Recession Marriage Trend: Living Apart

July 9, 2009 — -- After getting laid off from her job as an advertising executive last Thanksgiving, Leslie Singer co-founded the branding consultancy HS Dominion. The hitch: she had to hang her shingle in New York City, two-and-a-half hours from the Madison, Conn., home she shares with her partner of 17 years and their two teenage children.

"I don't have the kind of business that I could do remotely," said Singer, 52, who's the breadwinner of her family. "It's a people business. And you have to go where the business is."

To cut down on the onerous commute, Singer stays in a Manhattan apartment two to three nights a week. But she's no carefree city gal those evenings.

"I have certain rules to all of it," said Singer, who works late the nights she stays in New York and has deliberately avoided making her apartment too comfortable. "I never miss a kid's school play or concert. I try to work from home on Fridays so I have a three-day weekend. I try not to be away two nights in a row, but that's in a perfect world."

"It's not the ideal situation," admits Singer's partner, Ron Hook, 54, a full-time stay-at-home dad. "But it is what it is. We make every effort for the kids and I to stay in touch with her."

According to the Center for the Study of Long-Distance Relationships, a Web-based clearinghouse of data on the subject, 3.6 million Americans lived apart from their spouses in 2005 for reasons other than marital strife -- a 30 percent increase from 2000.

Many commuter couples aren't as fortunate as Singer and Hook, who share the same bed much of the month. As the recession forces more people to accept work anywhere they can, some spouses find themselves living in two different time zones.

So how do couples separated by the recession make it work? Besides swapping text messages during snoozy staff meetings and rendezvousing late-night via Skype, how do they keep their relationship -- and household -- from unraveling?