OPINION:
It’s 2am and I am looking at my holiday “to-do list” in despair. We’re only going away for four nights, and it looks like I’m preparing to invade a small country.
I’m a glass-half-empty girl, panicking about passports and vaccine passes. I’ve been packing for a week now, anxiously prepping thin- and fat-day outfits, while my boyfriend Mike is happy to breeze in at the last minute with a man bag containing pants and an interesting novel.
If you’re a Living Apart Together (LAT) couple, holidays are a longed-for distraction, the chance for quality time together. Sun, sea, sex, a proper lie-in. But they can so easily unravel.
Sometimes in the departures lounge Mike and I look at each other, mystified – who is this stranger we appear to have come on holiday with? And in a way we still are a mystery to each other.
We met three years ago (during the global lockdown) when I was 56 and Mike 59. It was a very nice and unexpected plot twist, but we still live quite independent lives.
If you meet at 50+, living under the same roof is often not a viable proposition. I work from home. Mike has two kids, 17 and 23 (his daughter lives with him). The last thing I want to do is encroach on their time together, so we exist separately in the week, relying on WhatsApp and email.
We spend weekends together – though one of us will usually go home on Saturday afternoon, before meeting up again in the evening for supper and drinks.
It suits us just fine. I work erratic hours, with books and newspapers piled everywhere. Midweek, I like nothing better than meeting my friends for a film or play, followed by supper at 10pm. Mike’s idea of hell.
He prefers to eat by 7pm. He loathes theatre (his dating profile said as much; though cruelly the algorithms sent him lots of Sondheim lovers like me because he’d mentioned the dreaded word “theatre”). To my knowledge he has never gone out on Monday evening ever (it’s his time to chill). Or to the cinema at weekends if it finishes after 6pm.
In his favour, he’s a fun party boy, who has introduced me to cool gigs and TV shows. I have never laughed so much in my life. He knows the best walks and markets. He reads omnivorously (while I guiltily download the Booker list on Audible). He’s encouraged me to learn to cook, and now I actually own proper saucepans.
But his own domestic routine (we call it “The Book of Mike” ) is sacrosanct. And long may it continue. It’s his house, his kids, his rules. And he’s tolerant about the way I live my life too.
In a LAT relationship, some things are best left separate. Nobody can understand complex family dynamics in five minutes. We certainly don’t feel obliged to spend Christmas together. I’m also careful not to try to be a step-parent. You are Dad’s friend – hopefully a welcome guest, offering small gifts and advice on A-level choices – but nobody needs your opinion on household issues.
On date nights, everyone is on their best behaviour.
It’s easy to look at long-term marrieds, warring about garden furniture and who puts out the bins, and feel a trifle smug. But you’d be a fool to do that. Because there is one huge stumbling block for the mature LAT couple. Holidays. If you lead separate lives, where you eat, sleep, cook in your own way (without having to explain why), it can be a shock to be together 24 hours a day.
On date nights, everyone is on their best behaviour. It’s a world of fresh linen and clean bathrooms, quirky kitchen suppers and Sunday Pilates classes. In other words, not real.
You may squabble occasionally, but you’ve got the rest of the week to process things, or simply apologise.
But suddenly being together on holiday, you can’t help noticing, up close, just how different your approaches are to both the planning and experience of the holiday. There are dark character traits lurking that even lovers can hide from each other.
Snoring, street noise, who sleeps next to the bathroom, booking ahead or living spontaneously, boutique restaurants versus authentic cantinas, the Spotify playlist... trust me, the list of triggers is endless.
This is the age when hormones go into free-fall, and body temperatures vary wildly. As a weekend couple, you can endure the odd sleepless night. It’s even romantic. But if one person lies tossing and turning for seven nights in a row, tempers fray. Mike and I have form in this area. We split up on day four of our first-ever mini break in his native Yorkshire. It turns out he doesn’t do lunches on British holidays – or lie-ins, or TV in the B&B (one of my guilty pleasures).
We split up on day four of our first-ever mini break.
I claim to be an enthusiastic hiker – but really that means six miles on the flat, with an attractive pub and bric-a-brac shops round every corner. Mike is hardcore. He dreams of empty moors with no mobile signal.
When I fell down a ravine in Yorkshire (wrong trainers, wrong attitude) and sprained my ankle, the local pub and taxi company were closed. I limped on for two hours until we arrived at a posh hotel, which refused to give me ice for my blackened ankle (“We need it for the cocktails, madam”). Mike thought their response was hilarious. I had a sense of humour failure.
A few drinks later, I was questioning the very premise of our relationship. Home truths were spoken. For 24 hours I was planning my train route home (and re-editing my dating profile).
Eventually hostilities ceased on a day-trip to Castle Howard (I was damned if we were going to waste the £24 tickets) and the unexpected joy of finding the only gay karaoke bar in Malton. We were having such fun, it was hard to sulk.
We still laugh about it today – disaster anecdotes become part of the repertoire – but I learnt the hard way that we do holiday differently.
For years as a single woman, I went on brilliant girls’ weekend breaks (still do, in fact), where hotels and restaurants are booked with military precision. Even lunches are pre-planned. We factor in as much pleasure as possible, and can feel that lunchtime glass of rosé calling to us. But men, really nice men, don’t always sweat the small stuff in the same way.
If I’m not careful I can become the holiday bore – poring over identical-looking studio flats in Valencia (will it be unbearably hot in the old town?), while Mike reads about Roman castles and where to see dolphins. It can sometimes feel like I’m going on holiday with a 12-year-old boy.
Sleep – not sex – is the other hot-button topic.
It’s also very easy to become the Mummy (or Daddy) of the trip. Doing all the legwork and resenting it. On our first European break (an Airbnb in Porto), I was the one paying £40 extra to check in a suitcase full of chargers, sunscreen and mosquito repellent. Mike just assumed he’d use mine, and was shocked that I could be so petty.
So we’ve had to sit down and work out more equal roles. Today Mike organises all outdoor activities. I book everything indoors (otherwise I suspect he would sleep under a hedge). If the apartment is stifling, it will be my fault. But you can be sure we’ll be near interesting galleries and restaurants.
Sleep – not sex – is the other hot-button topic. As weekend lovers you take every opportunity. But on a week-long holiday, you might just want a night or two off, without wounding the other person’s ego.
Next week, Mike and I are on a narrowboat with single beds (I’m writing a travel piece), and hilariously he’s worrying about whether sex is still on the agenda in a tiny cabin. I, of course, am panicking about where we’ll stow the suitcases, how we’ll survive unprecedented levels of bathroom intimacy and will everyone else be over 90?
When I talk to other friends who found love later in life, we agree it doesn’t matter how you explain the basis for your relationship: love, friendship, companionship, friendship with benefits... defining these things seems important when you’re young – when you’re older, what matters is that you laugh a lot, understand each other’s back stories and miss one another when you’re apart. But on holiday you do have to work harder than long-term marrieds because you don’t have that weight of emotional history to sustain you.
This is a late relationship and I’ve fought with every fibre of my being to make it equal. But I have learnt an essential truth. If you’re remotely travel-anxious or a bit of a control freak (guilty as charged), don’t expect the other person to care as much.
An argument is not always worth the fight. Holidays are supposed to be fun. Otherwise, you might as well go with someone else.
As Mike often reminds me (quoting an eminent relationship therapist): “Would you rather be right or would you rather be happy?”
Of course, we’d both rather be right. Don’t be mad. But mostly, thankfully, we’re on the same page.
* Liz Hoggard is a feature writer and columnist for The Daily Telegraph
