Life as a couple is far from being a long, quiet river. “The feeling of love fades over time. It turns into attachment. At first, we accept it, this relationship can continue to bring pleasure, but, in our case, it was a source of conflict. We were tired of lying and offering a poor vision of love to our children”, testifies Renaud, a 49-year-old journalist. In 2021, he and his ex-partner decide, by mutual agreement, to become “separators”, i.e. “parents who have regained their emotional freedom, but who continue to live under the same roof in two separate rooms”, to continue to offer their two children a fulfilling life. An end to a love story born in 2005, but the beginning of a new adventure that Renaud describes in his newsletter “The Separated”, the publication of which is currently stopped. Separated, but together? The situation seems counterintuitive in many ways.
“The natural reaction is to say it’s impossible. We are separated, so, on principle, we must hate each other. Except that there is no one way to be in a relationship and to separate, continues Renaud. At the beginning, we didn’t change anything in our habits, except for the separate room. But it was an unsatisfactory functioning, because it was not balanced between her and me regarding domestic tasks, and not clear enough for the children. Being at home more often due to teleworking, I never had a week fully free from daily tasks. And it’s precisely the freedom I was looking for when I separated. » In short, when we are under the same roof, the sentimental separation is not enough to make the old threads disappear as if by magic.
After several attempts at establishing rules for living together, the couple definitively adopted the method of alternating care at home, every other week. One has all his evenings free during the week, the other has the children in his care. And vice versa the following week. “Which does not mean that we cannot help ourselves, but the request must be made to the other as if we each lived in separate places. We are in a kind of R&D anyway [recherche et développement] permed. Our relationship is not without tension, but there is much less than before”clarifies Renaud.
A step-by-step de-training
Far from being a new phenomenon, living together apart, or LTA, as sociologists called them, were brought to light in the United States, in the aftermath of the subprime crisis in 2008. Originally, it was more about couples forced to stay together out of financial necessity, even if the term is now used indiscriminately to describe non-cohabiting couples, that is to say each living at home.
You have 75% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.