Demographic experts define commuter marriages as couples who spend at least three nights apart each week for a minimum of three months. The number of commuting couples has been increasing over recent years, particularly in the US, where according to the 2006 U.S. Census Bureau, 3.2 million married Americans (including military families) live in different homes, a 26% increase between 1999 and 2006.
In fact it has been common among Asian families for quite a long time also. Anyone that has lived in Hong Kong will know at least one Filipina that is living away from their husband or wife and children in order to work in Hong Kong to make more money to provide for their family.
The difference is that in large part in the Western world commuting couples have until now actively made the decision to live as a commuting couple in order to pursue individual careers and more money, whereas I don’t think it has been a ‘career’ decision for those Filipina maids and waiters.
I believe the current economic climate has led to a change in dynamic however and I am sure that the next census will show further growth in the number of commuting couples. I have spoken to a number of personal friends and business contacts who have had to take the commuting couple route due to the state of the job market and the economic climate. I have one friend whose family lives in London and he works in Cairo. A colleague of mine spends half the week living in Edinburgh and half the week living with his family in London. I myself am living in Edinburgh while my wife is living in the Midlands, a five hour drive or an hour’s flight away.
My wife and I are having to do this in order to keep the mortgage and all of our financial commitments covered – we would not be living apart otherwise.
On a more positive note, common opinion seems to be that while it can be tough, it does allow people in commuting couples to devote more attention to their work and, at the same time, forces them to concentrate more on their marriage. It will ultimately either strengthen or destroy a relationship.
The Commuter Marriage, a book written by Tina B. Tessina, PhD, suggests that spending time apart can freshen your relationship and remind you what you love most about your partner; or, if you begin to resent the separation, which is likely to be the case for those people who have been forced into a commuter relationship, and don’t communicate well while you’re apart, your marriage could unravel quickly.
Dr. Fairlee Winfield, a professor and author, studies long-distance couples. While interviewing 300 commuter couples for her book, ”Commuter Marriage: Living Together, Apart,” she found that those involved in successful commuter marriages require a good sense of humor, bundles of energy and unabiding loyalty.
This is all very well if you have made an active decision and are gaining more benefit than usual by living this way. If on the other hand the situation has come about due to the tough economic environment and work is stressful, the strain on a relationship is definitely heightened.
New technologies may help overcome some of the long distance related issues – the world has gone from the simple telephone to Internet video chatting and if you are wealthy enough you could even ask Cisco for one of their Telepresence systems which are truly staggering. There are also a number of entrepreneur’s working on innovative communications tools, to try and improve remote communications.
Francesca Rosella, an entrepreneur, saw an opportunity to go one step further and founded an electronic clothing company CuteCircuit in London. In 2001, after conducting focus groups, it became clear that lots of people said they missed being hugged by their boyfriend or girlfriend, so the company began development of the Hug Shirt. When a person wearing the shirt applies pressure to the shirt’s millimeter-thick cloth, the shirt captures the strength and location of the pressure with sensors sewn into its fabric and transmits the hug via Bluetooth to a cell phone. Passed as a text message to another phone in another city or country, that text message is translated into vibration and heat in the same location of another Hug Shirt worn by the hug recipient. It retails for the price of an iPod.
Other “tele-romance” devices that are under development include The KissPhone, created by French inventor, Georges Koussouros. It transmits the “percussion speed,” “force” and “suction” of a user’s kiss placed on the KissPhone’s artificial mouth to another KissPhone.
But these are merely gadgets – the fundmentals of a solid relationship remain spending quality time together, and for those that are being forced into becoming a commuting couple due to circumstance will, from my personal experience, find it a challenge.
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