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SJP, who, unlike her Sex and the City character, now has three kids, was ready to decamp to slightly more bucolic Brooklyn, the site said.
Broderick, on the other hand, would stay in the couple’s West Village townhouse in order to be close to his work on Broadway.
The item raised more than a few eyebrows, especially since rumors of estrangement have plagued them before. Was the couple separating? Sure, it could be a subtle way to signal divorce, or it could be that they’re joining the ranks of a growing relationship trend called the Living Apart Togethers—or LATs for short—couples who are committed to each other but maintain two different homes.
Kimberly Kaye, 26, and her boyfriend of six years broke up—geographically speaking—in late 2008 after living together for three years. He stayed in their apartment in Jersey City, NJ; she, like the Sex and the City star, got a place in Brooklyn.
“People think we’re nuts,” she says, “but it’s honestly been the best decision we’ve ever made. Not only do we have the space to ‘miss’ one another—our time together is now on a level akin to those early, passionate first dates.”
But the move had a positive impact on their professional lives as well: “We both have been able to refocus on other pieces of our lives,” says Kaye. She was promoted within four months of moving out, a career boost she attributes to her increased productivity. Her boyfriend gained a new stable of freelance clients, in part, she admits, because “I’m not there at night harping on him to ‘step away from the Mac and love me.’
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And even recent science proves the benefits of a little breathing room in the bedroom. “Fifteen years ago, experts in the field of sex therapy used to say that the best sex was among the people who were the most intimate—who knew all of the warts,” says Scott Haltzman, MD, clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at Brown University and author of The Secrets of Happy Families. “But there’s been a pendulum shift in our thinking.
We now know that one of the things that improves sexual attractiveness is not always being in the presence of another person. There’s good evidence that an LAT can actually increase people’s sexual attraction to each other.”
Just ask Marilyn Casey, a marketing consultant in Cleveland, who credits her LAT relationship with igniting her sex life with her partner of 13 years. And it didn’t even take a lot of distance: They live in separate apartments within the same complex. Still, says Casey, “making love in different beds makes sex more exciting. We maintain some mystery in the boudoir.” Then again, sometimes LATs are motivated by economics, not eroticism.
“After living together for almost two years in Las Vegas, my boyfriend and I were both laid off due to the current economic conditions,” says Melissa Harris, 27, a public relations executive. She found employment in DC; he landed a job in New Mexico, before eventually moving back to live in Sin City, alone. “We’re still very much together, says Harris. “We chose to do it this way so that one of us didn’t end up resenting the other for having to sacrifice a great job opportunity.”
Erica Easley, 31, and Ed Chalfy, 49, both work in fashion. He owns the largest vintage store on the West Coast, in Portland, Ore.; she designs a line of knee socks, sold at rocksock.net, from L.A.
They met in 2002, and after years of splitting their time between the two cities—living six months in one, six in another —the competing needs to grow both their businesses, as well as their relationship, made them decide to try on an LAT setup for size. They’ve been living separately for the past year and a half.
The two aren’t sure they want the arrangement to be permanent—at times it can be lonely and stressful, says Easley—but, for now, Chalfa’s sales are up 15 percent, and her business is going like gangbusters because she has undivided attention to give to her company. “It would be much harder to put the necessary time into managing and promoting Rock Socks if I had the happy distraction of a boyfriend home every night,” she says. John Curtis, author of Happily Unmarried: Living Together and Loving It, says the situation is common among dual-income couples.
“The model of marriage in America hasn’t changed in 50 years,” says Curtis. “It was built on an economic model where he made the money and she did not.” Now, he says, in relationships where two partners have separate but equal career concerns, more and more couples are being forced to get creative—and to compromise. “It used to be that if a husband was transferred, his wife automatically moved with him,” says Curtis. “That doesn’t work when she’s making six figures too.”
LATs are already commonplace in Europe: The rate of LAT relationships for women between 20 and 39 who have never married or lived with anyone is 32 percent in France and 47 percent in Switzerland. Until now, data on the trend within the U.S. has been scarce because, on a census report, anyone reporting his own address and no marriage partner would just be counted as single.
But, according to a new study out of UCLA, seven percent of unmarried American women and six percent of men self-identify as LATs, and three percent of married couples live apart from their spouse. “We were looking at this packet of family changes that’s been happening over the past 40 years,” says lead author of the study Charles Strohm, a sociology PhD student, “and one of the newest ideas out there are these nonresidential partnerships.”
One reason for the rise? This generation, many of whom were raised by divorced parents, may be more gun-shy about commitment in general. As are some of their elders, who’ve tried a more traditional route and found themselves back at the drawing board. LAT relationships are also common among the divorced, who, back on the dating market again, find themselves less willing to compromise.
In general, according to the study, those who embrace living-apart-together relationships tend to live in urban areas, be better educated—they’re twice as likely as cohabiting couples to have a college degree—possess more individualistic attitudes, and be more likely than married people to believe that men and women should share household duties.
For women, in particular, says Strohm, “it’s a way to get the goodies out of a relationship but not contribute disproportionately to the housework, like when living with a partner.” LATs, in that sense, may be a postmodern retort to “Why buy the cow, when you can get the milk for free?”
Not to mention that it averts the possibility of arguments over the decor.
“My boyfriend and I have been dating exclusively for six years,” says Roberta Kuehl, a divorcée who works in the medical field. Yet the couple lives 20 minutes apart, she in her two-bedroom apartment in Nassau County, NY; he in his Tudor home in Queens, NY.
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