Episode 48: We’re Living Apart—Together

[ INTRO WITH EV’YAN ]

 Hey, everyone! I’m Ev’Yan Whitney and this is The Sexually Liberated Woman.

Well first, I want to say thank you for all the love you gave me in the last episode. I’ve been hearing from a lot of you that the practices I shared have really helped you come back into your body and access pleasure during these wildly unsettling times, and that makes me so happy to hear. And for those who haven’t yet, definitely check out episode 47 for some accessible and gentle practices to help you ground and reconnect into yourself.

OK, so—what do I want to talk to you about today? Well, I think it would be a great time to address an elephant in the room that has been weighing heavily on my mind ever since I came back from my impromptu hiatus, and that is the state of my marriage.

I kind of alluded in the last episode that there have been some big changes happening in my life, and my relationship has been one of the biggest ones. The short version of this is that after a lot of months of hard conversations and back and forths about our individual needs and desires, me and Jonathan, my husband and partner of almost 14 years, are not living together at the moment. 

Here’s the long version. 

Last April—actually, at exactly this time last year, wow—I took a trip to Los Angeles to teach a workshop on sensual self-portraiture and to do some other fun work-related projects. It was the first time I had been back to LA properly since I moved from there to the Pacific Northwest and my god, that trip ignited me. At the time, I thought it was a combination of the sun, being surrounded by all of my friends, and the birds of paradise that really awakened me. And that’s exactly what it felt like—like I was finally woken from a very long sleep. I was wearing bright colors. I was feeling totally comfortable and at home not only in my surroundings but in my own body. I was experiencing new levels of agency and an ease with my own solitude that was literally making me feel high; like, I almost didn’t recognize myself.

During that trip I was actually FaceTiming my mom while walking around West Hollywood one afternoon, and she even commented on the shift in my demeanor. I remember her saying something like, “Wow, Ev’Yan, you are just glowing. You look so happy being back in LA, like you’re home.” And I didn’t just hear that from them, I heard it from my best friend in London, I heard it from strangers who were following my adventures on the Instagram who were like, “Damn, that California sun looks good on you!” And all of that was affirmed Jonathan as well.

I was having such a blast in LA that I ended up extending my stay by a few more days—which is totally not my style, by the way. Like, I’m typically pretty practical and low-key rigid in the way that I do things, particularly when it comes to big things like changing travel plans and eating the cost of a plane ticket—the perfect little Virgo that I am. So that burst of spontaneity and desire that drove me to intentionally missing my flight and staying five extra days in LA, without knowing exactly where I’d be staying or what I’d be doing was very unlike me. Or, actually, it is like me, as I’ve been finding out as I continue to embrace my Sagittarius rising.

But anyway. I ended up staying longer in LA, and eventually when I came home back to Portland, I did so with a lot of dread. Actually, the day before my flight back, I remember being on the phone with Jonathan and he jokingly said, “You better not be thinking about missing this flight too.” And I was like, “Oh no, not at all. I wasn’t even thinking about it”—which was a lie. I had totally considered skipping that flight and living out of my suitcase for another 5 days, but I just couldn’t justify it. I knew I had to come back home.

Wait, I just want to interrupt my story to address something that you might be thinking or bracing yourself for as I tell this story which is that—no, I didn’t meet someone while I was in LA. I mean, that’s not altogether true. I did meet someone. I met myself. I met the independent, confident, successful, sun-kissed version of myself, someone whose sensuality and fearlessness had never occurred to me before, and I fell deeply, madly in love with her.

And that was one of the reasons I extended my stay in LA and contemplated doing it again—I didn’t want to lose her. I was actually scared to go back to Portland, back to the rain, the dreariness, back to the oppressive whiteness that, after eight years of being there, still continue to shock my system. I was worried that the LA-version of Ev’Yan, who wore orange and red and lime green, who thrived with the help of the hot sun like an actual sunflower, who was enjoying the space she took up and created for herself—I was worried that Portland was going to crush that version of me. So on my flight back home, I made a vow with myself—that I was going to take this lingering glimpse of the magic I caught within myself and I was going to continue to embolden it there in Portland. And that worked for a little while. . . until it didn’t. 

I couldn’t stop thinking about LA, I couldn’t stop thinking about who I shifted into when all I had was myself. In LA, I felt so. . . free. And back in Portland with Jonathan, I noticed very quickly that I didn’t feel that same kind of freedom.

But you know, I wasn’t about to make any rash decisions—the careful Virgo that I am. I thought about it a lot and was fully convinced that the feel-good “freedom” I felt on that trip stemmed from the thrill of solo travel, something I had never really done before until that trip. I was also pretty sure that the reason I had such a shift in my energy and persona was because of being in a new city. I mean, you know how it is. You travel to a new part of the country with a totally new vibe and climate, and you find yourself acclimating to the pace and spirit of the city, syncing to its rhythms and vibrations. I figured that it was just that, that the travel bug had bitten me and that’s all that it was.

But it was interesting. . . when I had traveled to New York City a month or two later, I didn’t get those same feelings. I mean, yes, I felt like a total badass tackling a raucous, gritty city like New York all by myself, and I definitely felt aspects of freedom and independence on that trip. But there was a kind of magic missing to it—there was a kind of magic missing in me. And I was beginning to understand what it was.

I should say that as I’m processing all of this with you very vulnerably right now, I am doing so from a place of total clarity and clear perspective that I didn’t have at the time because back then, all I saw was LA; all I saw was how this particular place activated parts of me that I didn’t know existed. I didn’t start thinking about it more deeply until months later when I went back to LA and finally decided that living in Portland (and, later, living with Jonathan) wasn’t something I wanted to do. And I’ll go into that second LA trip in a minute. 

Right now, I want to pivot a little bit and give some context and history about my relationship with Jonathan, because, as I found out, there’s a lot of important information in the way we fell in love and started our lives together that I think really explains what was actually going on for me when all of this was happening last year.

I started dating Jonathan when I had I just turned 19 (and he had just turned 21). I was still living with my mom and my sister in the childhood home that I grew up in when we met. I was young and while I wouldn’t have admitted it at the time, I was totally keen to move within the “tried and true” template that had been laid out before me by culture and by witnessing my own parent’s relationship: You meet somebody young, you fall fast in love, you get married, you build your lives together as one unbreakable unit, forsaking all others and sacrificing parts of yourself. And in a lot of ways, that’s exactly what I did with Jonathan. We got together and within six months, we were living together, talking about marriage. We actually got married a little over a year after we started seeing each other.

Now, I want to be clear that I have no regrets about the way Jonathan and I met and fell in love, and I have no regrets about marrying young. My relationship with Jonathan has been both a safe space and a catalyst for me to find myself, know myself, and heal myself. It has been through this relationship that I’ve been given permission to uncover parts of me that, with anyone else, might not have been encouraged to bloom. It’s also through this relationship that I have known and experienced true unconditional love, something that I thought was a myth at best.

All of that said, even though Jonathan and I sought out to make the foundation of our marriage based in the autonomy and personhood of ourselves as individuals—and we practiced that with intention by choosing to open our relationship, by making sure that our queer identities would be honored outside of our marriage, and by fostering and encouraging in each other our individual needs, desires, and interests—there were some areas within my own individuality that were not able to be fully grown or explored because we got together so young.

Like, because I met Jonathan one year after I graduated high school, I never had the experience of living on my own (I didn’t go to college). Much of my independence lived under the protective shadow of my partner. I also never experienced what it was like to solely look after and focus on myself for long periods of time without putting someone else before me. Before becoming a nurturing wife to Jonathan, I was helping my mom through a messy, heartbreaking divorce and looking out for my younger sister. Even with all the ways we eventually radicalized our relationship—again, with things like non-monogamy—I was still centering my adult life and making all of my decisions around my relationship Jonathan.

Which is not a bad thing at all if you are able to feel free while doing that. But when I was honest with myself, there were parts of me that did not feel free within my relationship. And I had gotten a glimpse of that freedom on that trip to LA—of what it was like to have my own apartment, to be by myself, to focus totally on myself—my healing, my expression, my actualization—and discover new parts of myself within the stillness of solitude. 

I knew something had to change, I knew that Portland was slowly killing my spirit, I knew that I was hungering for more freedom within my marriage—I just didn’t know what that looked like. I mean, I had an idea of what that could look like: it looked like me moving to Los Angeles alone and ending my relationship with Jonathan. But that didn’t feel right. Because while I knew there were parts of me that didn’t feel totally free in our relationship, there were parts of me that really did. Every time I toyed with the idea of ending our relationship, I was like, “Are you crazy? This is the healthiest relationship you have. You two are so good together. There is so much love here, there is so much attraction and chemistry here. You still have so many dreams to be lived through with each other. The sex is incredible. Why the fuck would you want to leave that?” 

I literally didn’t know what to do. I mean, to leave didn’t feel right, but to stay didn’t feel right either. But I did know I was starting to get really scared about how dire all this was feeling, about how a decision needed to be made. There was something about this conundrum and the decision I would ultimately make that felt urgent, like there wasn’t any time to waste. And all of that really came to a head during my next trip to LA in August.

But. . . before I get into that, I need some water so let’s take a tiny break and I’ll continue spilling this tea. Don’t lie, there’s a part of you that’s loving this. OK, be right back.

. . .

Ahh, okay—I’m back and ready to keep telling all my business. I know I’m dragging myself a bit but I promise you I’m happy to be talking about this publicly. As I said earlier, it’s been weighing heavily on me and just being able to process this out is really cathartic for me. So I appreciate you witnessing.

Alright, so. My second LA trip. Yes. So this trip happened in August of last year, and it was during that trip I that things became much more clear. Professionally, I came back to LA for work, but personally I was hoping that this trip would help me figure out what the fuck I was going to do. It had been about four months since my last trip and I was really curious to see if I would feel that same desire in my loins to relocate. I wanted to see if I still felt that same hunger for freedom and self-actualization that I had felt last time.

And I felt it—those same feelings rushed back to me the moment I stepped out into the stale, smoggy Los Angeles air. And not just that—throughout that entire trip I experienced some crazy synchronicities and messages from the universe that literally had me shook. 

One time, I was walking outside and out of nowhere with no one around I smelled my grandmother’s perfume; and she had this very distinct perfume she would wear that was unmistakable. And my grandmother lived in LA (actually, all of my immediate family have roots there). I also started seeing angel numbers everywhere I went—sequences of 444 and 333 and 1111 on my receipts, on addresses, on graffiti on the sidewalk. At one point, I was walking down a particularly busy street in LA and I was feeling just this wave of emotion—feeling this visceral sense that I was supposed to be there, that I was home, not just a visitor; while also being really conscious of the fact that what was being asked of me, that where I was being led toward was going to result in a painful decision within my relationship.

Because it was when I was walking and seeing these angel numbers that I realized that if it weren’t for Jonathan, if I had been single, I would’ve moved to LA in a heartbeat—no question about it. But I didn’t feel like that was an option because Jonathan wasn’t too keen on moving to LA, for a plethora of reasons. Actually back in April, when I made that first initial trip, I had jokingly been like, “Hey babe, I don’t know, maybe it’s time to come back.” And his response was basically, “Nah.”

And that’s where that feeling of lack of freedom that I hadn’t been able to shake for months was ultimately coming from: the fact that I wasn’t able to live my life in the way I wanted to, that I had to defer to someone else’s happiness because what I needed to feel happy and thrive wasn’t in alignment with them. 

And what really fucked me up was that I knew all about the whole “marriage is compromise” thing, that all relationships require a certain level of sacrifice and selflessness. Like, the idea of prioritizing your spouse’s happiness over your own was so deeply engrained in me from a young age—I saw my mother do it with my dad and I did it with other lovers to my detriment. It’s how I operated in all of my relationships, not just romantic; that sense of martyring yourself, your desires, your individual dreams and wishes, as the best way to show someone you really love them. It’s fucked up but I was familiar with all of that. I had done that for years. And I was fucking tired. I didn’t want to do it anymore—especially not with this, not with something that I could see so vividly would restore my vitality and sensuality and overall mental health, that being back home in LA.

So I was thinking about all of this—the way I had put Jonathan’s happiness before my own throughout all these years, the way I’d live my life and the decisions I would ultimately make if I didn’t have the self-made obligation to someone else, all of those goddamn angel numbers—everything just started to click into place. And I had this thought: It wasn’t just that I was being divinely led to this place; that was only part of it. It was that I was being guided to live in LA by myself, that I was being called to intentionally separate from Jonathan to focus on myself, my career, my happiness, and selfishly prioritize above all others what I needed to feel joyful and fulfilled in my life.

And that realization scared the shit out of me.

So eventually, I made it back to my Airbnb and I remember it was a really hot day so the studio I was staying at, which didn’t have air conditioning, was sweltering inside. So upon walking through the door I took off all of my clothes, laid down on the bed, and opened my computer, hoping to turn my brain off from all of this processing. And I saw that Lana Del Rey had come out with this new song called “Fuck It, I love you”. I pressed play and, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard this song before, but within the song are the lyrics “Move to California”—she says this a few times in the song. And when I heard it, I burst into tears. That’s when I knew. I knew what I had to do.

I called Jonathan on the phone that evening and told him everything—about how I had been feeling since April, about how being in LA woke me up to the fact that I had been deeply depressed in Portland for a long time, that it was literally killing my spirit. I told him about about all the synchronicities and signs I was getting being back and how it was feeling like I needed to move back to LA—and that I needed to do it without him.

This conversation lasted two hours and was one of the most painful talks we’ve ever had because we both came face to face with the ways each of us hadn’t been feeling free in our relationship. It wasn’t just me. There were things Jonathan wanted to explore within himself, things he wasn’t able to do or focus on because of also considering my needs and desires. But for Jonathan, I think he was willing to deal with all of that because that’s just what you do in relationships. Some of your dreams and desires die; I think he felt like he ultimately signed up for that. But for me, with where I was at, I didn’t want to compromise or sacrifice my happiness anymore,  and at the end of the conversation, we both felt like it would be best for us to go our separate ways and end our relationship.

But once more—completely ending our relationship just didn’t feel right. I mean, there were things that weren’t perfect about it but there was nothing fundamentally wrong with our relationship. We still loved each other, we were still each other’s best friends. And not just friends, we were still deeply attracted to each other and wanted to be with each other as lovers. We both saw the ways we enriched and brought value to each other’s lives through our partnership, and to seemingly throw all of that away seemed ridiculous.

What we wanted was some space to explore what it would be like to deprioritize each other and put focus on ourselves. We wanted to do our own thing untethered while still staying together. It all seemed counterintuitive, but that’s what we wanted. What I wanted in particular, like, if I could’ve had it be exactly how I wanted it without it harming either of us, was to get my own apartment in LA (which would mean that Jonathan would stay behind in Portland) and I would live there by myself for a few months. And then, eventually, once we both felt like we found what we were looking for, we would come back together and resume living together again.

That’s what I wanted, that was the kind of arrangement I wanted to try. And to even speak that aloud to myself was terrifying, let alone to my partner of almost 13 years. I felt a lot of guilt too, because all of this was instigated by me. Jonathan hadn’t been thinking about any of this. Also, aside from my own selfish needs, there was no real reason for me to want to do this other than I just wanted to. Like, my desire to do this felt like the quintessential example of having one’s cake and eating it too. To even consider it felt selfish, frivolous, overindulgent.

And yet. . . when I took out the doom and gloom of what this would do to my marriage, what I was proposing wasn’t unlike a long distance relationship, specifically, one where one half of the couple has to temporarily live or stay in another city for work or school or whatever while the other stayed behind to hold down the fort until they came back. Like, people do this all the time. Maybe it wasn’t that deep?

I’ve never been in a long distance relationship before and I started to do research on them, particularly on non-long distance relationships that transitioned into long distance because of certain circumstances. I just wanted to see what could be possible, what other options we had that didn’t look like us breaking apart a relatively happy relationship. And that’s when I discovered the term living apart together. 

Folks living-apart-together have an intimate relationship but live at separate addresses—specifically intentionally, although there are folks in living-apart-together arrangements (or LAT for short) who are doing it begrudgingly.

I’ll be honest and say that the first article I read about a LAT relationship was referencing these two white, super rich actors in Hollywood who each had their own penthouse apartments in Manhattan and thus had the privilege to choose to live apart—and that expression of it did not resonate with me at all. But having a name and a framework for this, and knowing that many people had been engaging in this kind of relationship dynamic successfully for years made me feel hopeful. It’s like, Oh, I’m not crazy—this is a thing and it can be done; albeit, with a lot of work and intention. 

Because what I didn’t want was for us to be like, “OK, we’re living apart now. See you!” I personally wanted to continue to deepen our connection on the foundation we’d created for the last 13 years AND also explore new ways to be intimate and close to each other—while balancing my own desire to focus on myself, my work, and the self-discovery I wanted to do.

So . . . in September, it was decided. We were going to try it. I was going to move to LA by myself as soon as possible (which ultimately ended up being in February of this year), Jonathan was going to move to his apartment in the Pacific Northwest shortly after, and we were going to give this whole LAT thing a try.

It has been about two months since we’ve been living apart together and it has been. . . a lot of things. It’s been amazing in a lot of ways and really challenging and frustrating in others. 

What’s been amazing on my end is how deep I’ve been able to go in exploring what it’s like being in my own company and while I realize I enjoy being by myself, I am noticing that the quiet and solitude is making space for observation about the ways I run away from being by myself. I’ve become super awake to the things I do to distract myself from sadness, grief, loneliness, anger, insecurities. Within the first few days after Jonathan left me in LA, I realized really quickly that I’ve used caretaking others as a way to hide from my own feelings or the healing that needs to get done. Now that I’m alone and all I have to take care of is myself (and my dog Sofie), I’m able to be more present to the things that I’ve neglected within myself because I’m so busy doing for someone else.

The other thing I’m really enjoying is getting to see who I am outside of being a wife or someone’s committed partner. I’ve always unconsciously thought that I’m better when I’m partnered, that without my man I’m boring and unable to really take care of myself. It’s been such a pleasure to prove that patriarchal bullshit wrong and to witness myself flourishing within my own solitude. I am being reminded of how self-reliant I am and it’s so great to be stretched in this way considering that my entire adult live has been spent with a man at the center of my universe. To be able to go to bed each night feeling like I showed up fully for myself, my needs, my body’s desires, the passions that I have within me—I’ve honestly been in awe of my own autonomy and how much I am able to thrive there.

As for what’s challenging about this—well, I miss dick. That’s first and foremost. I mean, I’ve got some great dildos that are quenching my dick thirst but there’s nothing like a dick attached to a person, you know? So I miss dick and I miss sleeping next to someone. That’s one thing I find that I’m not really good at—sleeping alone. I sleep better when I have a warm body to cuddle up against, and unfortunately my little dog doesn’t have the amount of surface area I need to really feel fulfilled in that area.

And this coronavirus experience has of course added a new layer of frustration and complexity to what we’re doing. I mean, Jonathan and I talked constantly about the logistics of things, we planned meticulously for the emotional, physical, and financial impact of this experiment, but we somehow managed to forget to include a global pandemic in our plans. So, yea, that has thrown us both for a loop, especially because for me it’s been hard to face these very unsettling times without the person who has been my anchor for so many years.

But I think that’s where I circle back to what’s amazing about this—I’m proving to myself that I can be my own anchor, that I am strong enough and resourceful enough to take care of myself, and that even when it feels like I’m alone, I’ve got so much community around me that are helping to hold me up and keep me feeling grounded during these wild times. This time apart from Jonathan has allowed me to see the other people I have in my life who can give me companionship, intimacy, and support which I’m grateful for too. I also feel lucky to have one of my best friends as my literal next door neighbor, so that helps. 

As for me and Jonathan—we’re doing really really well. We talk every day and continue to explore and build intimacy between us in ways we haven’t done since we first started dating. This time apart has shown me the strength and resiliency in him, how witty he is, how thoughtful he is even from this long distance. Each day I am reminded why it was I initially fell in love with him and why I choose to be with him even now, across this great distance and through this crazy experiment we’re doing. 

Our original plan is to live apart together for six months, but who knows—it could be that we get to May and we decide to cut this experiment short because we really miss each other. Or, what’s more likely to happen these days is that the coronavirus has our finances looking scary so we need to move back in with each other to save money. (LAT ain’t cheap y’all.) We could also be enjoying this experience so much that come August we decide to extend it through the end of the year. Each day is different and we’ve both agreed to take it day by day and keep checking in with each other.

So. . . that’s it. That’s what’s been going on behind the scenes for the last year. It’s been a lot, like, my god, just telling this story has me realizing how complicated and rich all of this has been. And it has been hard, really really hard. But also really rewarding and I’m grateful to be here now, on the other side of it.

And thank you for listening. I said it before but processing this out loud has been really helpful for me and it’s brought to surface with more clarity and understanding some things that were kind of on the periphery. And because of that, in the next episode, I’m going to be bringing Jonathan, my partner, on the podcast to talk to him about LAT relationship and process in real time what this is bringing up for us both as a couple.

Also, if you have questions you’d like to ask us about our living apart together situation, like, I don’t know, how we’re getting our sexual needs met at this time or what our family thinks about what we’re doing, send me an email at evyan@evyanwhitney.com. I might just answer your question on the upcoming episode.

[CREDITS]

This podcast is produced, edited, and designed by me, Ev'Yan Whitney. Find me on my website, evyanwhitney.com and on Instagram @evyan.whitney to keep up with me and my work.

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Thank you so much for being here and I'll see you in the next episode.