It’s called an upstairs/downstairs arrangement, and for some couples, it’s the best solution to a marriage gone sour.
I once knew a couple that split up but continued living in the same house. Their tween-age daughter spilled the beans. Her mom lived upstairs, she told me, and dad downstairs. No, they weren’t divorced, but they “weren’t married, either.” The gossip about this couple, our neighbors, traveled through our cul-de-sac-ed community, mostly in the tone of ‘how could they do that to their little girl?’ But I remember thinking: how smart. They had a lovely home and a daughter who did not seem to be any more traumatized than any other kids in our neighborhood, including my own. This family remained in their home for several years. I chatted with this woman a few times and, perhaps due to my own projections, each time I talked to her, she seemed happier.A decade later, when my husband and I decided to divorce, I also chose the upstairs/downstairs way of life. My reasons were practical: we had a lovely home our kids loved, and we had significant money problems. Dividing up almost 30 years of partnered living would have compounded an already bad financial situation, so he moved downstairs and I remained upstairs. Nothing physical changed in our kids’ lives for the next three years.
Was it easy? Not always. Did we make the best of a bad situation? I’d like to think so.
Last week, I met a new friend for lunch, and I happened to share some of this story. I tend to be frank about the life choices that got me to a place where I’m glad to be. I could tell she was really listening. Her eyes brimmed with tears. She wanted to know more about my upstairs/downstairs arrangement. How did I pull it off? So I told her what I tell anyone who asks: with cooperation from my ex who felt the same way.
My new friend has been living in her own ‘marriage of convenience’ for much of her adult life, and witnessing her sorrow took me back in time. I told her about the negatives of living upstairs/downstairs, which, for me, mostly revolved around other people’s perceptions of my children’s relative happiness. Over time, other people’s opinions became less important. As my teenagers adjusted to their parents’ way of uncoupling, they began to notice what I had noticed, a decade earlier, about my neighbors’ lifestyle: Our family’s new living arrangement brought with it a transparency that seemed to make our home a lot roomier, now that we no longer had to tip toe around the elephant in the room
