Living apart together: Longing for the couple, enjoying being single

Abstract

This study focuses on living apart together (LAT) partnerships in Belgium (Flanders) and uses semi-structured interview data from a sample of 54 LAT individuals aged 30–68 years to investigate the extent to which such unions are comparable to marriage with respect to five relationship dimensions: a couple dimension, an enterprise dimension, a value dimension, a role dimension and a form dimension. Although key relationship values put LAT on an equal footing with marriage, our findings indicate that transitional LAT partnerships exhibit far greater similarities to a marital relationship than permanent LAT partnerships in terms of perceptions of coupledom, joint enterprise and partners’ roles and responsibilities within the union. These similarities with marriage again diminish as the form dimension is taken into account.

Keywords:

• Living apart together
• couples
• marriage
• legal
• qualitative study