Doing Intimacy Differently—An Emerging Trend: Living Apart Together Transnationally (LATT) Couples

The first chapter focusses on the intersection between intimacy and distance, mainly when the partners are located across nations, through a newly coined acronym Living Apart Together Transnationally couples - LATT. It describes the normative expectation of cohabitation, assuming physical proximity as an essential condition of a couple's intimate relationship, and the increasing number of LAT (living apart together) couples. Moreover, it introduces the global context, objective, motivation, method, and the 20 LATT couples /40 partners from 18 countries of origin, living in 10 countries, constituting the participants of the empirical study, and forming the book’s basis. Through a spatial understanding and historical perspective, it presents the couples’ dynamics - LAT and subcategory LD (long distance) couples due to the job and educational conditions, and how they are seen as “doing intimacy differently,” “unconventional,” and even ‘deviants.’ The chapter provides numerical data indicating that 6-10% of couples in the Global North are LAT.