Did you know that, in 2017, female founders got only about 2.2 percent of venture capital funding? A sobering statistic, but an unsurprising one to any woman who’s working to turn their idea into a viable business. Still, many have been able to cut through all the noise to create some of your favorite products, from Away carry-ons to Outdoor Voices leggings. And they have some real-talk for anyone hoping to follow in their footsteps.
At the Glamour Women of the Year Summit, Audrey Gelman of The Wing, Jen Rubio of Away, and Ty Haney of Outdoor Voices came together in conversation with Suitan Dong from the Female Founders Fund to discuss what it takes to get from pitch deck to big business. You can follow all the inspiring speakers and panels from the on our Summit recap—below, we round up some of their most pressing tips for female entrepreneurs.
Don’t get discouraged by the no’s.
Away’s Rubio has been on both sides of the fundraising conversation, so she knows that “no’s” are just a part of the process. But, from her experience, she sees women get discouraged by the sheer amount of rejection you face in those early stages of the business. “It’s part of the process,” she says. So it’s important to prepare yourself for it.
When she was first pitching Outdoor Voices, Haney would introduce her idea as “the next big activewear for women”—more often than not, to a group of men, who would counter with the names of the big-name activewear brands you know (and are, well, mostly run and designed by men). A lot of times, they wouldn’t get her vision for Outdoor Voices. So Haney came up with a new strategy: Send product ahead of a meeting to the women in the office, to the VC’s wives… Then, she started to hear yes from the rooms full of men. “Being a woman is a competitive advantage when you’re building a company for women,” Haney says.
The process doesn’t end once you get that coveted “yes,” though: The Wing’s Gelman stresses that what you do once you receive it is just as important. In her case, it’s fostering a community that then allows for more female entrepreneurship: having members network, encourage each other’s ideas, hire each other, and so forth. Pay it forward to get more voices in the room.
Know when to take advice—and when to not.
Rubio and her co-founder, Stephanie Korey, both came from Warby Parker, which is often held up as the paradigm for start-ups—but “one of the first things we realized is that there’s no traditional startup experience,” she says. There’s no playbook for starting a small business; in fact, a lot of what they learned during their time at Warby Parker didn’t really translate to their new concept, of starting a direct-to-consumer luggage brand. When you start a company, you get advice from a lot of people. The key, according to Rubio, is to learn how to filter through all of it and apply what makes sense for your business.
Cultivate a sense of community within your customer base.
The Wing’s 6,000 members are “their marketers,” according to Gelman: They spread the word on the co-working space and create interest in what they’re doing, attracting new customers. From its inception, The Wing would host events for specific sub-sets of their community—based on where they lived, or what industry they worked in—where they would pass physical business cards to each other, connect in real life… And that proved to be a valuable asset. Now, The Wing is working to launch a mobile app that allows its members to get in touch outside of the physical space, whether that’s for advice or networking.
Remember that fundraising is a two-way street.
Walking into a room to pitch your idea for a business can be extremely intimidating. But Haney encourages people to remember: You’re just talking to a person. If you’re real and vulnerable, it’ll come across.
Gelman points out that, when you’re fundraising, the power dynamic can feel imbalanced: They have money, you don’t. So when you’re preparing to pitch your company to potential investors, try flipping that and asking, “Do I want to partner with this person?” It takes the power back, if only energetically—and it offers you, as a founder, an important lens through which to think about potential partnerships.
Rely on your community of fellow female founders.
The community of female business owners is, unfortunately, still pretty small—but it’s there, and there’s often overlap when it comes to potential executive hires and VCs. Backstage, Rubio and Haney were discussing some candidates they were looking at for open positions at their respective companies. Because you often end up talking to a lot of the same people, you can recommend folks to each other and get real insight that you can’t find elsewhere.
This network is also not city-specific: Haney launched Outdoor Voices when she lived in New York, but she then relocated to Austin. And though the decision to move her still-growing company to Texas might have felt odd at first, she slowly began building her own community out there, thanks to some introductions from other female founders. (Girlboss’ Sophia Amoruso introduced Haney to Bumble’s Whitney Wolfe Herd, for example.) “Don’t be scared to leave your comfort zone,” she says.
Be really, really sure that you want to do it.
Newsflash: Starting a business is hard. You’re going to be told “no” a lot. It can feel lonely. What’s going to get you through is passion, says Rubio. “You have to really want to do it… It’s easier than ever to start a company—it also means you can go too far in a direction you don’t want to be in.”
For Haney, it’s all about execution, and making sure she can deliver on an idea she sets her mind to. She has a rule of having no more than three goals at a time, for instance—that helps her stay focused and ensure she doesn’t muddy her vision.
Also, don’t get caught up in what other people are doing. Gelman likes to think of the quote, “Don’t compare your insides to someone else’s outside.” You might see something in a magazine and think they have it all together, but it could be a whole different story behind the scenes. Keep your eyes on your own path.
Get more from Glamour‘s Women of the Year Summit here.
The Weeknd, né Abel Tesfaye, has made Bella Hadid quite an offer—an offer she can’t refuse, one might even say. Per TMZ, the singer and on-again, off-again, on-again boyfriend of supermodel Hadid recently asked her to move in with him—into a lavish NYC apartment—and she swiftly said yes.
The apartment in question, listed for $60,000 per month before it went off the market in early October, is nestled inside a luxury complex that, according to The Observer, bills itself as “paparazzi-proof.” The building is also home to the likes of Jake Gyllenhaal, Harry Styles, and Jessica Biel and Justin Timberlake. Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds, Jennifer Lawrence, and Meg Ryan all also own apartments in the building. It’s like real-life High-Rise.
As far as its paparazzi-repellent measures go, here’s how it works: The elevator bank, per WWD, is programmed such that neighbors never ride up to their apartments together (sounds inefficient, honestly); it contains a secret garden and 24-hour concierge and doorman services; and it offers valet services in a private garage.
But back to the apartment. It encompasses a reported 5,004 square feet, four bedrooms and four bathrooms, and a private, 1,000-square-foot roof terrace with extraordinary panoramic views; since moving in, per The Weeknd’s Instagram Stories, he’s littered the living room coffee table with the myriad magazines Hadid has covered recently. As a bonus, it has a 70-bottle-capacity wine fridge.
Hadid and The Weeknd split in 2016, but they reunited earlier this year and have been active presences on each other’s Instagrams ever since. “Home,” Hadid captioned a recent photo of the two. Given that they celebrated her birthday just more than two weeks ago, an apartment seems like a pretty lavish gift. With the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show coming up, its proximity to the Dogpound is an added bonus (though Hadid has been known to favor trainer Joe Holder).
Campaigns are like marathons: Both are races, with a distant finish line on the horizon. Both are slogs, the kind that can drive someone blind with delirium and push her harder than she believed possible. Both are a process and a practice and an ordeal. So to complete one, whether it lasts 26.2 miles or 18 months, much of the same advice applies: Hit the trail. Drink a lot of water. And if at all possible, run with a friend.
This November, a record number of women will run for office—not just for the House of Representatives or the Senate, but for school boards and in gubernatorial races, too. Not all will win, but if even some fraction of them succeeds, legislative bodies will look (and likely vote) differently than they do now. In a midterm preview, Reuterstook Michigan as an example: In 2016, just 23 percent of lawmakers across the state were women. In 2018, women are on the ballot in 63 percent of state senate seats and 71 percent of state house seats. If trends hold, Reuters anticipates that women could make up to 40 percent of the state legislature, an all-time record.
The promise of a female-led political movement has incentivized a not unprecedented, but noticeable collaborative spirit between women candidates. Michigan’s Rashida Tlaib, who is poised to become the first Muslim woman ever in the House of Representatives if she wins in November (which is all but certain considering she has no Republican opponent) has stumped for Ilhan Omar, the Somali-American who could share that title with her if she wins in Minnesota. Deb Haaland, who’s running for a House seat in New Mexico and is Native American, has gone on the road with Sharice Davids, also a Native woman, who is up for a seat in Kansas.
Amanda Litman, the co-founder and executive director of Run for Something, an organization that aims to recruit and support progressive candidates, has come to see relationships like these as a measure of campaign preparedness. When the PAC endorses candidates, Litman connects them over Slack—an internal messaging platform—to others in similar races, people who understand the particularities and peculiarities of electoral politics.
“I once saw a tweet that was like, ‘Behind every strong woman is a really powerful group text,’ and I think that’s true,” Litman tells Glamour. “When a woman decides to run for office, a lot of people will tell her no. It makes it that much more important to have a friend in her corner who just looks at her and tells her, ‘I know this race. Yes.’”
Ahead of the midterm elections, Glamour spoke to 13 women about female friendship in politics. What follows are excerpts from our conversations.
Mikie Sherrill, Amy McGrath, and Elaine Luria
Sherrill, McGrath, and Luria—all graduates from the Naval Academy and now Democratic candidates for the U.S. House—are three in a wave of female veterans candidates on the ballot. In separate phone interviews over the summer, each quoted the Academy’s mission: to develop leaders for “the highest responsibilities of command, citizenship and government.”
Six of the women veterans on the ballot in November keep up via text thread, including Navy Academy alumnae Mikie Sherrill, Amy McGrath, and Elaine Luria.
Sherrill (NJ-11): I entered the race in May 2017, and I did not know that other women that went to the Naval Academy were running. When Amy announced, someone sent me a link to her video. Like, “Look! Another woman like you!” It just blew me away. We got in touch shortly thereafter.
Luria (VA-2): Amy and I were in the same class at the [Naval] Academy. Mikie was three years ahead of us. I didn’t know Mikie at the time, but now we realize that we have lots of friends in common because it’s not that big of a school and also, there were only about 100 women per class back then. Everyone knew who all the other women were. The first class of women started in 1976 and graduated in 1980, and there were 55 women. I graduated in 1997, as did Amy, and there were 115 of us in our class. (There were about 1,200 men.) We crossed paths a lot, but we didn’t know each other even as well then as we do now.
Amy decided to run last summer well before I had made the decision to do this, but in between, we had our 20th reunion at the Naval Academy. I was so proud of her—that she’d launched her campaign, and it was gaining a lot of traction. We had a little get-together with some other classmates, and she told us all about the race, the challenges, the path ahead that she saw. It was really encouraging.
I wrote to Amy before I made the announcement publicly. “I’m gonna do it!” She’s got young kids. I have a daughter who is nine, and we’re both in similar situations where our husbands have also served. That’s what we talked about the most. How are you doing this? How do you balance this?
McGrath (KY-6): I remember that. Elaine was still deciding, and I did not want to push her in either direction because it’s not a simple decision. I just wanted to be there for Elaine to tell her, “If you want to do this, I’m with you.”
We’re both in hard races, so we don’t have time to talk all the time, but I love that she’s out there. And Mikie was in this even before I was. It’s awesome to have a support network of female veterans. And it’s not just us. It’s Chrissy Houlahan. It’s Abigail Spanberger. Once, a bunch of us were passing through D.C. for an event, and we just sat down over a glass of wine. The release of tension—we can talk about the issues, what it’s like to be a veteran in politics, what it’s like to be a woman. We talk about all the people who come up to us and tell us, “I can’t vote for you because you’re the mother of small children.” It happens!
Recently, an ad came out against me that said, “Amy McGrath is a feminist!” This was what was used to attack me. When that aired, we all texted back and forth, like, “Is that the best he can do?”
Sherrill: If one of us wins a primary or gets an endorsement, there’s that text. But sometimes it’s phone calls about how to communicate with voters or how to reach people in our districts. We’re women—we know how to build consensus, work in coalition.
McGrath: Recently, an ad came out against me that said, “Amy McGrath is a feminist!” This was what was used to attack me. When that aired, we all texted back and forth, like, “Is that the best he can do?” It’s that kind of camaraderie, which we’re used to because women who’ve served do have to have a thick skin.
When I was a kid, I had this dream: I wanted to be a fighter pilot. I learned I couldn’t do that because there was a federal law prohibiting women from those roles. I got lucky in 1997. We had a new administration, with President Bill Clinton in his second term and a new Congress. Doors were now open for women in combat. Mikie, Elaine, and I arrived at the Naval Academy at a time when we could exit from there with all the doors open to us. When we started before we had those opportunities, there were men who believed that we had taken a seat from a man. We weren’t going to be able to serve like a man could serve, so we were sort of robbing the taxpayers of that investment. I think we look at this and go, “Nope. You got your investment out of us. We served, and we’re here. Now we’re running.”
Rep. Debbie Dingell and Rep. Barbara Comstock
Both Rep. Dingell (D-MI) and Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-VA) were elected to the House of Representatives in 2015.
“You can tell we’re really good friends,” Rep. Dingell explains, a moment before she has to leave Rep. Comstock on the line and go vote on a bill. “Because I just let her talk for me!”
PHOTO: NBC NewsWire
Rep. Debbie Dingell (L) and Rep. Barbara Comstock (R) in a joint appearance on Meet the Press in November 2017.
Rep. Comstock: Gosh, we met so long ago when I was still staff on the Hill and Debbie worked and her husband, of course, was a member. We really got to know each other well because both of us liked to have these bipartisan women’s lunches with people that we all knew in Washington. A late friend of ours used to say, “Washington isn’t Democrats vs. Republicans. It’s men vs. women.”
Once we were both elected in 2015, we found a lot of common ground on issues that do tend to affect women—breast cancer research and now sexual harassment.
Rep. Dingell: Barbara and I have been friends for decades, I think because we saw early in our careers that women needed to support each other. There weren’t many women back then, period. We were always two of a few women in the room. Neither Barbara nor I drop people! So we’ve kept up with each other all this time. We may not agree on all the issues but we do agree on supporting women and that friendship really matters.
“Washington isn’t Democrats vs. Republicans. It’s men vs. women.”
I’ll just add that when I was first elected, it was a really hard time for me. My husband [Rep. John Dingell, who represented Michigan in Congress for almost six decades] was in the hospital, and I was trying to adjust to a new job, take care of him, get everything in order, and Barbara knew what I was going through and checked in on me. I remember the afternoon she said, “You have to leave the hospital,” and we met at McClean Family Restaurant [in McClean, Virginia], and she said, “This is a mental health break.”
Rep. Comstock: We have tremendous mutual respect, and we share a worldview when it comes to values, when it comes to women at work. From the floors of factories to the boardrooms, we want to make sure that women’s voices are heard.
Jessica Ramos and Alessandra Biaggi
Both Democratic New York State Senate candidates, Ramos and Biaggi won their respective primaries, defeating entrenched (male) incumbents. Jeff Klein, whom Biaggi opposed, spent $3 million on the race. She won with 54 percent of the vote.
Alessandra Biaggi and Jessica Ramos met at a No IDC NY activist meet-up at the start of their respective bids for New York State Senate.
Ramos (District 13): I met Alessandra around nine months ago, or so. We were professional women who wanted to challenge these men in power whom we felt didn’t represent us at all. In New York, they’re called the Independent Democratic Conference, but they’re Democrats in name alone. They really vote like Republicans.
Biaggi (District 34): Because we were running against these candidates, it made sense to know each other. And then people started to endorse us as a pair, which was kind of great. I knew I think from the start that I could learn a lot from Jessica. She has experience in government, and she’s a mom, which I think is heroic. I’m engaged and I said to her, “I barely see my fiancé.” The fact that she has kids is remarkable. She’s shown me that as women, we don’t have to segment our lives to run our shelve our other responsibilities somewhere else. We incorporate our lives into these races, because our families and our friends and are our communities are the reason we’re in this.
Ramos: We can be each other’s cheerleaders, and not just because we’re both women, but because when it comes down to it, I don’t want to work with the incumbent. I want to work with Alessandra Biaggi. That’s who I want to pass laws with. That’s who I trust. I may not be able to vote for her because I live in another district. And I may not be able to contribute to her campaign because I haven’t seen a paycheck in months, which is part of running for office, but I am sure as hell her biggest cheerleader.
Biaggi: When I can’t sleep at night, I scroll through Twitter. Recently, I saw that Jessica’s opponent posted a video that was outrageous. The lies! It made me want to crack my phone in half. So I retweeted the video, and I said something like, “These are lies! Vote for Jessica!” I think I said, “Is this a joke?” I couldn’t believe it.
Ramos: That was hilarious, Alessandra. That is so representative. Alessandra is just like this. Sometimes, when I just can’t find it in me, I’m so tired, I’m so exhausted, I think about Alessandra. I do. I hear her, over my shoulder, like, “Go finish door-knocking in that building, Jessica. Go make 10 more calls.” She makes me better.
Ashley Selmon and Zahra Suratwala
Selmon and Suratwala are running for DuPage County Board in Illinois. “At times, I do feel discouraged,” Selmon says. “Like, when party leadership tells us we need to raise unfathomable amounts of money, and I’m looking at our account, and I’m like we’re not quite there! But I have Zahra, and we have this, and we have all these volunteers and all this enthusiasm. I think about that and I can’t help but believe what we want to achieve is possible.”
Ashley Selmon and Zahra Suratwala, candidates for the DuPage County Board, realized fast that collaboration could boost their chances at the ballot box.
Suratwala: We met after we both had decided to run back in September 2017, and we met because there are two seats on the board that will open in November, so we were introduced to each other. We text all the time, especially because campaign season is heating up and there are like 100 decisions to be made per second. Who can print yard signs? Who was that person who said she’d host a meet-and-greet for us? It’s just a constant stream of communication going on between us. But it’s wonderful because it means the work is divided in half. Whoever can take something on does, and as much as we ask each other to help out, we know we’re also both giving 100 percent.
Selmon: In a way, our friendship is a big part of our approach. Where we live, there’s one Democrat on this 18-seat board. If people don’t know the candidates on the ballot, in this area, they’ll just pick Republican. It makes sense to let voters know about both of us, have our faces and names together, so that voters are motivated to turn out for us. Zahra will never take credit for this, but after we won in the primary, I moved and had to have surgery. In any other timeline, I would have incredibly stressed about being out of pocket for a month in the middle of campaigning. But I knew Zahra would look at the emails and would text me if she needed me. She’s what I never could have expected when I decided to do this. And knowing what I know now, I never could have done it without her.
Liuba Grechen Shirley and Christine Pellegrino
Grechen Shirley is a progressive candidate for the U.S. House, who notably won a petition to the FEC that allowed her to spend campaign funds on childcare. Pellegrino beat a Republican in a deep red district in a special election in May 2017. She is now a member of the New York State Assembly.
“We take selfies all the time. At events, people come over and offer to take our photo, and we’re just like, ‘No, no, we’ll take a selfie,’” Grechen Shirley tells me. It was Pellegrino’s idea: “I wanted a record—we did this together.”
Christine Pellegrino, a member of the New York States Assembly, and Liuba Grechen Shirley, a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives, made an instant connection over local politics and their (loud!) children.
Grechen Shirley (NY-2): After the presidential election in 2016, I started a grassroots Facebook group, and I called it New York 2nd District Democrats, and probably two days after this group went up, Christine reached out to me on Facebook and asked if we could talk. It was 11:00 p.m., I had a screaming six-month old infant to nurse, and Christine called me. We talked for an hour. She was one of the founding members of another activist group in the area, and we just delved into a plan to activate our people across the district. Her daughters were in the background; my child was sobbing. I knew in a second we’d be friends.
Pellegrino (District 9): This is what happens with women activists. We take up the call, literally.
Grechen Shirley: We put it all on the line because we’re fighting for change and we believe we can make a difference. But we have the same commitments that we did before. I’ve been at events with Christine where she’s had to run home to take her daughter to practice. Sometimes I have to rush out to get my daughter to dance class. It’s hard, but it would be harder alone.
Deb Haaland and Sharice Davids
Haaland and Davids (who, fun fact, is an ex-MMA fighter are both progressive candidates for the U.S. House and each could become the first Native American woman ever to serve in the chamber if she wins in November.
Sharice Davids (L) and Deb Haaland (R), campaigning together in Kansas in September 2018.
Davids (KS-3): Deb and I both went to the same summer program at the American Indian Law Center, a program that changed my life and enabled me to even be in a position to run for Congress. We weren’t the same class, but I felt connected to her because of that. Deb and I spoke soon after I announced I would run. The first time I called Deb, she was like, “If you need to sleep on my couch you can.” In some ways, I almost feel—Deb, you don’t even know this—that just hearing her on the other end in that first call, telling me, “Yes, do this,” was the validation I needed.
Haaland (NM-1): I had been at it for a lot longer than Sharice, at that point. It feels like a lifetime. A mutual contact put us in touch, and we share a lot of history. She was raised by a single mom. I’m a single mom. We’ve paid off our student loans. We’re both products of the public school system. We have a lot of similarities in our background, and when you share that struggle, it establishes a bond.
Davids: To me, Deb embodies that concept of someone who leads with love, who has genuine love and care for what we want to do here with Native candidates and women and the direction we’re headed in this nation. It’s been 240 years and we’ve never had a Native American woman in the House of Representatives in our government. It’s long overdue. I wish there were five of us and we all got sworn in at the same time. But we’ll take two for now, and we’ll leave the ladder down.
These conversations have been edited for clarity and concision.
Mattie Kahn is a senior editor at Glamour.
In a pivotal election year, Glamour is keeping track of the historic number of women running (and voting) in the midterm elections. For more on our latest midterm coverage, visit www.glamour.com/midterms.
When it comes to her relationship, Karlie Kloss doesn’t care what people think. The supermodel, who recently became engaged to her longtime boyfriend, Joshua Kushner, has faced criticism for choosing to be with someone who’s at least peripherally in the Trump orbit. (Joshua is the younger brother of Jared Kushner, which makes him Ivanka Trump’s brother-in-law.)
For a recent interview with Vogue, the usually private Kloss admits that being with Kushner hasn’t come without its complications, but that at the end of the day, they share the same liberal belief system that flies in the face of the president and his administration.
“Josh and I share a lot of the same liberal values that guide our lives and the things we stand for,” she said in the interview. “We’ve really grown together personally and professionally. Josh knows that I’m just a nerdy, curious human being. I think that’s why he loves me. We have each other’s back.”
While this marks the first time Kloss has opened up about her and Kushner’s political beliefs, the couple made a huge statement when they attended the Women’s March on Washington last year. The Cut also reported that despite their familial ties to President Trump, both Kloss and Kushner voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.
As for Kloss, don’t expect her to open up anymore about her relationship with Kushner moving forward. When Vogue tried to press on whether or not she plans on converting to Orthodox Judaism, like Ivanka did prior to marrying into the Kushner family, Kloss replied, “At the end of the day, I’ve had to make decisions based on my own moral compass — forget what the public says, forget social media. I’ve chosen to be with the man I love despite the complications.”
She continued, explaining how being hounded about her relationship is sexist. “It’s frustrating, to be honest, that the spotlight is always shifted away from my career toward my relationship,” she said. “I don’t think the same happens in conversations with men.”
Do you stay with someone who’s totally great…but not so great in bed? Is it smart to disclose your weird hobby on a first date? How prepared should you really be for a booty call? We hit our favorite podcast hosts with these and more of our most personal Q’s. (After all, we listen to their shows for hours on end and already think of them as BFFs. That’s normal, right?!) Everyone from Dan Savage of Savage Lovecast (a wildly entertaining relationship Q&A show) to Georgia Hardstark and Karen Kilgariff of My Favorite Murder (which revels in true crime) got back to us with their best lessons in Glamour’s December 2017 issue—you’ll want to tune in.
But first, online exclusively, Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman, real-life BFFs and hosts of Call Your Girlfriend (a podcast in which they give each other a ring to talk all the things that you’d share with your person) are here with their love advice:
Aminatou (Amina) Sow: Our advice? Tell your close friends about both the good and the bad of your romantic relationships, so you don’t turn your love interest into a monster or a hero.
Ann Friedman: Which isn’t to say you should take out a press release to everyone you’ve ever met. Your extended friend group doesn’t always deserve to be completely in the know, but with best friends it’s important to be close to hundred percent honest.
Don’t turn your love interest into a monster or a hero
Amina: Sharing only half the picture it isn’t healthy for those friendships. If you only vent about your boyfriend, your friends won’t like him, and if you only disclose the good things or always project a sunny outlook, when your relationship is in a tough spot your friends won’t be able to respond appropriately.
Ann: Don’t do that Instagram-fake-life-stuff. I’ve been guilty of selective detail sharing about a relationship, and I think it’s because there was something I didn’t want to admit to myself. If you’re running a shadow PR campaign for your relationship, you probably aren’t being honest with yourself either. Your close friends want the best for you, but if you don’t give them the full picture, they can’t be as good of a friend as they probably want to be.
Amina: Some of not wanting to confront something has to do with shame and avoidance. But you don’t have to deal with those pressures with a best friend—they’re supposed to be the person you’re the most transparent with.
If you’re running a shadow PR campaign for your relationship, you probably aren’t being honest with yourself either.
Ann: We’re not saying it’s easy; it can be pretty hard figuring out what to share with your friends. Personally, I know it’s time to check in with my friends is if I’m writing about a relationship issue a lot in my journal and not talking about it with them.
Amina: I agree with the journal for sure. And if you don’t know how to say something, the phone can provide a safe distance, which might make the conversation easier. In other words: Call your girlfriends.
I’m pretty sure my last live-in relationship would still be intact if we’d just had separate bathrooms. After five years, though, little differences in our preferences and routines started seriously getting to us: We worked opposite hours, and he liked to shake off stress by going out among other humans, while I liked to retreat to our cocoonlike bedroom and binge Netflix as if Kimmy Schmidt and I were the last two people on earth. In the end, compromising on what we wanted just to share space made us feel like we’d stopped growing as individuals. Once we broke up, I wondered if I’d ever reconcile my need for serious alone time with the fact that being with someone means, like, being with them.
So I was intrigued when, last year, my friend (and former Glamour colleague) Annie Fox revealed that she and her husband live in different apartments. This arrangement, she explained, gives her space to pursue her work and hobbies, and helps them better understand what’s actually going on with each other. “We enjoy this idea that there is a space we each have to ourselves that nobody else is going to enter for a period of time,” says Fox of her marriage. “I do think it really forces communication.”
Turns out, this setup is kind of a thing! Sociologists call it “living apart together,” or LAT, and it’s distinctly different from the phenomenon of commuter relationships, in which couples live apart for their jobs but typically see an end date to their living-apart-ness. LAT couples are fully committed, even married, but they specifically choose not to cohabit.
While there hasn’t been a ton of research on this phenomenon in the United States, the U.S. Census Bureau reports that the number of spouses whose partner is absent from the household has doubled to 3.6 million since 1991. Research in Europe and Canada suggests that LAT is common among younger people, for reasons that range from wanting more autonomy to just liking their own place and choosing to keep it.
“It makes time together special, rather than habitual.”
As appealing as it began to sound, I was still skeptical that LAT is the cure-all for relationship ennui. So I called Judith Newman, a New York author who has written about this lifestyle based on her experience living about 70 city blocks from her husband, John, for almost 25 years—a journey she touched on in her new book, To Siri With Love. She says they discovered early that his fastidiousness and her desire for children (he wasn’t initially so sure) made living apart a clear choice. Keeping two separate places, even with kids, would actually give them more space and could even be cheaper. Plus, she adds, it’s made their relationship possible. “[Some] people get married or start to live with each other, and all of these qualities they find wonderful rub up against the ones that aren’t supportable on a day-to-day basis,” she says. “If they didn’t have to do that, they’d probably be very happy together.”
Eli J. Finkel, professor of social psychology at Northwestern University and author of The All-or-Nothing Marriage, agrees. “For some, LAT is a way to play to the strengths of the relationship without succumbing to its weaknesses,” says Finkel. “It makes time together special, rather than mundane and habitual.”
For Annie Fox and her husband, Nash, having two Brooklyn apartments a few blocks away from each other was in part a pragmatic decision made when they were dating. “He was moving here from another country, and we felt it was important that he have a chance to build up his own life and his own friends,” says Fox. “And part of doing that was getting housemates.” That way, she explains, “we could both have our own independent universes as well as a shared one.” Though she’d cohabited in other relationships, this arrangement works well for them. “Even if Nash doesn’t sleep at my house every day, we’ll still meet for a drink on the way home or grab a coffee,” she says.
“If I’m lonely, I can’t just slam dishes while I’m cooking and hope that someone notices.”
But keeping a LAT relationship strong also requires some serious self-awareness. “If I’m just lonely and mopey and need someone, I’m going to have to pick up the phone and say it,” says Fox. “I can’t just slam dishes while I’m cooking dinner and hope that someone notices. Which I’ve done before!”
When Deena Chanowitz, 35, made the decision to attend medical school in Vermont, nearly 300 miles from her husband in New York City, she realized that she wanted to start the next chapter of her life on her own. “I figured I could have date time with Gary on the weekends and be fully committed then, versus being stressed out during the week.” Her husband of two years agreed, and she says it made their relationship better than ever. Though they moved back in together because they had a baby in June, she plans to go back to Vermont next summer and continue the LAT relationship. “When I was in New York, I was overworked and not fully present. Now we have better quality time.”
Is LAT a forever arrangement? Many of the couples I spoke to don’t know. After all, how realistic is it that you’d keep separate places if you start a family? Fox says they’ll deal with that conversation as it comes up. “We don’t take anything for granted in terms of talking about family planning and how it’s going to happen and where and how we want to raise our kids,” she says.
“Proximity and support are not the same thing to me.”
When Newman and her husband had kids, their boys grew up living primarily at her house; John would stay over until they were in bed, head home, and then come back in the morning to make breakfast. “Proximity and support are not the same thing to me. I would not have been able to have the father that my children adore in their life this way if we had lived together, because I would have killed him,” she says, laughing.
Surprisingly, the most consistent issue couples face is judgment. Newman has fielded questions from strangers who have assumed she and her husband were on the rocks. “I would get concerned phone calls from parents [at my kids’ school] who decided something awful was about to happen and one of us was going to have a breakdown in the middle of the school auction,” she says.
Fox has felt the scrutiny too. “People who essentially watched us grow up can, in one breath, testify to our ability to communicate and love each other despite distance,” she says. “And then, in the next breath, say this makes absolutely no sense and how can you take care of each other if you live five blocks away.”
But for the people I spoke to, living apart is more than just one giant compromise. It’s also a way to be more mindful about all the little decisions they make in their partnerships. “We’ve already kind of abandoned status quo,” says Fox. “With other relationships, we felt like we were on a fixed track.” And getting off that track in favor of choosing what really, truly works for you and your partner? That sounds downright freeing. And if it works, hell, I may never have to share a bathroom again.
This article originally appeared in the November 2017 issue. Additional reporting by S. Tia Brown.
