Most happily married couples have a go-to response to the oft-asked question - 'What's the secret to the perfect marriage?'
You'll hear standard replies like 'a date night once a week' or 'keeping the spark alive in the bedroom' and even more radical explanations like sleeping in separate rooms.
Well one woman in New York has taken that last concept to the next level, by arguing that the secret to a happy marriage might well be living in separate HOMES.
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Bianca Turetsky is a writer who currently lives in Prospect Heights, New York while her husband of six years, Peter, lives in an apartment 38 minutes away.
When the pair got engaged, they realised that living together was not going to work for them. Peter had a son and an apartment of his own, while Bianca felt strongly that she couldn't just up and leave the home she bought which had become a "refuge after a hard breakup. I bought it, I moved, I rebuilt my life. It has history. It’s a part of my family."
In a recent essay for Today, Bianca writes: "We’ve been together for almost six years now and yet a mundane weekday evening still feels like a date. He will have made dinner by the time I arrive. He will remember that I like my roasted broccoli burnt. He will clean up because he claims he actually likes doing dishes.
"I know him better than anyone and yet our time together is still something I get butterflies for."
Another stumbling block in the way of the couple moving in together is Bianca's cat, Cleo. Both Peter and his son are seriously allergic to cats so Bianca and Peter agreed that they would simply live separately.
Bianca said of Cleo: "She 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. She was a smaller, furrier version of my apartment. She was also a part of my family, and she was there first."
While Bianca revealed that many people who hear of the couple's unique living situation are highly curious at first, she believes many begin to feel jealous of the freedom that both members of the couple have.
The 38-minute commute doesn't bother Bianca as she keeps herself busy while travelling on the New York City subway but she also admitted that Peter is currently looking for an apartment slightly closer to her one.
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