Digital Compilation by Jennifer Jessee
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Split Decisions
By Mindy Charski, January & February 2005
Why more married couples are living in different cities
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Doug Kingsriter and his wife, Debbie, never thought they'd live apart.
But in 2002 Doug was offered a job at CureSearch, a children's cancer
foundation in Bethesda, Maryland—about 1,300 miles from their home in
Dallas. Debbie was thrilled about her husband's job but not about moving
east: one of their sons was still in school, and Debbie had roots in Texas. The
solution? Doug, 54, lives a time zone away during the week and flies home every
other weekend. Such killer commutes are becoming more common. Three million
American couples now live and work in different cities, and the number of
50-plus long-distance duos has tripled since 2001.
Blame it on the job market. As older workers struggle to find work, many are
forced to take jobs elsewhere. Their spouses, meanwhile, are often unwilling to
leave their own jobs and friends, especially for a job that in a soft economy
may not last. And yet despite the obvious stresses of the two-city
marriage—the travel can be expensive and exhausting—some couples,
to their surprise, have found that splitting up helps them stay together.
"You're on a perpetual date," says Gloria Eastman, 58, a college
professor who spent four years in Buffalo, New York, and saw her husband in
Denver twice a month. "The time you have together is celebratory.
There's a lot of romance in that." Says her husband, Ben, 63, a
teacher: "You treasure things that ordinarily wouldn't have occurred
to you, like doing the dishes together."
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Most couples set a limit—usually three to five years—on how long
they'll be apart, says Linda Stroh, a Loyola University Chicago professor
who studies the topic. An 18-year exception: Nancy Westcott-Pocock, 54, and her
husband, Roger Pocock, 63. Since 1986, Nancy has lived weekdays in New York,
where she runs her two businesses. Roger, who has a Green Acres view of city
life—"I like having a garden and space"—lives 90 minutes
away at their home in Connecticut. "We don't fight much because
we're so delighted to see each other," says Nancy.
Nancy and Roger enjoy time alone, which helps make a commuter marriage work.
Another key: trust, more so than in a typical marriage. "People in
commuting relationships don't cheat on each other more, but they're
much more worried about it," says Greg Guldner, head of the
California-based Center for the Study of Long-Distance Relationships. Still,
there's no link between distance and divorce. Ultimately, says Guldner, a
strong marriage can survive a long separation.
More married couples are living in different cities
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