On Not Living with a Partner: Unpicking Coupledom and Cohabitation

Introduction

1.1 Whilst there has been an explosion of sociological research exploring the proposition that there has been a “transformation of intimacy” (Giddens, 1992) in western societies, sociologists have paid little explicit attention to those who are living outside conventional coupledom. One of the most significant, yet largely unremarked upon, changes in personal life of recent years has been the rise in the number of people who do not live with a partner. With the decline in the popularity of marriage and the rise in heterosexual cohabitation, being recognized as a couple no longer requires marriage, but instead coupledom has come to be marked by cohabitation. Since cohabitation has become almost completely normalized (Ermisch and Francesconi, 2000) and morally acceptable (Lewis, 2001; Jamieson et al, 2002; Duncan, Barlow and James, 2005), both as an alternative and sequential to marriage (Lewis, 2001), the dominant normative model of relationships now assumes a teleology in which some time after getting together two people instantiate their state of coupledom by moving in together. As a consequence, those who do not cohabit with a partner are generally thought not to be coupled. Social researchers have largely shared this understanding of intimate relationships, operating with a tripartite model of relationships in which people are single, cohabiting or married.

1.2 This paper seeks to unpick the assumed contiguity of coupledom and cohabitation, and in so doing, it deconstructs the category of “single”. It draws on data from an intensive investigation (Sayer, 1992) of the relationship experiences, practices and values of people who are not living with a partner. Previous research has approached this population in terms of distinct groupings – single people, people living alone, lone parents, those living in shared households, and, most recently, couples “living apart together”. In contrast, the research reported here encompasses people in all of these groupings. The paper starts with a discussion of the prevalence of not living with a partner, offering a commentary on recent demographic data and quantitative research. It then sets out the methodology used in the research, and describes the sample, before exploring the diverse practices of partnership and orientations towards (non) cohabitation of those interviewees who were in non-residential couple relationships. The individual and relational contexts of these orientations are then discussed.

The Prevalence of Not Living with a Partner

2.1 Alongside the decline in the popularity of marriage and the increase in heterosexual cohabitation since the 1970s (Ermisch and Francesconi, 2000), not living with a partner has also become more common. In the UK in 1979 19% of people ^[1] did not live with a partner, rising to 29% by 2004 (Table 1), and in 1979 34% of households did not contain a (heterosexual) couple, rising to 44% of households by 2004 (Table 2) (GHS, 2004). ^[2] In order to unpack this rise in the proportion of people living without a co-resident partner, we need to look at statistics on a number of dimensions of change: solo living, singleness and non-residential partnerships.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 1.

Percentage of people ^[3] living in different types of household: 1979 and 2004

	1979	2004
Living in Household Type	%	%
Married or cohabiting couple 4	78	70
2 or more families	2	2
Total living in couple households	80	72
1 person	9	14
2 or more unrelated adults	2	4
Lone parent	8	11
Total living in non-couple households	19	29

Source: General Household Survey, 2004 Married or cohabiting couple[4]

Married or cohabiting couple[4]

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 2.

Types of household: 1979 and 2004

	1979	2004
Household Type	%	%
Married or cohabiting couple	65	56
2 or more families	1	1
Total couple households	66	57
1 person	23	31
2 or more unrelated adults	3	3
Lone parent	8	10
Total non-couple households	34	44

Source: General Household Survey, 2004.

Solo Living

2.2 Across Europe, from the early 1970s onwards, there has been a significant, and new, trend away from family households towards one-person households (Hall, Ogden and Hill, 1997). This trend is the result both of compositional changes in the population – increasing numbers of people divorcing or never marrying and of elderly people – and an increasing propensity to live alone, especially amongst young people (Hall et al, 1997). ^[5] In Britain the proportion of one person households has risen from 17% in 1971 to 31% in 2004, and the proportion of people over 16 living alone has risen from 9% in 1973 to 17% in 2004. As Table 3 shows, the proportionate increase in solo living is greatest in the 25-44 age group. This is particularly interesting as it is this age group which, according to dominant norms about family and personal life – hetero-norms - might be most expected to be living in a couple, and having children.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 3.

Percentage of people living alone, by age: 1973 and 2004

	1973	2004
Age	%	%
16-24	2	4
25-44	2	12
45-64	8	16
65-74	26	26
75+	40	47
All 16+	9	17

Source: General Household Survey, 2004

“Singleness”

3.1 If we turn to research on “singleness”, as opposed to solo living, we find considerable confusion about the meaning of the category. In registration data and traditional usage “single” refers to marital status – the condition of never having been married – and it therefore includes those who are cohabiting outside marriage. Recently, however, in response to the normalization of heterosexual cohabitation, many researchers, including those responsible for large scale data sets such as the General Household Survey (GHS) and the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), have redefined the category in terms of “partnership status” rather than marital status. Assuming that there are basically three relationship options, partnership, in the form of marriage or cohabitation, or “remaining single” ^[6] , they operationalize singleness as the state of being “unpartnered”, where partnership is equated with co-residence. ^[7] An example of this shift in the meaning of singleness is seen in Trimberger's (2005) qualitative study of middle class single women in the US. In her first round of interviews she defined as single anyone who was not married (i.e. in terms of marital status), but seven to nine years later, in the second interviews, she defined as single those who were not currently cohabiting or married (i.e. in terms of current partnership status). Whilst the former usage seems clearly outdated in terms of contemporary relationship mores, the latter definition of singleness as remainder is also problematic, because of its conflation of partnership and co-residence. I would suggest that those who are currently generally designated as “single” by most researchers are more accurately understood as “not living with a partner”.

3.2 This means that research that reports an “increasing incidence of singleness” (Simpson, 2005) and a “postponement of partnership” (Kiernan, 1999; Ermisch and Francesconi, 2000; Berrington, 2003) actually addresses the increase in the numbers of people who are not living with a partner. So, for instance, Ermisch and Francesconi's (2000) analysis of BHPS data shows that 25% of women in the 1950-62 birth cohort were not living with a partner at the age of 24, rising to 44% at the same age amongst the 1963-76 cohort, and 40% of men were not living with a partner at the age of 26 in the older cohort, compared with 48% amongst the younger cohort.

Non Residential Relationships

4.1 Whilst sex researchers have long recognized that sexual couplings are not confined to the domestic sphere, it is only relatively recently that sociologists of personal life have begun to recognize that not living with a partner does not necessarily mean not having a partner. A number of different terms have been used to describe the range of non-cohabiting relationships: from the early notion of “commuter marriage” (Gerstel and Gross, 1984; Winfield, 1985), to “weekend couples” (Kim, 2001), “distance relationships” (Holmes, 2004, 2006) and, the term which is now gaining acceptance in international sociological and demographic literatures, “living apart together”, or “LAT”, relationships (Winfield, 1985; Levin and Trost, 1999; Ermisch, 2000; Gierveld and Peeters, 2003; Gierveld, 2004; Levin, 2004).

4.2 Researchers are generally keen to distinguish non residential partnerships which are “steady” (Ermisch, 2000, Milan and Peters, 2003) or “regular” (Haskey, 2005) from relationships which are more transitory and less committed. Thus, the 1998 BHPS, which was the first national study in Britain to examine non residential relationships, asked the following question: “Do you have a steady relationship with a male or female friend whom you think of as your ‘partner’, even though you are not living together?”(Ermisch, 2000). ^[8] In response to this question, 34% of men and 42% of women who were never married, childless and under 35 identified themselves as in non-residential relationships. When relationships of less than 6 months duration were excluded, one third of never married childless women were found to be in non-residential relationships, two-fifths of which were over two years in duration.

4.3 Haskey (2005), reporting the findings of the first Office for National Statistics study of non-residential relationships, conducted via the Omnibus Survey (2002-3), seeks to differentiate the population of those who have a partner who usually lives elsewhere from the more committed group who are “living apart together”. He defines a LAT relationship as:

4.4 Because a relatively large number of teenagers and young people who were still living in their parental home answered in the affirmative to the question “Do you currently have a regular partner?”, which was asked of everyone who was not married and living with their spouse, or who was not cohabiting, a more restrictive definition of living apart together was constructed for the Omnibus Survey. This excludes both those who are the children of the household reference person ^[9] and full-time students, on the grounds that their relationships are more likely to be temporary and they are less able to make a conscious decision about co-residence (Haskey, 2005:43). So, of the 32% of the men and 34% of the women aged between 16 and 59 who are not married or cohabiting who have a non residential partner, about two-fifths are children living with their parents, and only about half are described as living apart together. This translates into an estimate that around four million people in Britain (between 1.7 and 2.1 million men and 1.8 and 2.3 million women) in this age group have a partner living elsewhere, and that approximately two million people are in LAT relationships (according to the more restrictive definition) (0.9 million men and 1.2 million women). So, whilst both the BHPS research and the Omnibus Survey found that non-residential partnerships are most common amongst younger adults, they are not just a phenomenon of youth, as is shown by Table 4. ^[10] Indeed, there is roughly the same number of people in non-residential partnerships as are cohabiting. Whilst time series data are not yet available, it seems highly probable, as the numbers of people living alone, divorcing, and not marrying at all are rising, that so too are the numbers in non-residential relationships. ^[11]

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 4.

Residence and Non-Marital Partnership, by age: 2002-3

Age	Non-Residential Partnerships %		Cohabiting Partnerships %
	Men	Women	Men	Women
16-19	26	35	3	6
20-24	37	40	13	23
25-29	25	25	32	38
30-34	22	28	45	33
35-39	18	20	39	33
40-44	17	16	43	28
45-49	18	17	20	22
50-59	14	13	28	21
All	24	26	25	25

Source: Omnibus Survey (Haskey, 2005:41).

4.5 So, taken together, there is now a powerful body of statistical evidence which suggests that more people in Britain are living longer periods of their lives not just outside marriage and the conventional family, but also outside a co-residential partnership. Very little, however, is known about the meanings that are attributed to living without a co-resident partner by those who do this, and it is to this that I now turn.

Methodology

5.1 The remainder of the paper draws on research carried out as part of the ESRC Research Group for the Study of Care, Values and the Future of Welfare (CAVA) between 2000 and 2003. ^[12] The project involved two phases of data collection. ^[13] In the first phase, in-depth narrative interviews, lasting between one and a half and two and a half hours, were carried out with 51 ^[14] people aged between 25 and 60 years old who did not live with a partner. ^[15] This was followed by second interviews, also in-depth and narrative in orientation, with 24 ^[16] of the sample, approximately eighteen months to two years later, which introduced a longitudinal dimension into the research. ^[17]

5.2 Interviewees were drawn from three localities which Simon Duncan and Darren Smith's (2002) analysis of the geography of family and gender formations identify as significantly different in terms of patterns of household and family form, and in gender and family cultures. ^[18] The localities, all in northern England, were:

5.3 Within these areas interviewees were found by a range of means: they responded to adverts calling for participants placed on community notice boards in shops and cafes, in local newspapers and workplace newsletters, and to leaflets which were distributed via GPs’ surgeries, self-help and support groups, through adult and further education classes, and hair salons. ^[19] Some, particularly the lesbian and gay interviewees, were also recruited by snowballing from existing contacts in each of the localities.

5.4 The research sought not to assume in advance which relationships mattered to people, and was designed to elicit narratives of personal life, relationships and experiences of giving and receiving care in which, as much as possible, the interviewee's own meanings and values would be articulated. We began each interview with a “relationship mapping” exercise, in which participants were asked to write the names of everyone whom they felt was significant to them within a series of concentric circles, indicating the nature of the relationship by the use of different coloured pens, and the degree of closeness felt by their proximity to the centre of the circle. This map was then used as a resource during the interview, to ensure that all of the interviewee's significant relationships were discussed. The interview method itself was influenced by Wendy Hollway and Tony Jefferson's (2000) work on the free association narrative interview. Following their suggestion, we used of a relatively small number of open-ended questions, (along the lines of, “can you tell me about…?”), formulated around our main points of interest, in order to give the interviewees time and space to construct their own stories within which meaning and values gradually unfold.

5.5 I then carried out three main modes of analysis of the data thus gathered: (i) a simple quantitative analysis of “who matters” according to the relationship maps; (ii) a conventionally sociological cross-sectional thematic analysis, (using a qualitative data analysis package - NVivo), which read across the data set for dominant themes and patterns; and (iii) an in-depth psycho-social analysis of individual cases. ^[20] Whilst this paper is informed by all three modes of analysis, what is presented is mostly derived from the second.

Description of the Sample

6.1 The interviewees were selected to include, as far as was possible within the localities, a spread of ages and sexualities: the sample comprised 23 men and 28 women; 24 had children, 27 did not; 46 were white and 5 African Caribbean; 17 were heterosexual men, 19 were heterosexual women, 7 were gay men and 8 were lesbians; and 30 lived alone, 11 with their children and the rest in shared housing (7 in households of two or more unrelated adults, 2 in households of two or more unrelated adults and their children, and 1 with an elderly parent) (see Table 5).

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 5.

Characteristics of Interviewees (at first interview)

Locality	Sex	Sexuality	Age	Have child/ren	Race	Living Arrangements
Leeds n=3.1	Women n=28	Heterosexual women n=19	25-34 n=18	Yes n=24	White n=46	Alone n=30
Barnsley n=l0	Men n=23	Heterosexual men n=17	35-44 n=22	No n=27	African Caribbean n=5	With children n=ll
Hebden Bridge n=10		Lesbians n=8	45-60 n=ll	Under 18 living with them		2 or more unrelated adults n=7
		Gay men n=7		Yes n=13		2 or more unrelated adults and children
						n=2
				No n=38		With elderly parent n=l

6.2 In terms of socio-economic status, the interviewees can be classified thus: 17 were in managerial or professional occupations, 14 in intermediate occupations, 7 were in routine and manual occupations, 12 were in receipt of benefits (unemployment/ incapacity etc) and 2 were full-time students (see Table 6). ^[21] The interviewees were, as a group, highly educated; 30 were graduates, of whom 15 also had higher degrees and 4 graduate certificates or diplomas, with the more educated clustered in Leeds, and those with lower level qualifications in Barnsley.

6.3 It should be noted that no claims as to the representativeness of the sample are being made. The interviewees as a group were employed in higher level jobs and were better educated than the population at large, although they were also by no means exclusively middle class and university educated. Hall, Ogden and Hill's (1997) research on one person households in England between 1971 and 1991 does, however, suggest that those who live alone (the largest group of those who are not in co-residential partnerships) are skewed towards the higher socio-economic groups. This is particularly so for women. Hall et al (1997) also note that both men and women living alone have higher unemployment rates and are more likely to be described as permanently sick than the population at large. Thus, they conclude, there seems “to be much greater polarization among those living alone between those employed and unemployed, and those permanently sick or well, than in the total population” (1997:172). This casts a favourable light on the sample, suggesting that the skewing towards higher social classes, and the relatively large numbers in receipt of benefits might mirror the wider population of those who are not living with a partner.

Diverse Practices of Partnership

7.1 Because they did not live with a partner, the people interviewed in this research would, as I have suggested above, be considered by many social researchers to be single. However, the relationship maps they produced and the stories they told in interview suggested that many were engaged in a range of sexual/ love relationship practices which are not captured by the conventional tripartite categories of single/ married/ cohabiting. Just over half (26) of the first round interviewees were not in a sexual/ love relationship at the time of interview ^[22] , whilst 25 were engaged in some form of sexual/ love relationship. ^[23] This former group might reasonably be referred to as “single”, and remain largely outside the scope of this paper. The latter group, on whom I focus in the paper, I will refer to as “partnered”, because they all reporting having a sexual/ love partner.

7.2 A close analysis of the interviews suggests that amongst the partnered interviewees there was considerable variation in terms of relationship practices and mentalities. ^[24] If we seek to distinguish between those in “steady” or “regular” non residential partnerships and those whose relationships are more transitory or casual as Haskey (2005) and other researchers have done, we find that 22 were involved in some form of “couple” relationship (whom I will refer to as “coupled”), in which there was a sense of an on-going entity composed of two parties and a degree of recognition of this from others. Three of the 25 were engaged in casual sexual partnerships (the “casually partnered”) and did not have such a sense of ongoing commitment to each other. ^[25] It is this former group – the coupled - whom Haskey (2005) would describe as engaged in LAT relationships because “they usually live at different addresses to each other but they regard themselves as a couple and are recognized as such by others” (Haskey, 2005:36). These relationships ranged in duration from a few weeks to 18 years at the time of first interview, with the majority of them over a year old (see table below).

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 6.

Duration of couple relationship (at 1^st interview)

Duration of couple relationship (at 1st interview)	< 2 months	2-12 months	1-3 years	4-6 years	7-10 years	>10 years
Number of interviewees	1	9	5	3	1	3

7.3 Of the nine coupled interviewees who were interviewed twice, four had split up with their partners in the eighteen months to two years between interviews. At the time of re-interview, seven of the nine were coupled, two with new partners, one was single, and one was engaged in a casual partnership. None had moved in with their partner.

7.4 Surprisingly, given the emphasis on “commuting” (Gerstel and Gross, 1984; Winfield, 1985) and “distance” (Holmes, 2004) in previous research on non-residential relationships, the majority of non-residential relationships reported in the research were between people living in the same locality. Sixteen of the first round interviewees were involved with partners who lived in the same town or city, with three in relationships with people who lived approximately an hour away, and seven were in long distance relationships with partners who lived over two hundred miles away, three of whom were overseas. ^[26] Whereas those in local relationships were diverse in terms of socio-economic status and the localities in which they lived, the “long distance lovers” were a much more homogeneous group. All of those in long distance relationships had higher degrees, all but one of them lived in Leeds, with the other living in Hebden Bridge, all but one were in professional or managerial occupations, and four of them were academics. This resonates with research which suggests that dual career, high skilled professional couples, and particularly academics, are often involved in long distance relationships (Gerstel and Gross, 1984; Green, 1997; Holmes, 2004). However, the predominance of relationships being between people living in the same locality is an important finding which raises questions about the explanatory status accorded to the exigencies of employment in previous discussions of non-residential relationships.

Orientations towards (Non)Cohabitation

8.1 Levin (2004), who has conducted the largest qualitative study of LAT relationships amongst adults, divided her Norwegian and Swedish sample of 100 into two groups, on the basis of attitudes towards their non-cohabitation: those who would have liked to live together but had decided not to, and those who would not live together even if they could. The former group was composed of those who chose not to cohabit because of a sense of responsibility to care for others (particularly children, but also elderly or disabled parents), who would be disturbed if the partners decided to move in together, along with those who worked or studied in different places and did not wish to relinquish either their individual careers or the relationship. The latter group contained those who had previously been married or had cohabited, and did not want to find themselves facing another painful separation, a group of retired people who do not wish to disrupt their own sense of personal history or jeopardize their children's inheritance by moving in with a partner, and a group of people who had previously cohabited who decided to physically separate, whilst seeking to maintain their relationship. Unfortunately Levin does not give any indication of the numbers of her interviewees who fell into each group, but her work offers a useful point of comparison for my, admittedly much smaller, sample.

8.2 The interviewees in my research cannot be categorized dichotomously in terms of the two groups suggested by Levin. Rather, their orientations towards cohabitation suggested three groups: a small group who wished to live with their partner but who had decided not to (the regretfully apart); a larger group who were clear that they did not want to live with their partner (the gladly apart); and the largest group who had not made an explicit decision about the issue (the undecidedly apart). Perhaps because, unlike Levin's sample, they had not volunteered to take part in the study self-identifying as in LAT relationships, the interviewees in my research were less likely to have engaged in conscious decision-making about the non-cohabiting dimension of their relationships than Levin's subjects. There were no interviewees who, as in Levin's (2004) research, said that they unambiguously wished to cohabit but did not do so because of caring responsibilities.

Individual and Relational Contexts in Understanding Orientations to (Non)Cohabitation

9.1 As we have seen, across the dataset the coupled interviewees spoke of their non-cohabitation primarily in terms of their own personal needs and desires, both emotional/ psychic and practical/ material, and/ or with reference to the current state of their sexual/love relationship. Many also cited the impact of their experiences of past relationships. In other words, orientations towards (non) cohabitation were expressed in terms of either an individual logic or a relational logic, or, most commonly, both.

9.2 However, the stories that interviewees told about their non-cohabitating relationships must also be understood within the broader context of the interview, which focused on a range of other relationships in addition to sexual/ love relationships – relationships with family, friends, neighbours and work colleagues. Particularly important here was that the wider narratives offered by interviewees spoke of a significant decentring of the sexual/ love relationship within their personal lives, and a centring instead on friendship (see Roseneil and Budgeon, 2004). There was a pronounced tendency, amongst both interviewees who were involved in sexual/love relationships and those who were not, to de-prioritize sexual/ love relationships and to place far more importance on friendship than conventional relationship mores dictate. Against the dominant heteronormative emphasis on finding and keeping a life-long conjugal partner, there was a widespread belief that such relationships are increasingly rare, and that a happier, more secure life is to be created by investing time and energy in maintaining friendships. This disinvesting in potentially risky sexual/love relationships and the prioritizing of friendships, which interviewees tended to regard as more stable and reliable, is an important part of the relational context within which lives were lived outside cohabiting relationships.

9.3 The significance of children in the formation of interviewees’ orientations towards cohabitation must also be considered. Others who have researched LAT relationships (Levin, 2004), the re-partnering decisions of the divorced (Smart and Neale, 2003), and step-families (Ribbens McCarthy, Edwards and Gillies, 2003) have all highlighted the way in which the needs of children are given priority by many, if not most, parents when facing decisions about cohabiting with a partner. In this study, however, of the thirteen interviewees who had children under 18 living with them, only three were in non-cohabiting couple relationships; nine were single, and one was in a casual partnership. I explore elsewhere (Roseneil, 2007) the significance of children in the personal lives of the interviewees. Suffice to say that the presence of children was an important factor in most interviewees’ orientations towards sexual/love relationships, but this was particularly the case for those who were single. The presence of children was identified by single interviewees as giving rise to a considerable degree of caution about such relationships, and particularly about the prospect of cohabiting with a partner. But only one of the three coupled parents placed any significant emphasis on the role played by their children in their relationship decisions and orientations.

9.4 For the undecidedly apart parent, LJ, a white lesbian from Hebden Bridge (mentioned above), it was her concern about the security of her home rather than expressly that of her children that was a consideration in thinking about cohabitation. And one of the gladly apart parents, Kelly, a black heterosexual woman from Leeds, who had never lived with her partner (the father of her children), spoke of her desire to live separately in terms of her need for her independence. Cohabitation had never been on the agenda and she did not suggest that her children were relevant to her feelings about cohabitation. The one coupled parent for whom children were more clearly a factor in her orientation toward cohabitation was Carol, a white heterosexual woman from Barnsley. But even she did not frame her story solely in terms of her children; her own needs were also important. She had moved in with her partner on leaving her husband, but moved out again as soon as she was able to buy a small house for herself and her daughters, who were unhappy living with her “Jekyll and Hyde” like new partner. She saw his volatile temper and ongoing mental health problems having negative effects on both herself and her children. She was perhaps relieved rather than glad to be living apart from her partner at the time of the first interview, and expressed her desire to end the relationship with him in the near future. By the second interview she had done this, and had embarked on a new relationship, with a man with whom she felt she might one day like to live, once all their children had left home. In the meantime, she was positive about many aspects of her non-residential relationship.

Concluding Comments

10.1 The people interviewed in this research pose a challenge to the assumption, shared by much of sociology, social research and public culture, that not living with a partner means being single, and that entry into cohabiting coupledom is the expectation and aim of almost everyone. Across differences of socio-economic class, gender and sexuality, and with only a few exceptions, cohabitation was not constructed as an unequivocally desired goal by the coupled interviewees. Every one of them, even those who were regretfully apart, was positive about some aspects of not living with their partner, and almost all regarded a non-residential relationship as a valid way of living in its own right, not as a stepping stone on the journey towards a “proper” relationship.

10.2 Underlying these orientations was a widespread and profound ambivalence about the cohabiting couple form. Many of the interviewees’ sexual/ love relationships were being conducted outside a paradigm of “settling”, and were very much works in progress – understood and accepted as contingent, unresolved and fluid. I am aware here that this description has resonance with Giddens’ (1992) notion of the “pure relationship” and Bauman's (2003) metaphor of “liquid love”. Whilst I have been critical elsewhere of what I have called the “patriarchal pessimism” (Roseneil, 2004) of Bauman's account of contemporary intimate life, with its nostalgia for bygone days of stable families and secure communities, the processual, undecided character of many of the non-residential relationships in this study cannot be ignored. That said, there was also a considerable minority of interviewees who were in long-term, settled relationships, and who were also challenging the assumed contiguity of coupledom and cohabitation.

10.3Although based on a small sample, this intensive study of the practices and values of people who are not living with a partner offers new insight into the ways in which coupledom is being re-worked and intimacy transformed in contemporary Britain. It provides evidence of a new orientation towards sexual/love relationships emerging amongst a particular, but growing, sector of the population, and suggests that both more empirical research and new theorizing of the relationship between partnership and household would be timely.