A few days ago, I came across a Facebook post in which a 42 year old woman was looking for a partner, but she had one rather unusual condition. She wanted them to maintain separate homes. Each person would have their own life, their own space, their own things, and they would simply agree on certain days of the week to be together.
It was not a proposal for an open relationship. She was not saying she did not want commitment. She was saying, essentially, I want to be married without having to live with my husband every single day.
The reaction was fascinating. Some of the men in the comments were having absolutely none of it. There were insults, accusations and the usual internet diagnosis of a woman who has apparently decided she is too independent for marriage.
The women, on the other hand, seemed considerably more receptive. Many were saying, in one way or another, that perhaps this was the only way marriage could work for them.
And I found myself thinking: Have we really decided that two people being married means they must live under the same roof?
At that point, I remembered my grandparents. Growing up, I remember seeing my grandmother and grandfather’s bedroom that had two separate beds.
I remember looking at those beds as a child and thinking, Hmmm.
Even at that young age, somehow my subconcious knew that a husband and wife where supposed to sleep in one bed. So why were these two married people, (and its not the come we stay marriages of today, mark you. My grandmother was paid full dowry for, a whooping 16 cows) sleeping in separate beds?
At the time, it seemed strange. Now, as an adult, I find myself wondering whether perhaps we are the strange ones for assuming that intimacy must always look like constant proximity.
Marriage has not always looked the way it does now
We tend to talk about marriage as though the modern nuclear family is some ancient, universal arrangement: husband and wife meet, get married, move into one house, share a bedroom, combine their lives, raise children and do everything together until death separates them.
But human societies have never been quite that simple.
Across parts of Africa, marriage and residence could take forms that would look very unfamiliar to many of us today. In some traditional systems, husbands and wives did not necessarily maintain one permanently shared household. Anthropological research on sub-Saharan African kinship systems describes circumstances in which a polygynous husband could have separate residences associated with different wives, sometimes moving between them rather than living permanently with one woman.
The Ashanti example is particularly interesting.
Research on marriage and residence among the Ashanti describes a system in which a wife could remain with her matrilineal family while her husband maintained his own residence. In a polygynous marriage, the husband’s time, including cooking and sleeping arrangements, could rotate among his wives. The women could also maintain their own economic lives and budgets.
A husband could have several wives, each with her own domestic space, and marriage did not necessarily require all of them to live under one roof.
So perhaps my grandparents having two beds wasn’t as bizarre as little me thought. But the distinction here is that we should not romanticise the past and pretend our ancestors invented the perfect marriage system. These arrangements existed within societies with very different ideas about gender, property, children, lineage and authority. A woman having her own house did not necessarily mean she enjoyed the independence that a modern woman might associate with having her own home.
Still, the historical reality challenges one assumption that we now take almost completely for granted: Marriage has never required constant physical togetherness everywhere.
So why does separate living sound so radical now?
Perhaps because modern marriage has become much more than marriage.
We don’t just expect our spouses to be our spouses anymore. We expect them to be our best friends, lovers, financial partners, co-parents, travel companions, emotional support systems, housemates, emergency contacts and sometimes the only person we are allowed to have an intimate relationship with.
And then we put all of that inside one house. Every day.
Your partner sees you when you wake up. They see you when you are irritated, broke, sick, exhausted, horny, grieving, constipated and having a bad day. They know how much money is in your account.
They know what you bought and how often you went out.
They know why you are late and that you have been wearing the same underwear since Tuesday (sic). Okay, perhaps that last one is where marriage really begins 😂.
But seriously, there is something to be said for the amount of proximity modern marriage demands.
The question is not whether couples should love each other but whether loving someone requires constant access to them.
There is an actual relationship arrangement known as Living Apart Together, or LAT, in which couples maintain separate homes while considering themselves committed partners. Research has found that some people deliberately choose the arrangement because it gives them greater autonomy and personal space while preserving emotional intimacy.
And interestingly, research does not support the simple idea that women want this and men don’t. A British study found little significant gender difference in attitudes towards living apart together. Both men and women identified benefits such as freedom and emotional security, while also recognising the potential risks to closeness and stability.
So perhaps the Facebook comments were not really about men versus women, but what different people believe marriage is supposed to provide.
And here is where things get uncomfortable
If a woman says, “I want a husband, but I want my own house,” some people hear: She doesn’t really want marriage.
But if a man historically had several wives who maintained separate households, we rarely look at that arrangement and say:
Clearly he didn’t want marriage. Why?
Perhaps because we have historically understood the man’s independence differently from the woman’s.
A man having his own space can be interpreted as authority while a woman wanting her own space can be interpreted as rejection. And this is where that Facebook argument becomes particularly interesting.
Because what exactly are some people afraid they will lose if their wife does not live with them?
Is it intimacy and companionship? Or is it the practical convenience of having another adult permanently available to cook, clean, raise children, provide emotional support, split bills and generally keep the household running?
In other words, perhaps the uncomfortable question is not whether men can love women who live separately but whether some people have confused having a wife with having access to a woman’s labour.
While that is not a claim about every man, it is a question worth asking.
Somehow, the moment a woman says, “I want my own home, my own money, my own routines and a husband I see several days a week,” the conversation suddenly becomes about whether she is a “proper wife.”
Yet nobody seems particularly troubled by the fact that marriage has historically accommodated arrangements in which women and men maintained considerable physical separation.
Maybe what has changed is not our capacity to love, but our expectations of what a spouse should do for us.
Has marriage become too much of a merger?
Without a doubt, there is something beautiful about building a life with someone. But there is also something potentially dangerous about the idea that marriage means two people must surrender almost every aspect of individual life.
Your friendships become our friendships. Your money becomes our money. Your home becomes our home. Your time becomes our time. Your family becomes my family, your problems my problems, and the big one – your happiness becomes my responsibility.
Eventually, somewhere in the middle of all that merging, two people can forget who they were before they became a couple.
Maybe that is why the idea of separate homes appeals to some people.
It is not that they want less love. Maybe they just want to preserve some of themselves.
A woman can love a man deeply and still want to sleep alone. In the same manner, a man can adore his wife and still want a room that nobody enters without knocking.
Two people can raise children together and still have separate spaces. A couple can be committed without spending every waking hour together.
Still, separate houses are not a magic solution
Living apart does not automatically make a marriage healthier. Research on LAT relationships has found that they can offer autonomy and emotional support, but they can also involve challenges around practical support, closeness and relationship stability. Some research among older couples has even found lower relationship quality among certain LAT couples compared with married couples.
The lesson therefore, is not that everyone should move out of their marital home. It is that there should be more than one legitimate way to construct a marriage.
Some couples will happily share a bedroom for fifty years while other will have separate bedrooms.
Some may have separate houses while others may spend every weekend together, and some may need more space. As long as the arrangement works for the two people inside it.
And that brings me back to my grandparents.
I don’t know why they had two beds, perhaps it was cultural, or, practical.
Perhaps it was simply what worked for them. Maybe one of them was a heavy “snorer”, or one of them liked the window open and the other wanted it closed.
Maybe they had discovered the ancient wisdom of “I love you, but please stop touching me, I am trying to sleep.” I guess I will never know.
What I do know, is that childhood memory looks different to me now. Those two beds were evidence that two people could share a life without having to surrender their individuality. Maybe, just maybe, that is something we need to rethink about marriage in 2026.
We keep telling people that a good marriage means becoming one, but what if it doesn’t?
Perhaps our ancestors understood something we are only beginning to rediscover: a marriage can contain two individuals.
