Happy ever after - on separate floors

Last night Olly, my partner of 31 years, invited me for a dinner of seared tuna and salad followed by hand-rolled chocolates. He served this in his apartment to a background of Nina Simone. When he suggested I spend the night, I accepted.

At the weekend I held a birthday party for him on the roof garden. He arrived at the invited hour, then as 8pm approached he thanked me warmly and scuttled downstairs to his quarters to watch Euro 2004.

Nine months ago Olly and I moved into separate floors in our house, converting a family home designed to suit us when our sons were around, into a maisonette with kitchen, bathroom, bedrooms, a living space each and, crucially, the possibility via a staircase of as much or little independence as we wanted.

This arrangement came about as the result of a row. Our sons had grown up and we suddenly had a surfeit of time alone together. I found myself viewing Olly as a tedious flaneur because he didn't want to live and work at full throttle as I chose to do. I was bugged by all sorts of things he did - and didn't do - and found myself tensing as soon as I went through the front door. One day I returned home to find Olly watching the TV in the early evening and flipped. He turned off the television and turned to me: 'Maybe you'd better live somewhere else,' he said.

It was an uncomfortable moment but it kick-started a discussion about how we might reshape the way we lived. Since then we've managed - harmoniously - to rework our living space. Olly has even designed a fabulous staircase to the roof for 'my bit', even though he has to ask permission to use it. We're lucky to have enough space in the house to create this separate togetherness (this is what I call our new arrangements because I believe being able to retreat into privacy enhances our chosen time together). But critically, this re-organisation has been made with enthusiasm on both sides - otherwise it could easily have pushed our faultline to breaking point.

Admittedly, the first couple of weeks were shaky: what did it mean having this separateness? How much time could we spend apart and still sustain a relationship? Was it an oblique way of parting? Certainly friends thought so, asking discreet questions about the state of play between us.

The truth is this separate togetherness suits us, and I've heard of other couples who agree. In her book Rethinking Families (Calouste Gulbenkian), based on a five-year study, Fiona Williams, director of the Economic and Social Research Council's research group on care, values and the future of welfare, looks at how new domestic arrangements are affecting family values. Far from fuelling the pro-family campaigners who see moral collapse in today's trends, Williams argues that the desire to make relationships endure is as strong as ever. She says: 'One of the things that people have become very aware of is the need for personal space.'

It was this recognition that led painter John Pearce, 63, and his wife Tina, a 62-year-old teacher, to agree on a routine where John spends months abroad painting the vibrant landscapes he exhibits at the Francis Kyle gallery. Yet Tina describes their relationship as 'rock solid'. Even so, their separate togetherness evolved out of frustration after John quit teaching to become a full-time painter, and a lack of space in their London flat became an issue.

John began painting nature, which took him to 'rural retreats' for days, or even weeks. Meanwhile, Tina discovered that she liked doing things her own way. When John fell in love with a house in France, they decided to extend their mortgage to buy it. Tina says: 'I was resistant at first because we really couldn't afford it, but when we talked I began to understand how important it was for John.'

Since then John has spent long stretches of time alone in France. Tina says: 'I think he might have liked us to go with him at first, but I am a very urban person and have a life in London. And although our daughter Eleanor missed him, I didn't feel angry with him for not being there to share the care. He has always been very close with her when he is around.' John says: 'I miss the family terribly when I am away, at the same time I do need to feel physically alone to work.'

If there is a problem, Tina murmurs mildly, it is that when John returns 'he brings back big bags of dirty washing, and deposits huge pictures around the house'. Yet when Tina got cancer a couple of years ago John stayed at home caring for her and, because he could not paint, found teaching work to bring in money. Listening to them, the huge affection between them is clear.



Soon after they married, seven years ago, Pablo, 40, and Sofie Amalie Juarez, 30, decided to live separately in order to protect their relationship. Sophie was doing an art degree in London and Pablo was working in catering but not getting much work. All they could afford was a small flat. Pablo recalls: 'We were very hard up so there were arguments about paying bills and no space to cool off. Everything seemed to cause friction between us.'

It was at this point that they agreed Pablo should take a live-in catering job so that he would have somewhere else to stay. Meanwhile Sofie Amalie put a mattress into the artist's studio she rented so she could sleep there and they were able to give up the expense of the flat. 'The lovely thing was we started missing each other,' says Sophie. 'We were able to recall the feelings we had for each other that had been in danger of getting lost.'

In the past year, Pablo has found better paid work and Sofie Amalie is coming to the end of her studies. They have rented a flat with a large space where they are living together again. However, says Pablo without hesitation: 'Living apart was undoubtedly the way we saved our relationship and now we feel very committed to each other.'

Increasingly young couples are recognising the danger of 'swamping' a relationship before it gets fully established, says Sue Heath, senior lecturer in sociology at Southampton University, and co-author with Elizabeth Cleaver of Young, Free and Single (Talgrave). 'Our research looked at the accommodation choices of people in their mid-twenties. A lot of them preferred to share a home with friends, not partners, because they understood the tensions that being too on top of each other can bring. I think there is a strong sense of the tension between independence and partnership. But even though they may be choosing different ways to build a relationship, most of the young people we interviewed had traditional aspirations and wanted a committed relationship with roots when the time was right.'

Emily Rowe Rawlence, 24, and her boyfriend Andy Fagg, 23, met at Leeds University and have been together for two-and-a-half years. 'We love each other very much and hope to love each other for ever,' she says, 'but we also know that this will take effort and thinking about each other's needs.'

Out of this thinking has come an arrangement where they have 'individual spaces' within the house they share with two other young women. As her place of retreat, Emily has an attic apart from the couple's double bedroom. 'At first it was difficult for Andy to understand that wanting my privacy wasn't about not wanting him.

'It was also difficult because he didn't have anywhere that felt like his domain. So we talked about this and I took all my clothes, make-up, books out of the bedroom and put them in the attic room so that Andy could make it his space. This is where he goes to read, listen to music or play the piano. Most of the time I respect his right to privacy, though there are times when I've pestered him and he lets me know I've crossed the boundary.' But at night, she says firmly, it remains their joint bedroom and both want it that way.

Establishing the need for separate togetherness from the beginning was vital, say Emily and Andy. They believe being honest is better than 'keeping quiet but silently fuming'. At the same time they know they spend enough time together to nurture their relationship emotionally.

This is key, according to Janet Reibstein, an Exeter University psychologist and author of a study of happy marriages, The Best Kept Secret, to be published by Bloomsbury next year. 'The couples who have survived the long haul best are those who are conscious of the need to keep their relationship alive and vibrant, and recognise what they need to do to achieve this.

'They might well follow their own pursuits and they don't begrudge each other separateness. But they also want to have time together. Being able to talk and communicate feelings and needs to each other, as well as wanting to make the other happy, comes up over and over again,' she says.

Penny Mansfield, director of One-Plus-One, the marriage research organisation, acknowledges that modern relationships have developed, but she warns that putting too much focus on making distance in a relationship is risky. 'If one partner announces he or she wants separate space and the other has thought they are doing fine being very together, it can feel very rejecting.'

And then there is the question, she suggests, of where the parameters are. Is this an open relationship or still sexually exclusive? Does it involve meal times together? Will there be financial sacrifice involved? 'Couples have to be very good at communicating and caring for their relationship to introduce a fairly radical new shape,' she says.

But as I pour myself a bath and turn up the volume on my CD player to cover up the sound of Olly and our youngest son laughing on the floor below, it seems to me that the essence of separate togetherness is that it's not designed as an escape route from the relationship.

It is, instead, a way of protecting our partnership, a way of giving it a new kind of life.