It’s known as living apart, together. Being in a serious relationship while remaining at separate addresses has long been a lifestyle more associated with people starting out in life.
But those aged 60 and above who date like people in their 20s enjoy better mental wellbeing, the largest study of its kind has found.
Couples who meet in later life and decide against moving in together experience mental health benefits comparable to marriage or cohabiting – but without the “frictions”, “intense day-to-day interactions” and care commitments that come with those relationships, the research showed.
They also avoid the “legal obligations and institutional binding” that make it harder to get out of an unhappy marriage, according to the study from Prof Yang Hu at Lancaster University and Dr Rory Coulter at University College London.
Challenging the perception that older people prefer more “conventional” arrangements involving marriage and cohabitation, the research found that when the over-60s form a new relationship, “living apart, together” is the most popular option: 10 times more probable than marriage.
The actor Helena Bonham Carter and the director Tim Burton lived separately – next door to one another – during their 13-year relationship. They first met when Burton, 56, directed Carter, 48, in 2001’s Planet of the Apes.
Miriam Margolyes has lived apart from her partner Heather Sutherland for more than 50 years, though last year the Blackadder and Harry Potter star said the pair wanted to move in together.
The new research relied on data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study, tracking the over-60s, their relationships and their mental health between 2011 and 2023 – the first time the subject has been looked at on a national scale.
It follows earlier research that looked at living apart, together across the whole population and revealed it was a more “durable kind of relationship form” among the over-60s in particular, Hu said.
“If you look at younger people they are LAT [living apart, together] because they couldn’t afford a house … but for older people the picture is very different – it’s a long-term arrangement rather than transitory,” he said.
While the study found marriage and its protections offered marginally greater mental health benefits for the over-60s, they found there was less of a risk to mental health with LAT break-ups than there was with a marriage or cohabitation ending.
Previous research has shown mental health benefits for marriage and cohabitation are greater for men than women and that “older women typically undertake a larger share of domestic and care tasks” in such relationships.
In contrast, older women and men enjoy similar mental health benefits from LAT, according to the study, soon to be published in the Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences.
However, Hu said they “didn’t find evidence LAT is on the rise” among the over-60s. “It’s not new, it’s new in terms of the attention being paid to it,” he said.
“We need to acknowledge the strength of these ties stretching across households, they are really important in sustaining individuals’ wellbeing. What’s also interesting is that among older people who LAT, 64% were living within 30 minutes of each other – and [they were] more gender egalitarian.
“LAT is a sort of fine balance between intimate union and individual autonomy. It allows individuals to still keep their commitments to existing family relationships, while leaving a space for them to have an intimate partner at a late stage in life.
“In terms of numbers there are many more younger people living apart together, but they do that under completely different circumstances … for younger adults living apart together, seven out of 10 are saying they want to move in together in three years’ time, in contrast to just one in four older adults.”
Adding that the research aims to deepen knowledge of an “important, previously overlooked aspect of older people’s intimate life”, Hu said it also has implications for policymakers concerning care, mental health and lockdown-type policies.
“Household-centered governance has its limitations,” he said. “During the [Covid-19] pandemic the whole LAT population was cut off.”
