'Living apart together' relationship ultimately selfish

Just when you think America's "all about me" culture has peaked — one finds out there is so much more room for more "me."

So it is with the new trend more and more Americans are apparently adopting from our friends in Europe: "Living Apart Together" or LAT relationships. Such arrangements, all the rage across the pond, are now increasingly popular in the United States.

These are long-term, "committed," openly sexual/romantic relationships between a man and woman. Only, the players live — permanently — apart. Sometimes these folks are even married to each other, but most typically they are simply determined that they will not marry (or marry again) — ever.

What they all share is that they don't want to share each other's "space" — or lives.

This is no return to courtship.

"Home Alone Together" was the title of the recent New York Times spread chronicling (and overall, it seemed, cheering) this rising trend here. Still, writer Jill Brooke put it this way: "As much as anything . . . the rise in LAT relationships may be due to a growing unwillingness to compromise, particularly among members of a generation known for their self-involvement."

Gee, do ya think? Dr. Scott Haltzman, a professor of psychiatry at Brown University, is author of "The Secrets of Happily Married Men" (Jossey-Bass 2005.) He told me that historically, "marriage was less about the two individuals involved than what they created when they came together." Now, he laments, there's an overwhelming sense of "what can marriage do for me?"

That's a tragedy, because one of the beautiful things about marriage is precisely that it calls us — or should call us — to a sense of "other," of connecting to and living for something bigger and more important than just ourselves, of learning to sacrifice and give and share and live and receive in a way that makes us human.

When it's "all about me" we deny ourselves a real chance at humanity. After all the ultimate "all about me" animals are, well, animals.

Haltzman told me he believes LAT relationships aren't just a trend here — they reflect the ongoing disintegration of the nuclear family in the United States.

Even some of these LAT folks may not be quite sold on the idea. NYT writer Brooke quotes Marvin, an investment banker in Chicago, as saying of Laurie, his LAT girlfriend of eight years, "I am as devoted as any husband to her . . . " (Laurie wasn't as thrilled at their LAT arrangement at the beginning, but she's come to accept it.)