More Older Couples Stay Together Because They Live Apart
wsj.com
wsj.com
The root of the problem, I think, is that when you have a job you only really spend 20-50% of your awake time with a partner. When you don't it gets to a 90-100% range, and it is harder. No single person can fill 100% of your time.
The way I coped with it was to find some bits of spare time to go do my own thing. For me this was something mundane- I wanted to find a popular ruin bar in the area, but in the process I found a backpack I really liked and later purchased. This might be a more complicated situation given it's your girlfriend but taking a bit of time to solo it helped me a lot.
Hou can also buy a yacht cheaply in Fiji because of the number of people who think it would be great to Sal together and, after a few months, realize it would be better to stay together than to live on a boat.
My wife and I married after traveling together and I think in retrospect that was smart/lucky....at least it worked for over 20 years.
I think everyone should spend a week (min) or two traveling with their prospective partner before committing to a lifetime together. You learn so much about people when you remove them from their daily routine.
It seemed very kind, until years later when he and I were talking, and he said that if she was going to follow me to school, he wanted to make sure she could stand me for an entire week at a theme park.
That was ten years ago. Things are going well. I agree with you completely.
He says something like, "What should I do right now?"
"Well, I can't plan your day for you."
"Maybe I'll help around the house."
"Better not. How'd you sleep?"
"Had dreams."
"Well, you got time for 'em now."
So then my dad retired, and he expected to behave like a retiree. He helps out: mopping, washing clothes, even cooking occasionally. She's constantly trying to find him extra stuff to do outdoors.
Why?
Because she enjoyed the domestic side of the domestic life of a housewife: spending hours watching tv and / or gossiping with her friends in the comfort of her home. For 30 years, she had a routine, and was essentially married to the routine as much as the man.
The women largely learned how to get along, the kids all did, and the fathers did to a degree but they had the largest separation in personality and past times, probably because they had the least free time / most money and wanted to make it count.
It happens much more often than doesn't, not only in couples but also among friends. The cure is simple - spend at least few days apart. Not so easy in more dangerous countries. Rather plan ahead with this in mind.
On the other hand, it brings people much more together - backpacking 6 months in india brought us together more than many married couples after 10 years.
In this situation, we didn't have the benefit of a shared mission or sense of purpose. It was just a job, and a more or less random group. The one thing we had in common was that we were all in a place in life where we were willing to take a job in the middle of nowhere for months at a time. Some people were there for an adventure, some for money, and some to get away from their problems. It turns out, their problems followed them.
This sounds like a great tagline for a novel.
Now multiply that by two. Two inflexible people, both unwilling to shoot themselves in the foot for so-called love, trying to find some means to meet in the middle.
Besides, a lot of our relationship expectations are rooted in the idea that a baby will or could be the result. When that stops being true, it gets a lot harder to cave to convention and a lot easier to negotiate whatever terms you two can privately agree upon.
Add in the fact that your parents may be dead. Who do you need to please or seek permission from? Possibly no one.
Your coworkers or what not may have no idea you have some kind of unconventional relationship. You may be well past the age where your social circle is going to actively butt into your romantic life. If they do, you may just dump them as friends rather than accept that.
A lot of the petty frustrations of living together are transient. They change when you change towns, change jobs, have a baby, have that baby grow up into a kid, have your kid move out, and retire. But after all that, there's a long stretch where people's schedules and lives don't necessarily change very much beyond needing more support. That's not universal, people can make all kinds of big changes well past retirement, but it's common enough that people start asking "do I want to deal with this for the rest of my life?"
And that doesn't just mean younger people are putting up with bad relationships out of hope for the future. They could potentially be very compatible, making sound decisions like "your sleep schedule clashes with mine, but I'll deal with it for now and it'll be a positive down the line when we have to take care of kids at all hours of the day". It's just that the standard for a 'good' concession to make is different when you're weighing future circumstances against the present than it is when you're going to keep doing the same thing indefinitely.
Not to mention, in the nicest way I can put this, I don't really see how any relationship can last forever. I don't mean this as a criticism of my partner, I'm genuinely very happy with her, but I'm also well aware of just how much I change over time.
Knowing about more types of relationships is extremely useful for designing software. It helps to avoid baking in assumptions about relationship status and the implications thereof.
I didn't find the article cynical at all - on the contrary there were stories of several couples who had found a way of being happy and staying in lasting relationships that worked for them despite differences that might have driven them apart if they'd tried to compromise enough to live together.
How is finding ways of making love work for you "part of some cynical narrative" just because it doesn't fit the conventional pattern?
A more positive reading would be that the article shows that love finds a way.
Seems pretty cynical to believe that true love requires cohabitation.
Tangentially, you claim there's some narrative trying to brainwash people into believe "true love" doesn't exist, but we're just supposed to take your word for it that it does?
...that Numberwang has just fallen victim of, for sure...
Help if asked/needed, but seek new interests that don't involve your partner, and let them find their own. If you coincide, awesome, but don't force it.
[0] https://www.businessinsider.de/millennials-vs-baby-boomers-b...
Real estate inflation has been dramatic over the last several decades. If there were really a glut of old people attempting to offload their paid-off homes on the market, the prices might drop to more historically normal levels...
I’m not sure how the statistics actually work out but if single or married people are staying in oversized homes for longer without kids, it does seem like that could affect the supply of homes for families with children. I know the UK had a controversy over a “bedroom tax” that tried to address this issue.
He'd like to move, but would have to take on a mortgage in his 70s, so he'll stay put and my sibling and I will sell it for whatever we can get when he passes.
Interest rates were much much higher in the 1980s. So it's probably a wash and/or even less now.
It seems that once you reach a certain age, a house is primarily for storing all the clutter that accumulated in a lifetime, not for living.
So you didn't deduce your mortgage interest on your taxes?
People should be allowed to keep finances separated unless explicitly deciding otherwise.
Obviously designed to protect the rights of people in this situation long term, it's also rather frightening.
Or, at least this is what I've been told, I don't speak Swedish enough to read the relevant law myself but it's been corroborated by enough people I trust.
So if X owns a home, then meets Y and they both start living in X's home, if they split up X will still own all of it. However if X buys a home for X and Y to live in, then it doesn't matter that Y didn't pay anything the home is still owned 50/50 according to Sambolagen. X can avoid this by making a written statement that the home belongs to X signed by Y.
because automatically tying personal and romantic relationships and property arrangements together seems odd to people who want to keep them apart, just like some people might not want to have any relationship with their family any more and don't want to fiscally depend on them, or the other way around.
It seems archaic to me to have some sort of parallel informal and customary law based on kinship that you're automatically opted into.
I looked this up and it's not true. If there are no explicit documents, the court will interpret what the intention of the couple were in terms of ownership. If the property is in one person's name, that person tends to keep the property. If the property is put in both names then it is split 50/50.
My statement of 6 months is incorrect: it is two years of cohabitation, unless there is a child, or other circumstances.
In regards to splitting assets, there is no hard and fast rule: meaning it could slice either way.
It’s complicated because even prenups can be overturned if one partner experiences regret and the courts decide the prenup wasn’t “fair”.
The law is surprising enough to enough people that they’re looking at changing it.
I suppose that depends on which side of the financial scales you are on.
the Netherlands recently passed legislation that changed the default marriage agreement to no longer have the shared ownership stipulation.
And even then, that's only one option (marriage, that is); there is nobody (except maybe family, church, etc) forcing anyone to marry. There's other options as well.
We also have only recently legalized prenups.
Oh, and living wills are very very limited too. ..so yeah...
I don't know if it's enough for one partner to claim marriage to the other, but if they both claim it the marriage is valid.
I have no idea what happens if two non-romantic roomates buy a couch together, and one of them moves out though.
> I have no idea what happens if two non-romantic roomates buy a couch together, and one of them moves out though.
I'd certainly hope the couch would fall under the $10,000 limit for small claims.
Not to say your statement is invalid or that it's time for a shift, just a reminder that this is a well trodden field.
The situation now is that divorce and childlessness are common and people are adapting accordingly.
Personally, I think it's sad. Long-distance relationships don't work. Yet, as I see it, short-distance relationships do work, though a period of adjustment may be required.
Medium-distance relationships are stuck in the middle!
And, to put a cynical hat on for a moment, the powers-that-be may be just fine with this. They want people isolated in separate dwellings for purposes of taxation, property pricing, general conformity to their agendas, etc.
I don't think that holds as a blanket statement. (I have multiple counterexamples in my immediate circle, at least. Some of them on the decades scale)
Is there specific evidence, or is this simply an assumption you're making?
Of course, relying on the default cultural script for local relationships often falls down as well when it turns out that you disagree about the details. But we accept that relationships fail all the time, and don't tend to say "local relationships don't work" just because many of them fail. :D
To be clear, I'm not saying "GP is wrong" - I was genuinely curious if maybe they had some data/studies on the subject, since all I have are personal observations, and I'm curious about the issue. I.e. How much harder are LDRs?
Which is probably why we don’t have any right now.
My dream house (kids aside—that makes an already infeasible dream even less realistic) would have my wife and me in separate bedrooms with our own separate bathroom and kitchen and a living space, then one or two shared rooms in between us.
It'd be fine if only one of us ever cooked, and if either of us didn't find the other's methods and tools frustrating to use at best, but that's not the case, so here we are.
Examples: my ideal kitchen would contain a rice cooker and zero crock pots. Hers would have zero rice cookers and at least two crock pots. Mine would have at most two non-stick pans of any kind—really, I could live with just one—but several cast iron pieces, and some steel. Hers would have exclusively non-stick. I'd be entirely content with a single short built-in oven to save space. She'd want a full-size double oven. That sort of thing.
[EDIT] also, whether it's OK to leave any small appliances on the counter full-time or they must all go in cabinets when not in use. We finally, after years, compromised on the stand mixer and we're up to a 4-slice toaster now so it's just too damn big to store, but the rest...
[EDIT] and actually I bet we'd both do a better job of keeping it clean, with separate kitchens.
I know this is the kind of pessimism that attracts downvotes, but I can't hold my tongue. The WSJ not only paid someone to write this, but it actually made it into the print edition.
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It makes me happy - the same way a story about a rescued cat makes me feel warm and fuzzy.
Perhaps it is not at all related to Hacker culture, but then again this is a free forum and if some cat rescue stories slip in every now and again, I don't mind :)
Are you from 1950?
Relationships aren't only seen as a one-way-escalator anymore.
You don't have to date, move in, and marry.
This is a strong implication that OP thinks this is the way to go and only because they had bad experiences in the past they are not following them.
The point that "old people dating" follows from this implication being true.
They had bad experiences => they date longer before moving in => this is an article about old people dating => boring
They aren't "dating" in the classical sense, this IS how their relationship is => this is an article about shifting relationship structure in older people => interesting
1) I need to be very cold to sleep and don't want to be disrupted by someone else's warmth
2) I'd be woken up when the other person shifts around, and vice versa
3) What if my partner snores, has sleep apnea, mutters in their sleep?
4) What if we just have different circadian rhythms? I like to be up at 6am, which means bedding at 10pm. But my partner(s) have historically been night owls.
Then again, they split when I was 6...
Where by "many" the author means "some in my affluent circles of the 10 percenters and up".
> A roofing contractor, he had repaired her roof a few times... He lives in the big house that he built on 60 acres in the country, with tractors and a satellite TV for watching sports. She lives in a brightly decorated home with no satellite TV in the college town of Columbia, Missouri.
> Mr. Pastoret moved from his family home to an apartment 250 steps from hers. He comes over every evening for a supper of fruit and sandwiches. He washes the dishes. She dries and puts them away. They watch the news and “Wheel of Fortune,” holding hands, then go out to the front porch.
Do those really seem like stories restricted to the upper crust?
These people aren't broke, to be sure, and it's worth recognizing that pressure to live together to save money is part of how income affects divorce rates. But most of the people in this story are widowed or divorced with kids - they have property and maybe savings, but not enormous incomes. A house in Columbia, MO is $200k, and several of the other people have apartments.
Yes, most people can barely afford to maintain a single modest home, let alone 2 or 3.
By my count, the story has four renters, three homeowners, and one unknown. One of the renters even sold his home to make this arrangement more viable. This is an age bracket with an 80% homeownership rate. (That's not the same as % owning homes, but most people mentioned were divorced or widowed, which shrinks the difference.) All of them appear to be either working or retired; no one here is a stay-at-home spouse whose partner bought them a second house for comfort. No couple here even has three houses, so I don't see where that enters in.
If these people were single, or just starting a relationship, would we look at pairs of them as "owning two homes"? This is just a story about people who are staying 'dating' instead of remarrying and moving in together, which is viable for any demographic that isn't living with strangers to save money while single - and that includes most of the middle class.
> If these people were single, or just starting a relationship, would we look at pairs of them as "owning two homes"?
Expand your circle. How many people do you know living completely singly vs having room mates? Most of the people living in the US can't afford to have their own place, and many couples in the US can't afford to have a place for both of them, let alone children. Life is much different outside the ivory towers.
> Expand your circle. How many people do you know living completely singly vs having room mates? Most of the people living in the US can't afford to have their own place, and many couples in the US can't afford to have a place for both of them, let alone children. Life is much different outside the ivory towers.
I promise you I'm not surrounded by rich young Harvard grads buying houses. Most of the people I know have roommates, a live-in partner, or both. But looking at high-cost cities is every bit as misleading as looking at rich people; most of the US spent decades subsidizing sprawl and single-family homeownership, with predictable results.
Only 30% of American adults live with roommates (including family) outside romantic relationships. For the 55+ demographic in question, who largely grew up in an era of lower housing prices, that number is 10% (and skewed higher by those who need family care). Meanwhile, 65% of American households and 80% of over-55 households are owner-occupied, so the median American over 55 lives in a home that they or their partner own. 4/3 renters to 3/4 homeowners, none with roommates, is almost exactly what you'd expect for 7 Americans over 55.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/01/31/more-adults...
I'd expect nothing less from the Boomers and Gen X.
And I'm only somewhat joking.
In other words, they are not couples, just people that date sometimes. Next story please :)
That's what you do with someone that you date sometimes? My dating life was quite different than yours, I guess!
Also, why so dismissive of how other people structure their lives? They don't describe it as "someone I date sometimes" so why do you?
do whatever you want, I just disagree with the label.