Congratulations! You just got married and now can choose which home you’d each like to live in. Yup! Together but apart!
ABC's Good Morning America had a December 14 segment highlighting what hosts called a “growing trend.” Essentially couples are getting married but living apart to keep their lives independent from one another and go about life as they had before they said “I do.”
A New York Times story inspired the coverage which indicated that there are over four million people who are currently married but live separately.
The segment was highlighted by correspondent Will Reave and mentioned a couple from NYC who got married and then lived 15-minutes apart. They would see each other on weekends but do whatever they wanted throughout the week independently.
The husband was filmed playing video games and lounging around while the wife got to wear a face mask and drink wine … apparently those things cannot be done within normal marital domesticity.
“I think as women, we are just told to be good wives and mothers and, you know, et cetera, and for the first time I feel like I was able to see who I am outside of those labels and it was really fun and interesting to find out who I am,” the wife said.
So we need to be independent people, get married and completely forget about that, and then live without our spouse so that we can re-find who we were before the marriage.
Why get married in the first place if you think you have to completely deny who you are as a person in order to fulfill marriage expectations?
Unironically, the couple who was spotlighted suggested that they do miss each other. So again I reiterate that this makes no sense whatsoever.
Eventually they moved back in together but that doesn't make the situation any less strange.
It’s one thing for couples to separate for a given time. Perhaps one person is deployed. Maybe one of the people works in another state for a given time or has an ill parent to tend to in another region. In those cases, being married but separated makes sense. But cases where people choose to get married and intend to spend the rest of their lives together but then live separately, that does NOT make any sense.
The world is a strange strange place.
