There are thousands and thousands of websites and self help books and newspaper articles or whatever about the secrets to a happy marriage, but this woman has decided to come out with one of the most outrageous ones we’ve ever heard: simply don’t live in the same house as your spouse.

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43 year old Bianca Turetsky married 58 year old Dr Peter Bach back in September 2021 and both of them decided to stay living in their separate abodes, Bach with his teenage son in his house and Turetsky with her cat Cleo in her apartment. Here’s what Turetsky had to say about their decision:

Saying ‘I do’ for the first time at age 42 meant having my own life built already.

Following the traditional playbook wasn’t going to make anyone happy. Why did we have to live by old conventions? Why couldn’t we make it up as we went along? Who says what a good marriage should look like?

I soon learned that both Peter and his then teenage son are severely allergic to cats. Like the throat-closing-up kind of allergies.

[Cleo] would never be able to be a part of a home with him, and I had no plans to have a life without her — no wedding ring was worth giving her up.

By the time his son left for college, we had both decided that we still wanted to continue living alone.

We spend a few nights a week at each other’s houses before returning to our how house for some alone time.

Most people we tell about our unusual living situation move pretty quickly from surprise to curiosity to, in some cases, a little envy.

It’s a 38 minute journey and I can now do it in my sleep.

Every mundane weekday evening still feels like a date even though we’ve been together for six years.

I think this living arrangement is the secret to our happiness.

It’s become a cliche that the secret to a happy marriage is separate bathrooms. We’ve settled on separate boroughs.

This is not what I expected marriage to look like. It’s so much better.

I normally say that I think it’s really weird when people feel the need to go to the press about how happy they are when they’re dating someone way younger than them or have some other kind of weird relationship trope, but I actually kinda rate Turetsky and Bach for how they’re letting people know about this because it sounds like a fairly decent idea for some people out there. And it feels like the kind of thing society would probably look down upon as well as it is kinda radical, so it’s great for them to even present it as an option. Hope it continues to work out for them and inspires other people to do the same as well too.

For more of the same, check out this woman who decided to marry a tree. Think she did the right thing there?