To Mum and the Man Next Door
Aug 13th, 2007 by Eats Wombats
The latest topic getting attention from journalists and the chattering classes in Britain is couples not living together. Several celebrity couples are now living next door to each other and, now that this is a trend, non-celebrities who have been living apart for years are being interviewed and celebrated. You can spot the sex question coming. It begins “And if I may…”
[ lick my lips and intrude upon your de facto affair ].
From ecological and property price perspectives this non-cohabitation trend makes little sense. There is already a housing shortage in the UK and average prices in London are now at a record 10 times average earnings, and rising faster than earnings. The average home increased in value last year by more than the average salary!
The only circumstance I have heard yet that was at all compelling as a justification for maintaining two households was to avoid the unwanted integration of two sets of children.
Ariel Leve, writing pessimistically as ever in the Sunday Times, has endorsed separate homes as a way of saving on moving when the inevitable break-up happens. She doesn’t say if she considers having such a convenient escape far more likely to lead to its being used, which I would expect.
Having had two homes for the last several years, one of which was occupied en famille for 5 years, and one of which was my solitary wombat abode for half as long again, I dare to comment, including on the inevitable getting together again.
Running two homes is fine if you can afford it (double income pessisimists) and you don’t mind having two of everything. Anyone who has commuted between two homes knows that stuff ends up in the wrong place. That can be mildly inconvenient if the homes are adjacent, and more annoying if they’re 8,000km apart. It was surprising how often we found ourselves speculating about on which continent a certain corskcrew or book or other item could be found–only to exclaim later “argh, it’s been here all along.”
Commuting at intervals also leads to some minor “stock control” anomalies. E.g., I kept buying razor blades in London and never using up the cheaper blades I often had to buy in the Philippines, which I often brought with me to London and stopped using before running out. I ended up with a year’s supply of razor blades.
If our homes were adjacent, with his and hers bathrooms, then surely at some point I’d need to say “I’ll just go home and shave.”
A desire to have separate bathrooms, which invariably seems to be a female aspiration, seems a strange idea to me. Who would notice you reading in the bath and offer you a cup of tea or a back rub or entertain you with threats of molestation? Really, taking the rubbish out together doesn’t do anything for me. And half of the fun of lying in bed has to be watching someone else get dressed and occasionally soliciting or offering a peeled grape. “I’ll just go home and get one” would be a bit of an intimacy killer, even if they were imaginary in the first place.
And what of pets? A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of according to Ogden Nash. So, double the inconvenience and some canine neurosis if the rules about furniture vary between households. Something tells me, however, that the people who need total control of their own space are unlikely to have a pet of any kind–unless it’s a man.
Surely a woman who either desires or acquiesces in her husband just visiting is implicitly unconcerned about other visits he may entertain–and the implications for her health, and wealth and their children’s future? Men, unlike Penduline tits, rarely bring up their offspring alone. Where women and governments permit it, men seem increasingly unwilling to bring up any offspring properly, and the chance of their sons then doing it must be remote. Little surprise then that the Conservative Party says family breakdown costs £102 billion a year.
I became quite accustomed to living alone. It’s a bit of a dreary way to live, tolerable to the extent it’s not a life sentence. Nevertheless, I couldn’t avoid a feeling of being a visitor in my own home after such an absence–for a while. In some ways it was trickier than getting married and (eventually) starting a family in the first place. At least there was no need in our case for the contemporary greeting card reading
To Mum and Dad on their wedding day
