My gf had been looking for a carpenter willing to refurbish several outbuildings on our property. Every guy who came to give an estimate insisted on only wanting to demolish and rebuild, because it would be cheaper. Finally she found a guy who actually enjoys refurbishing structures (he’s actually known for his Victorian architecture porch work).
He’s a real character. He’s been working a week and has fallen into our pond twice. He’s 6’ 6" tall, thin as a rail, sorta an Ichabod Crane look. My gf mentioned we were going to see Michael Franti on Tuesday, and whadaya know he and his wife showed up there!
He introduced us to his wife, who is an artist. He mentioned that it was their 41st anniversary. He said that when they married he was 20 and she was “jail bait”. She quickly pointed out that she was not 14, but rather 17 and 10 months old.
Then she told us they each have a home where they live. She needs room for her canvases and other art supplies and needs solitude to work. He has a house filled with tools and various woodworking projects. On Friday nights they usually go somewhere, then spend time together over the weekend doing various activities and sleeping at one home or the other.
Personally, I’d be fine with it but wouldn’t prefer it to the traditional full-time-living-together arrangement (unless there were some special circumstances involved). But I can see how it might qork quite nicely for some people.
I love my husband. And I love living with him. Mostly. But if I was somehow on the dating market again I would never choose to marry again, nor share a house with anyone. I can have my space, you can have yours, and in between we shall meet.
For me, marriage was one and done, so while I might date, it will never be serious enough to even combine finances again, let alone households.
There’s a song whose tagline is something close to “It’s cheaper to keep her”. I could certainly imagine situations for folks who aren’t overjoyed with one another, but separate housing is cheaper than a divorce. Meanwhile they keep up a placid exterior for appearances’ sake. Or for reasons of religious compliance.
One of my brothers got divorced after a few years’ marriage. Now ~30 years later he and she are still good friends and have been all along. They share dogs, get together most weekends for a shared dinner, etc. They don’t sleep together and didn’t since the divorce. They both have or had various BFs and GFs since. They happily co-parented their now 30-something son. Just from different residences nearby one another. They’re far from being SOs now. They’re more like siblings or cousins. Fond of each other, but not as mates or full-time friends.
I imagine there are people who love one another but don’t really like one another. Opposites attract and all that. Living apart but getting together regularly might work for them. Absent kids, probably better for both to have split completely long ago, but they may have backed into the current “separately together” situation over a period of years and now this is what feels “normal” to them.
I’m poly, and although I’m currently living with one partner full-time, the modality of seeing a partner weekly and accepting that she’s pretty busy most of the week is pretty pro forma for me.
I’ve gone much more extreme than that, having done ~ 2.5 years in an ongoing relationship with a woman in Maine while I lived in New York, and we only saw each other in person 3-4 times per year.
I live here and M-Th they live/work “ up north” and come home on the weekends. My food costs are down and it’s quieter.
Two house partners married 41 years why not! It may have happened naturally, one wants to move to their perfect home the other is happy in place. Not enough space etc or could be investment driven. NTL, not so uncommon. @panache45 iirc had the same arrangement with his partner. They lived next door to each other.
My boyfriend and I have been “together” for 14 years but “ok seriously we’re together for real this time” for about 9 years now. We’re 44/45.
He has his place about an hour away from mine. It’s a family home, on family acerage, and he doesn’t want to move. He can only afford it because his mom owns it, so she lives there and he takes care of the property (she’s also not there a lot as she herself has a boyfriend out of town).
I’m super entrenched in my life here. My mom lives down the street, I am on city council, I like living in “the city” (a little suburb) and couldn’t deal with “country” (township) life.
We’re of course not married, but we might as well be. He’s only down here like 3-4 times a month at this point, spending the night for a day or two. He has “his” bedroom which is my guest room, and some toiletries. We can’t sleep in the same bed - he snores. And I’ve got 2 dogs.
I sometimes wish he was here all the time, but living in the basement, each of us with our own space. But when it comes down to it, I love my own space and my own schedule and my own life, so “weekend SO” works for me (crappily enough, he got a new job and works every weekend so we never see each other then).
I have a longtime family friend who is about 70 yo and for as long as I’ve known him, he has a similar setup with his SO. He lives in his house in the city, she’s at her place in the country with her dogs and her dad.
Before the pandemic, my work required me to travel as much as six months out of the year, usually for a few weeks at a time. The hardest part was leaving the dog for that long as I couldn’t call him every couple of days to check in. It was turning in to a grind, but I like having some time to myself and want to find a better balance now that we are both at home 24/7.
The thread title reminds me of a big of Hong Kong slang: a “sugar daddy” is known there as “weekend husband”. Or used to be; I don’t know the current slang.
After being laid off at the age of 50, I landed a teaching position at a community college, but it was located about two hours from our house. My SO had a stable, fulfilling job that she didn’t want to leave, and I considered the job offer to be a dream job. So for eleven years I would leave on Sunday night after supper, drive two hours when traffic was super easy, and then teach during the week. We had a standing phone call at 9:00 each evening, plus the usual texting and emails. Then on Thursday, after my last class was done, I would return home.
It got to be a running joke when friends and neighbors asked how the arrangement could possibly work, and I’d answer “By 2 o’clock Sunday afternoon, she’d ask if I was leaving yet.” We both kind of appreciated the freedom during the week, and the weekends were that much better.
It also helped that my dean never scheduled Friday classes for me, and for several semesters I didn’t have Thursday classes either. We also bought a small house on a lake at the college town, do it’s become an easy vacation spot. In fact, I was just there for several days this week, checking up on the property, and we had our nightly 9:00 phone calls.
For about 5 years, Mr. Legend commuted from New Mexico to California during most weeks. It was really rough at first, but once he negotiated a 4-day week, it wasn’t bad. After another 5 years of working mostly in town, he resumed traveling for many years, but this time he was one of the company’s owners, so he was able to be more flexible and work from home some weeks. Since the pandemic, he’s worked almost exclusively from home. I mostly enjoy having him home, but it was a real adjustment, learning to share the house again!
When we were living in San Jose DesertWife attended for six months classes at UCSF to get recertified as a medtech. She’d left the field when it got too crowded so wages were stagnant and positions were hard to find. Then all her cohorts were retiring so there was a crushing need.
The classes were five days a week and she didn’t want to drive the 50-odd miles each day so she stayed with a friend in the city and became a weekend wife. We didn’t like it.
I’m going to buck the trend. I think i care more about having a roommate than about having a SO. If i had a weekend SO, I’d also want a roommate. Or maybe I’d become a crazy cat lady and have cats as roommates.
I need my own space. But i also need regular social interaction.
I’m the kind of a strong introvert that absolutely needs plenty of alone time. I have lived happily in long-distance relationships where “weekend SO” was basically a synonym. I would readily go back to such an arrangement, even though I think I want to share my ideas, jokes, entertainment etc. with someone a bit more frequently than that.
