How to Make a Long-Distance Marriage Work
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Welcome to Doing It, a column where sex educator Varuna Srinivasan explores the deep connections between sex and emotions. This month, they speak with people in long-distances marriages about how they make the non-traditional living arrangement work.
When it comes to marriage, our perception of success often draws from what a traditional marriage looks like. You know: Two people who are monogamous living with their children in a single-family home. Society at large is skeptical of non-traditional structures that don’t uphold the “sanctity” of marriage. Opening your relationship, swinging, sleeping in a separate bedroom, or even living in different homes by choice are seen as the gateway to divorce.
But when you look at the stats, a non-traditional living arrangement is rarely cited as a reason for divorce. You know what is, though? A lack of commitment and unrealistic expectations about what it means to be married. In fact, couples who haven’t created enough space to talk about their preferred lifestyle choices and long term goals find it harder to live together after they get hitched.
As such, many couples today are rewriting what success looks like for them when it comes to marriage. They’re opting into radical structures outside of the framework of a “traditional” marriage that work in the interest of both people—including living in separate households by choice.
Sheryl Lee Ralph is perhaps the most famous person advocating for this type of arrangement. By now, you’ve likely seen clips from her December 2024 interview with People, during which the Emmy winner shared details about the separate lives she and her husband, Vincent Hughes, lead and why it works for them. As people who have successful careers of their own, as a senator (him) and actor (her), the couple found that maintaining two different households allowed them to not only show up for themselves but for each other in a meaningful way. They’ve been happily married for 20 years while living in different homes, a milestone Ralph said they plan to celebrate this year.
I know what you must be thinking: “But Varuna, that’s Hollywood! It won’t work for us normies in the real world.” Oh, but it does. Couples that successfully make a marriage work understand the importance of each person investing in their own personhood, which can mean living apart from each other.
To get a sense of just how common this is, I spoke to sexologist and sociologist Pepper Schwartz, PhD, who is in a long-distance marriage herself. “The Economist reported that over 4 million married couples in America are in long distance relationships,” Dr. Schwartz says. “There’s a myriad of reasons why a couple might choose this. Maybe they both have established lifestyles and routines and want to maintain that while sharing a connection with one another or they have to work in a specific city but don’t want to sacrifice their relationship for the sake of their professional development." Dr. Schwartz lives a 45-minute drive away from her husband’s house by choice, an arrangement she says helps them maintain a loving relationship.
I won’t pretend that this arrangement is guaranteed to work for everyone. For one (quite big) thing, paying two separate rents or mortgages is simply unrealistic for a lot of couples. Even if you can swing the double cost of housing, any marriage can involve paperwork, taxes, parental responsibilities, and so many more obligations that might feel harder to navigate when you live in two households, especially if they’re several states apart.
But for anyone who’s thinking a long-distance marriage might be in the cards—whether by choice or because one of you has a new job or other life event that requires it—consider this your how-to guide on making your arrangement work.
How to Deal With Questions From Other People
In collectivist cultures like my own, living apart is met with considerable social stigma. The idea of facing that judgement can be enough to prevent people from ever seriously pursuing similar arrangements, even if the idea otherwise sounds appealing.
Married couples living apart are often met with a barrage of inquisitive (and sometimes invasive) questions about their “situation.” When are you going to live together? What happens when you have children? Why would you do this?
According to Dr. Schwartz, couples often face scrutiny from people who think such arrangements aren’t possible, that living separate lives means they aren’t really a couple, or that it’s not possible for a long-distance marriage to be monogamous.
“People might also doubt the longevity of a long-distance marriage, betting on an inevitable separation, or that the couple doesn’t love each other enough or even want to be together,” Dr. Schwartz says. “Such ideas only downplay the love and intimacy that is present in long-distance relationships.”
When Hayley, a 29-year-old who lives in New York, shares details about her arrangement, people are usually curious to know how things work. “I get skepticism when folks first hear we don’t live together full time.”
Hayley and her husband have been together for five years and married for one. “Throughout the entire time, we’ve maintained separate residences; he lives in North Carolina and travels most of the year for work and I need to be in NYC for my job a lot of the time,” Hayley says. Luckily, the skepticism usually fades once Hayley answers peoples’ questions. “When I explain why it works for us, people typically get it,” she says.
And she gets why people are curious: Hayley held some of the same doubts in the beginning as well. Eventually, she was able to come around to the idea of permanently living apart from her husband to keep their pre-established personal and work schedules intact. “Living in different states was never a mutual choice, it was just how it was, and we’ve decided to keep it that way even in our marriage,” Hayley says. “It helps that he travels for work for most of the year.”
How to Propose a Long-Distance Relationship to Your Partner
If you’re thinking about potentially moving away from your partner, whether it be down the street or to another state, just know that the conversation will require a considerable amount of patience, communication, and trust. A partnership like this can only work when there is an equal investment from both parties.
Hayley advises couples to ask themselves why they think living apart would be beneficial to the marriage. “For us, we would be apart anyways because of his work, but we also both value our independence and having our own spaces,” she says. “Ask yourself: What am I looking to get out of it?”
Let’s be honest, while this living situation works for Hayley, Dr. Schwartz, and Sheryl, it’s not for everyone. While couples in which the partners have different communication and attachment styles can work, added pressure like living apart could be harder to manage in those situations. Before you jump into any type of new living situation, it’s good to get a sense of where you emotionally are in your relationship.
Dr. Schwartz encourages couples to look into defining their romantic and emotional personalities. “There are a range of relationship identifiers—from attachment styles, to enneagrams, and even erotic personas—that can help couples better identify the needs of their partner and overcome these communication gaps.”
When asked what types of attachment styles do well in a long distance arrangement, Dr. Schwartz singles out the securely attached person, who, according to her, can easily connect and stay in relationships. She also suggests the “anxiously attached” person might benefit, “since they will be able to call on another person all the time and may find that reassuring.”
It benefits couples to be as thorough and detail oriented as possible when discussing the possibility of living separately. Commit to having many talks about this—to discuss fears, potential insecurities, and logistics—before moving forward. Once you get a sense of whether you would be able to emotionally manage the distance and space apart, Dr. Schwartz then encourages couples to have very specific discussions about logistics: how you’ll handle expenses, frequency of visits, chores like laundry, closet space, and so on.
You should also be prepared to discuss the expectations around who stays where and how often, Dr. Schwartz says. She suggests asking questions like “Is each home totally open to the other person at any time?’’ or “Can a partner drop in unannounced or at the spur of the moment without needing permission?”
These questions are important, she adds, because it might be easy for a partner to feel rejected after becoming accustomed to daily, easy, and open access to a joint home and then face the possibility that their partner's place might have some limits or new rules. Putting these boundaries in place before the move can help prevent unpleasant surprises.
If it helps to take the edge off from entering a different living situation, set regularly timed check-ins after the move about whether the situation is working or not. During those check-ins, you’ll want to take account of the good and the bad, but make a mutual commitment to work through things as well as you can.
Making Long-Distance Marriages Work
Living apart through a marriage is more than just living in two separate places. It takes a lot of structure and planning to make the relationship work.
While Hayley has a joint schedule with her husband when it comes to seeing each other and spending time with their respective families, she otherwise manages her own time, household finances, and chores. “We have two separate households to pay for, but when we have a shared expense, we use a credit card that we share and then split the bill,” she says. “We make an effort to fly to family events when we can. During the holidays, we spend time with each of our families, and plan separate trips to celebrate with everyone together.”
The couple also makes it a point to text every day and see each other every three weeks, during which time they make a solid commitment to be truly present with one another. One undoubtedly positive side effect of the time apart? “Our sex life has also been amazing,” she says. “[The distance] gives us a chance to have sexual longing and desire that builds up until we see each other next.”
Hayley's experience is backed up by science. It’s common in any relationship for people to lose sexual interest in their long term partner. You may have heard of a related phenomenon, The Coolidge Effect, which, in a nutshell, refers to how mammals (humans included) might need to switch things to keep their sexual desire alive. Dr. Schwartz explains that while excitement can be reignited by a new sexual partner, new research shows that any type of novelty (like, say, transitioning to live separately) can be the secret to maintaining excitement and connection in a long term relationship—which is good news if you want to remain monogamous.
Moving into separate households will certainly be a novel experience, but it’ll take more work than simply living apart to keep the spark alive. Regardless of a couple’s living arrangement, both people in the marriage need to stay committed to keeping the intimacy alive, something that can often get even harder when your partner isn’t always physically in front of you, Dr. Schwartz says. In these moments, technology can play a big role in helping people feel connected. (Though if you prefer to send handwritten love letters like they did in the pre-internet era, that could work too!)
Dr. Schwartz recommends maintaining rituals “like having Zoom dinners together that allow for conversation and the ability to download their day with one another or share their feelings more intimately.” She also suggests trying intimacy wellness platforms, like Arya, an AI-powered concierge app for couples that are looking to build communication skills and enhance their intimacy. (Dr. Schwartz is on Arya’s advisory board.) These types of activities, she says, “are key so that the relationship continues to feel connected and intimate.”
And know that long distance also has its fair share of hard moments. Hayley mentions that she still has times where she gets lonely and really misses her partner. During times like this, she relies on continued supportive messages from her husband and from family members who are closer by.
When It Looks Like Long-Distance Isn't Working Out
Long distance is hard and sometimes technology won’t cut it. It's important to acknowledge that there will be a lot of moments where couples might struggle to make it work. In these cases, it might feel like living apart was a big mistake—and for some couples, it actually might have been.
“If your partner starts meeting with you less regularly, is not affectionate or using loving terms even though they used to be before, often making it hard to reach them during non working hours and in general making themselves hard to reach, then it might be time to evaluate the situation,” Dr. Schwartz says.
Any time you start to feel confused by your partner’s behavior, it's always in your best interest to communicate what you feel before jumping to any assumptions. Problem solving together as a couple can help you reach a conclusion faster as to whether this situation is really working out as you both had once hoped. While the conversation might be difficult, it’s a good time to discuss if moving in together will actually help resolve any issues in the relationship that living apart brought up.
Ultimately, the end of a relationship will likely have less to do with distance and more to do with communication breakdown and issues with trust—both things that can often lead to issues in couples that live together, too.
Regardless of distance, any successful marriage requires that both individuals feel safe enough to take up space and invest in their own dreams. When speaking on the success of her marriage, Ralph attributed a big part of the success of her marriage to the fact that both her and her husband take up the space they need.
“He has his own life. I have my own life. He has his own real career; I have my own real career. He has his light to stand in, I have my light to stand in. He’s doing his thing. I get to do my thing.” Get it, Sheryl.
Read more from Doing It:
How to Deal If You and Your Partner Have Mismatched Sex Drives
My First Threesome Was Nothing Like What You See on TV
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