Woman Breaks Down Her Unconventional Living Arrangement With Her Partner, And People Have Thoughts
For some, a long-term relationship culminates with things like leaving a toothbrush at each other’s home, giving each other keys to their place, and eventually moving in together.
But a fair share of couples think that it’s way more romantic to have different bathrooms, bedrooms, and even addresses. Daniella, a 41-year-old brand manager from Ohio, and her partner are two of those people.
She recently turned to TikTok to explain how they live together but separately in a duplex with their own apartments, and her video quickly went viral, igniting a discussion on modern housing dynamics.
Image credits: halfpoint (not the actual photo)
Recently, one TikToker urged everyone to normalize couples having separate bedrooms
Image credits: rebelmarie
But this woman said she and her partner took it even further
Image credits: rebelmarie
And she made a case for partners having not only separate bedrooms, but also their own apartments
Image credits: rebelmarie
“She gave you really good reasons to have your own bedroom, I’m going to give you reasons to have your own apartment. My partner and I have been together for four years, and two years ago we bought a duplex. I live in one unit, he lives in the other. We have never lived together all the time. Here’s why. We’re both divorced, we got used to living alone.”
Image credits: rebelmarie
“We also both have kids. I have a daughter, he has a son. So we have two only children. We have different design aesthetics. I’m a maximalist, he is not. We don’t fight about who does the dishes. We each do our own dishes. We don’t fight about clutter. We don’t fight about messy bathrooms. We are responsible for our own spaces. This also safeguards us against financial calamity.”
Image credits: rebelmarie
“If one of us lost our job or some other thing, we could all live in one unit and rent the other one out. It wouldn’t be comfy. We don’t want to do that, but we could and not lose the house. We spend a ton of time together as a family.”
Image credits: rebelmarie
“I’m about to go down there and eat breakfast with them. We have a beautiful home. I love it here. It’s working out great. I highly recommend.”
The video has amassed over 2.6 million views
@rebelmarie #stitch with @user359911342169 two year mark: still great, still recommend #livingaparttogether ♬ original sound – Rebel Nell
Daniella told BuzzFeed that she and her partner were inspired by the idea of a “bridge house” early on in their relationship.
“Since we were both previously divorced and we each have a child from our previous marriages, we knew we didn’t want to live together in the traditional sense,” she explained. “However, two separate buildings and a bridge were out of our means, so we began talking about a duplex.”
She said they both had several reasons why they didn’t want to fully cohabitate, and a lot of them had to do with preserving their identities within their relationship.
“When we talked about what our relationship could look like in the future, we both felt confident we wanted to be together, but it was important for each of us to feel autonomous, too. Living apart together felt like a way to tie our futures together but in a sustainable and independent way.”
As Daniella mentioned in the video, they also think this decision is the best one when it comes to their children. “Blending our families completely didn’t feel like a good option for us for a lot of reasons, but mostly because we felt our kids deserved (and needed) to have space and one-on-one time with their parents.”
“We started dating in August 2019 (we’re about to hit our four-year anniversary!), so we had only been together a few months when the pandemic hit, making things more complex as we worked to find a balance for developing our relationship, entwining our families, and maintaining healthy boundaries that didn’t move things along too quickly.”
“We had a little bit of a trial run at living apart-together during the pandemic when we shared a babysitter for our kids who helped them with remote school for a year,” Daniella recalled. “So, each day, we came together as a family to work/school but then would go to our separate spaces at the end of the day. After two years of living in separate apartments about two miles apart, we were both ready to buy a home, and we decided we were ready to look at duplexes together.”
Many loved the idea
Image credits: www.facebook.com
Image credits: www.facebook.com
Daniella and her partner have received some criticism for their living situation but in terms of how it has affected their relationship as a whole, Daniella said, “I love knowing that he’s only a flight of stairs away if I need anything: from a hug to help with something.”
“I also love that we’re comfortable and confident enough in our relationship that we don’t feel like we need to spend every spare moment together. We both have hobbies and enjoy time alone, and we also both feel really committed to spending quality time with our individual children. Every decision we’ve made in the last two years, from where to buy our home, to repairs/upgrades to the space, to when and where to take family vacations, has been done in equal partnership, There is no default caregiver, default decision maker, or default schedule.”
However, even with all the mixed reactions in the comments under her video, Daniella believes that people are becoming more open-minded about alternative living arrangements for families and couples. “I had never heard of anyone in a long-term committed relationship living like this until just a few years ago, and now, I’ve found lots of other people online and off who have created families and partnerships that look all kinds of ways,” she said.
“The living-apart-together movement has a lot of variation even within people who identify with that term: from legally married people who live across the street (or town) from each other, to polyamorous partnerships living in one or more homes with partner(s), to folks who are dating living separately with no intention of ever living any closer than they currently do. I think it’s really beautiful how people find ways to create meaningful connections that don’t prescribe to a traditional or nuclear family.”
Some, however, couldn’t wrap their heads around this arrangement
Image credits: www.facebook.com
The reasons why people get married and the reasons they move in with a partner actually differ in some key ways.
When the Pew Research Center took a look at the data from a nationally representative survey of nearly 10,000 Americans over 18 years of age as well as the numbers from the National Survey of Family Growth, it found an interesting difference.
Most married and cohabiting adults cite love and companionship as major reasons why they decide to get married or move in with a partner. But about four-in-ten cohabiters also say finances and convenience were important factors in their decision: 38% say moving in with their partner made sense financially and 37% say it was convenient. In comparison, just 13% of married adults cite finances and 10% cite convenience as major reasons why they decided to get married.
Additionally, among cohabiters, about a quarter (23%) say wanting to test their relationship was a major reason why they decided to move in with their partner.
So if you and your partner are relatively comfortable financially and have already showed each other that you can make it through thick and thin, alternative living arrangements, like the one Daniella has, can become more attractive.
And others said “not in this economy”
I get why some people don’t “get” it, but why did so many people feel the need to have a go at her because THEY can’t afford this setup? She isn’t saying everyone has to do this, just that it works for her 🤷♂️
My husband and I have our own bedrooms. If we want to sleep together we can, but honestly, I like my bed to myself.
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I live in the same home as my boyfriend of 22 years, but we don't share a bedroom. We have very different sleeping styles/sleep hygiene, and we BOTH snore. (I have a badly deviated septum and pretty bad sleep apnea. I also drool. Sigh.) He says he got used to my snoring when we used to share a bed, and can sleep through it, which I appreciate, but I unfortunately never could get used to his snoring. Even now, some nights I literally have to turn my white noise machine up to sound-barrier-breaking levels because his snoring (from the OTHER SIDE OF THE ENTIRE HOUSE where his bedroom is) is so loud that I can't sleep/ignore it. He can't help it, he has excessively large and flappy versions of those flappy tissue things we all have in our throats, but mang. It's sad, because I enjoy snuggling with him, but we just have irreconcilable differences in our sleep habits XD But it's obviously not fatal, as we've been together for 22 years. (23 years this December!)
Aw congratulations on your upcoming anniversary Lakota, every time I see you write about him it seems like such a cute relationship. I'm happy for you two.
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partner and i have been together 10 years. he snores, i'm a light sleeper. he doesnt care about crumbs in bed, i do! i love watching stuff as i go to sleep, it distracts him. he's a pc gamer who doesnt like big screens, i am an xbox addict and a tv nerd. he works in IT, he's on the phone all the time, and I'm a translator, i need absolute silence. so we have separate sleeping and living arrangements in a large apartment. we spend a lot of time together, we nap together, we cook together, we are watching star trek every night, religiously. we have 2 cats and 3 dogs together. it works perfectly for us.
I get why some people don’t “get” it, but why did so many people feel the need to have a go at her because THEY can’t afford this setup? She isn’t saying everyone has to do this, just that it works for her 🤷♂️
My husband and I have our own bedrooms. If we want to sleep together we can, but honestly, I like my bed to myself.
Load More Replies... I live in the same home as my boyfriend of 22 years, but we don't share a bedroom. We have very different sleeping styles/sleep hygiene, and we BOTH snore. (I have a badly deviated septum and pretty bad sleep apnea. I also drool. Sigh.) He says he got used to my snoring when we used to share a bed, and can sleep through it, which I appreciate, but I unfortunately never could get used to his snoring. Even now, some nights I literally have to turn my white noise machine up to sound-barrier-breaking levels because his snoring (from the OTHER SIDE OF THE ENTIRE HOUSE where his bedroom is) is so loud that I can't sleep/ignore it. He can't help it, he has excessively large and flappy versions of those flappy tissue things we all have in our throats, but mang. It's sad, because I enjoy snuggling with him, but we just have irreconcilable differences in our sleep habits XD But it's obviously not fatal, as we've been together for 22 years. (23 years this December!)
Aw congratulations on your upcoming anniversary Lakota, every time I see you write about him it seems like such a cute relationship. I'm happy for you two.
Load More Replies... partner and i have been together 10 years. he snores, i'm a light sleeper. he doesnt care about crumbs in bed, i do! i love watching stuff as i go to sleep, it distracts him. he's a pc gamer who doesnt like big screens, i am an xbox addict and a tv nerd. he works in IT, he's on the phone all the time, and I'm a translator, i need absolute silence. so we have separate sleeping and living arrangements in a large apartment. we spend a lot of time together, we nap together, we cook together, we are watching star trek every night, religiously. we have 2 cats and 3 dogs together. it works perfectly for us.
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