Confession time: I’m not a trendy person. I don’t stand in line for hours, let alone days, to get the newest smartphone because I need to be an “early adopter” and I certainly don’t want Alexa in my house. I have minimal interest in buying the latest fashion nor do I care what colour my eyelids or toenails are supposed to be this season. So it came as a surprise to find that I am right on trend in an important aspect of my life.

Since reconnecting with The Boyfriend in 2017, we have spent time together at home (mostly mine), at our family cottages (mostly his), socializing with friends, and travelling to the Caribbean and Europe with my kids. The one thing we haven’t done, however, is move in together – or at least not in the traditional sense. I maintain my house in the city and he holds on to his house about 30 minutes’ drive away. And so we fashionably live apart together.

Yes, there have been passing discussions about moving in together. There has been an agreement in principle that we will eventually get married. But in reality the two “big M’s” – mortgage and marriage – are years in the future. In the meantime, we are fully committed to a life together, now and in the long-term.

As a result of these realities, The Boyfriend leads a nomadic life. He commutes a long distance to work. He travels regularly to another town to see his sister. And, because of our relationship, he now finds himself regularly travelling between his house and mine. Meanwhile, I stay put in my home, firmly rooted in place by my boys and their schooling. In our blended family, my kids and I are the planet and he orbits around the periphery like an unpredictable moon, sometimes closer, sometimes farther, depending on our schedules and my womanly gravitational pull.

In the days prior to his arrival, my anticipation begins to build, and I find my heart becoming fluttery. Then the appointed day finally arrives. … The Boyfriend’s appearance at my place is heralded by a lot of sound and fury signifying his arrival: the rite of unloading and unpacking begins. Every trip necessitates bringing his tech gadgets, clothing, and musical accoutrements. My reasonably tidy house is abruptly overwhelmed by extra food on the counter, his computer on the dining room table and his personal items in “our” bedroom. Suddenly my bathroom vanity feels cluttered with the addition of his toiletries. He is not untidy, but he doesn’t meet my OCD standard of “a place for everything and everything in its place” either. To make him feel at home, I have magnanimously given him a drawer in my dresser, some space in my already overfull closet and a shelf in my medicine cabinet. These were big concessions, and he knows how much they cost me.

Those, however, were the easy things. There have been bigger adjustments needed. We have negotiated a non-traditional division of labour along the way. Since I am completely uninterested in culinary activities of any kind, he agreed early on to be in charge of cooking while visiting. My contribution is buying the family food and doing the post-meal clean up. And I am firmly in charge of the garbage and recycling.

As for parenting my kids, he has wisely chosen to leave the heavy lifting on that front to me – the conventional wisdom being that ”step parents should step back.” And as someone who doesn’t have his own kids, he understandably points out that he does not feel qualified to give parental advice anyway. My view is that being a parent doesn’t necessarily instill you with magical wisdom on how to solve every problem, it just creates “best guess” parental judgement, often clouded by love and guilt. As a result, I welcome his perspective and advice, even if I don’t always agree with or take it. As for my kids, they are very fond of him, but they do not see him as their father. Instead he is more like a mentor or elder statesman of maleness to them. It’s true that occasionally I get caught uncomfortably between The Boyfriend and my sons, but I am learning to mediate my way out of being caught in the middle.

In return for plunging him into the world of parenting, The Boyfriend has dragged me into the world of pet ownership. A year after we started dating, he moved his cat into my house to assuage his guilt for leaving her home alone. The cat has adapted well and quickly figured out who feeds her and cleans her litter box, but The Boyfriend remains her preferred human. For my part, I swiftly learned that she was the one in charge and she bent me to her will in short order. But a larger commitment lies ahead: getting a dog. Because man – or at least The Boyfriend – cannot live without his best friend. As part of my training, he has softened me up by having me help care for his ex’s dogs when she travels. I am still not fully convinced: having the visiting dogs sleep on the bed and getting up early with them takes me back to the interrupted sleep of the toddler years with my kids. Terms are still being negotiated, but I see that a canine is unavoidable. Resistance is futile and I have resorted to the same strategy I use with my taxes – deferring the inevitable.

Apart from the cat, The Boyfriend has moved in a couple of other items critical to his wellbeing: his weight machine and his large screen TV. Both were significant undertakings and the TV arrived just in time to watch the Raptors during the 2019 playoffs. We have also added a harpsichord built by his father as a new feature of my living room. I expect this is where it will end as I have no more space to offer. And, after all, he doesn’t want to gut his house completely – that would be too much like moving in with me.

This living apart together approach to domesticity means that, on one hand, he has the freedom to come and go when he pleases, which sometimes leaves me feeling powerless. On the other hand, he is required to do all the planning, packing and schlepping. Sometimes I resent my lack of control. Other times he feels overwhelmed by all the driving and switching gears from bachelor to family man and back. But, on the whole, our arrangement keeps our relationship fresh.

And then, just as I am getting used to having him underfoot, he is gone! The food and personal items vanish, and the other half of the bed becomes a vast uninhabited plain. I revel in putting the house to rights again and enjoy the newfound quiet and absence of the nightly disruptive snoring. I breathe a small sigh of relief. And then I begin to miss him anew and start to count the days until the next visit and those reassuring nocturnal snores.