“Living as a non-cohabiting couple has drastically changed my life (…). You go to a professional meeting, go to sleep at the other person’s house, then, the next day, you go home”, confides in front of the camera, in TikTok videothe American Joanna Dahlseid (182,000 subscribers), 31 years old, whose leitmotif is to convey “money before men”as his life program announces (Money Before Men). Then, this “mompreneur” – mother and business manager – unfolds her ultra-dense schedule as a divorce negotiator coach, as if to prove that she has no time to devote to her spouse. However, she regularly packs a small suitcase to go see him, as she wishes. Welcome to the living together apart (LTA, “non-cohabiting couples”).
In the American media, the expression initially had a very different meaning. In 2008, after the subprime crisis, it refers to separated parents who find themselves obliged to continue living under the same roof, due to being unable to do otherwise financially.
More recently, the term has evolved to refer to a couple who do not live under the same roof, the result of the rise of personal development and individualism, female emancipation and the liberation of morals. According to the study “The family at a distance” from INED, published in 2018, there are more than 1.2 million French people living like this. Among them, 6 out of 10 are under 35 years old.
Share only the “good times”
Often made up of young, highly educated urbanites, this couple, generally without children, most of the time experienced, during a previous relationship, a tumultuous separation punctuated by a bitter move. So, when these lovebirds get married again, they keep a safe distance from this potential trauma, don’t get too involved and try to share only the “good times” (for the chore of taking out the trash and the gastro in sound vision, you will come back).
With a fluctuating topography (at her place or at his place, it depends), this couple moves away from conventions. But shared housing is the main one, with its daily hassles translated by sentences starting with “Have you thought about…”.
Gone are the evenings where, slumped on the sofa, two pairs of ears twitch when the all-too-famous Netflix “tou-doum” sounds. Why waste another forty minutes agreeing on a tepid film to watch together, the result of an unsatisfactory compromise, when you can comatose in front of your favorite Godard in pilou-pilou pajamas alone at home?
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