One for the price of two
Some couples find their marriages thrive when they share separate quarters

Joshua Brody and his wife, Juliana Grenzeback, have been married for seven years, but they have never lived together. Grenzeback lives in a neat, pleasant house in San Francisco. Brody lives across the street in a rented flat.

What do they say when people ask the two of them where they live? "We say we live in Bernal Heights," Brody said, in "a very big house with a street running through it."

Brody makes a living as a musician, comic and composer; Grenzeback is a financial consultant for nonprofit arts groups. They are both in their 40s.

Virginia Woolf dreamed of a room of one's own, but there are larger dreams: a house of one's own.

It's almost a trend. A 2003 census report found that 3 million married couples lived in separate residences (although that statistic must include many who are separated in the "this-isn't-working" sense). Some live in different units in the same apartment building. Some live in separate cities. Some just divide up the house they have into two addresses with one electric bill.

There's even a coinage -- LAT, or Living Apart Together, for couples who are committed to each other but live separately.

The rich and the literary have done this often enough. British novelist Margaret Drabble and her husband, writer Michael Holroyd, put a flat between them, a sort of neutral Switzerland. During their marriage, Mia Farrow and husband Woody Allen put a large urban park between them. Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir had part of Paris between them, and movie stars practically make news if they share a roof.

Judye Hess, a professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco and a couples and family therapist, is a believer in the notion that one can have one's cake and not have to live with it, too. When she met her longtime boyfriend, she warned him she would never want to move in with him. She had lived with someone before, and found out it worked as long as he had a completely different work shift, but that changed, and there her beloved was, in her space at the same time she was. "I was giving up too much, " Hess said, firmly. She remembers sleeping on the living room couch as a child and yearning for her own space.

Now she and her boyfriend have condos around the corner from each other in Berkeley, so that one is always coming to see the other. "It's exciting to get together," she said. "It captures the feeling of dating." They did just buy a car together, though. "And we have a cat," Hess added.

Separate dwelling units will not work for every couple, Hess said. "It requires two unambivalent people -- people who don't need that merging to feel secure. You know the person is with you and don't have to prove it."

Donna Guadagni, 46, is one of those happy beings. A high school art teacher, she has a well-ordered place of her own in the sleepy former mill town of White Pines in Calaveras County. In June she will marry Dave Wallace, 55, but there will be no "we're-moving-in-together" garage sale to get rid of the duplicate appliances. Wallace lives an hour down the mountain in his own house, and both will keep their houses. The distance is not ideal: Guadagni said she'd prefer what Minnie and Mickey Mouse have -- living next door to each other with a path going from front door to front door. But she likes her own space, and her intended has fits of creative energy, not to mention seven hot rods in the yard. Wallace dreams of a 10-car garage with a modest house at each end.

It's still a rare arrangement. The vast majority of couples share a house, a bedroom, a bed -- the unlucky even share a bathroom. Hess said, "The cultural belief is that you are supposed to get all your needs met by one person." She believes the Hollywood expectations of what married life is supposed to look like keep couples from considering other arrangements, even if their relationship starts to die the minute they move in together.

In California, the cost of housing comes into it, too. It's not the most economical way to live. Brody and his wife manage it because his rent is cheap -- he's been there 15 years -- and she owns her house and rents an upstairs flat. Wallace and Guadagni live in the foothills, where housing is cheaper. For those who can afford the arrangement, and manage the leap of imagination it requires, it often seems just the ticket.

Hess believes that living apart is one option that, if considered healthy and desirable, could spare some people the trauma of a breakup. Brody said of his and Grenzeback's arrangement, "You avoid a whole area of negotiation and compromise in pursuit of something neither of us want in the first place." For him marriage is "an a la carte menu. You can choose which parts work for you."

Hess has found that couples who have chosen to live separately often believe that this choice is partly responsible for their good relationship. In "Dual Dwelling Duos: An Alternative for Long-Term Relationship," published in the Journal of Couples Therapy, she wrote, "They've been able to maintain their friendships, their passion and their even-tempered good will toward each other to a greater extent than many couples who live together." She points out that the poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote that one of the great gifts that two people can give to one another is to " 'stand guard over one another's solitude.' "

Not surprisingly, different styles can have a lot to do with the decision to live apart. When she thinks of living with her husband, Grenzeback said, "I get anxiety attacks." Brody describes his own style as archival. It's a dark apartment with a music studio in the middle, and other rooms hold shelf upon shelf of 45s. Brody's kitsch postcards -- "Seattle at night," "Florida at night," etc. -- decorate the wall next to the front door.

It works. Brody said he and Grenzeback sat down with their wedding presents and decided who would get what -- a four-piece CorningWare set was broken up, with two pieces going to each. At first they would punctiliously return things to the house the items belonged in. Now the Tupperware is all mixed up.

"I'm no longer as conscious of 'this is his, this is mine,' " Grenzeback said. They have relaxed sufficiently to share one Sunday paper, but keep separate friends. "She has dinner parties and sometimes invites me," Brody said. They almost always spend the night together in one house or the other. Where may depend on the weather: "Her house is warmer," Brody said. They have three pieces of community property: a Makita drill, a cat and a lamp. If they ever divorce, she gets the drill, the lamp is to be broken over his head and he gets the cat.

One of the hardest things about living apart may be explaining it. Brody said that when others first hear of the arrangement, they look at him and his wife "the way King Kong looked at Faye Wray when she was first in his palm, with that 'What is this?' look."

Of their friends, most made a swift transition from surprised to envious. All except a teenager who said, "It's weird, man."

Guadagni and Wallace have had mixed responses. Some friends say, "Never move in together!"

.... the diversity of human behaviour ......

It'll never catch on. Evolution encourages conservation of resources. Eventually human beings will become hermaphrodites.

If nature conserves resources then why did it invent war?

to rid the world of competitors, thus conserving resources for the winners (fitter)

That would seem to justify a warrior mentality. Surely we have learned to move beyond barbarity. Maybe not.

Rick, you have much evolutionary biology to learn. Can't you see that the world is FULL of adversarial competition. The US and UK have just fought a war, and they're the good guys (?). Nature is cruel. Rose coloured spectacles come to mind.

So humans are not able to rise above their programming. Too bad. So much for free will, I guess.

Free will is for the free. I don't know anyone in that category.

So if you are not free, who is your master?

Guess.

She who shall not be disobeyed?

How right you are. She has just been called out (work) and I have agreed (?!) to go with her. Taking along a pot noodle! What is it this time - train crash, drunk pilot? Exciting? 11.42 pm - no!

To be continued...

Is she some kind of rescue worker?

on-call nurse.

Ah, yes, the more things change, the more they stay the same.