For some couples, distance is key to closeness

Living apart — and loving it
So far, the children don’t seem to think much about it, especially because Dad is always around for dinner and to tuck them in. They talk happily about their uptown and downtown houses. Once, Henry told a friend that his mom and dad didn’t live together. Soon after, I got the Alarmed Call from a mom: “Judith, is everything … all right?” You could hear the anxiety, tinged with interest, in her voice: Those people are divorcing; he already has his own apartment! How soon before she’ll be blowing her kids’ college savings on liposuction and a face-lift?

I was bugged, yet amused. Clearly, she was making the same assumption that everyone does, which is that a married couple who do not cohabitate must not be happy or ever have sex. Another fun interpretation is that we must have lots of sex, only not with each other. The notion that two people can live apart and still be in a traditional marriage, neither celibate nor throwing key parties, seems to make folks’ head explode. To which I can only reply, in my own head, “That’s logical. We have separate places, so we must never have sex. Because as everyone knows, the thing that makes for a hot sex life is proximity.”

Yet another misconception held by those who find our setup peculiar is that a person can only be as faithful as her opportunities, so when John isn’t around, I must be entertaining myself somehow (or he himself). Now I admit I’ve lusted not only in my heart but in parts farther south, but these temptations are moderated by the thought, lodged in my heart, of someone waiting for me at home, scowling lovingly.

Some people suspect that John has a commitment problem. He lost his beloved second wife of 20 years to cancer. (I’m number three.) Does he now have some deep fear of abandonment, they wonder, which he deals with by keeping me at arm’s length? Do I, an only child, have a problem with sharing? Or do we just not care enough about each other to want to be entangled?

Entangled lives
Yet our lives are entangled, hopelessly, irrevocably and, for the most part, happily. To us, living together in the same physical space has nothing to do with living in the same emotional space. In my more hippie-granola moments, I like to think that there is a certain purity to our arrangement. I am married simply because I happen to love the guy.

Not that I never get angry, especially because I’m usually the one rushing around in the morning trying to get our boys off to school. (“Quack! Quack! Mr. Duck wants you to eat your cereal and put on your pants!” For this, I got an Ivy League education?) Indeed, there have been moments of fury: When I’m on vomit patrol by myself, or when Henry wakes me at 3 a.m. to ask, “Why do we have knees?” Yet we have something many kids with dads in residence often don’t: a father who is there for dinner, who will leave for his place only after he hears the boys snoring. He loves and worries about all of us. And he agreed to take on the burden of children in his late 60s; the least I can do is let him get a good night’s rest.

Truthfully, I can’t fathom why any couple would want to live together. It’s not as if most people feel more intimate when they share a space. (There’s a reason the courtship days are the giddiest time — that reason involves not knowing every nasty detail about each other.) I’ve never walked in on John in the bathroom. He has never clipped his toenails in bed. If you live apart from someone and trust him, you have intimacy without that incestuous feeling that comes from too much information, which can lead couples to stop having sex.

I won’t go so far as to say that our arrangement has brought us closer. John and I fight as much as, and perhaps more than, the average couple. But living apart has allowed us to stay married and remain in love. We do find each other essential; it’s just that, like many couples, we find each other deeply annoying, too. The only difference with us is that sometimes we can breathe a deep sigh of relief at the end of the day and say: I love you, honey; now get the hell out of here!

And on certain afternoons, when the children are with the babysitter, I make my way uptown, where John is waiting for me. The lights are low, and there are beverages at the ready (single malt for him, white wine for me — seriously, we have nothing in common). I look forward to these afternoons when it’s only me and the guy I fell in love with 16 years ago, afternoons that would be tough to savor if we lived together. And the best part? Afterward, when he gets frustrated that I’ve strewn clothes everywhere, I put them on, kiss him and wave good-bye.

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