Relationship where you can have it all, I’m all for LAT

Apparently my man and I are very modern. It’s nothing personal, it’s just that we are one of those new-fangled LAT couples.

That’s Living Apart Together, which apparently more and more of us are doing, according to research from London’s Birkbeck University. That is, being in a committed partnership, but not living under the same roof. For some LAT couples, it means not even living in the same town. I’ve tried that, but found there was nothing romantic about a four hour journey there and back every time either party fancied a snog. I say snog in case anyone of a delicate disposition might be reading, but you get my point.

Living Apart Together in the same town, however, is bloody marvellous. It was particularly handy this weekend for Austerity Valentine’s Day – instead of having to go hot air ballooning followed by champagne and a restaurant dinner involving oysters and chocolate sauce, we just stayed in. Cost? Some heart-shaped pasta and a heart-shaped cake tin. A log fire. Match of the Day has never been so romantic.

Because for LAT couples, especially those of the struggling artist /writer combination, staying in is the new going out. Co-habitees go out so that they can still stand coming back home together. They leave the four shared walls in order to be able to stomach those conversations about whose turn it is to unblock the drain, or who forgot to buy tea bags. LAT couples don’t do that. We just scamper through the fields of romance, romping like spring lambs, careless as teenagers, passion undimmed. On a Monday night.

Well, maybe not quite like lambs – actually, more your dry cured mutton - but it’s still more fun than arguing over phoning the insurance people about roof tiles or having artistic differences over soft furnishings. You could probably surmount such domestic dreariness if it were just the two of you – with perhaps one small elegant cat, or some decorative tropical fish – but add kids to the mix and it’s like having a big bucket of cold water thrown over your heart-shaped cake.

Specifically, teenagers. You might feel like one yourself, but the reality is that you probably couldn’t live with a whole bunch of them, even if half of them are from your very own uterus. Living with teenagers originally from someone else’s could be tricky.

Hence the invention of the LAT couple, each steering their own messy but autonomous ship of teenage (and middle aged) fools through the choppy seas of hormones, exams, relationships, friendships, creative projects, homework, middle age decrepitude, and unruly household pets. But aside from the clash of differing versions of domestic chaos, the real joy of the LAT dynamic is its intimacy without over-familiarity. Unshaven, hungover, menopausal, bad hair day? Reschedule. Disgustingly messy personal habits? They’re yours to keep. Anal retentive about the carpet, fussy about the knife drawer? No problem. (Although therapy never hurt anyone). In a LAT relationship, you can have it all. Everything, except two names on the same gas bill.