My secret to a happy relationship? Live apart

Yet when I fell in love a few years after my second divorce, to a man who also had a child at home, I assumed we would eventually move in together. It seemed he had other ideas, as whenever I brought it up he was vague about the concept, which hurt me.

But the longer we were together; committed, very much in love and seeing each other a few times a week, the more I realized that it wasn’t so bad. In fact, I began to like it.

So I did something I had never done before. I asked myself, what do I want my life to look like? I already had a house, a career and the number of kids I wanted, so I certainly didn’t “need” a man. But I did want a boyfriend.

I just didn’t want him hanging around all the time.

Many older women like myself have come to realize that living apart from a romantic partner allows us to have companionship as well as independence. It also frees us from the gendered caretaking and housekeeping women often do. According to a recent study, many single women in their 60s and 70s would like to have a companion but were adamant that they were “willing to be lonely before sacrificing independence.”