Living alone together

Recently, there’s been more attention to people, generally those getting a little long in the tooth, who are choosing to have relationships with others but not marry or move in together (see this article, for example: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/16/well/family/older-singles-living-apart-LAT.html )

Beyond the practical reasons why someone might choose to “live alone together,” LAT, as it’s called, makes sense from a psychological perspective.

During the course of our lives, we create homes that send messages to the world (and ourselves) about what’s important to us and what we value about ourselves.

Many of us, by the time we’ve gotten to be older, have fine-tuned the stories our homes tell about us and can see the challenges of melding our tale with another’s as daunting.  Also, that melding will likely dilute “our story,” messages sent won’t as clearly reflect who we are as a person and what drives us forward.

LAT takes courage, it’s not what our society expects when people commit to each other, but it maintains, and potentially strengthens, our commitment to ourselves.