In most female friendships between women with male partners, the following occurs, sometimes regularly. It usually happens after one of them has delivered a passionate rant – or if not technically a rant, then certainly rant-adjacent. The women’s eyes lock, the instinctive understanding between the two of them undeniable, and then the one who has been complaining about her partner will say: “I wish I could just live with you instead.” If there are more than two women present, the conversation may move on to communes. There are inevitably wistful sighs.
That fantasy could become a reality. “Positive news” platform Upworthy has explored the phenomenon of gen X and boomer women playing the long game and pulling a Golden Girls: rather than living alone, post widowhood or divorce, they are moving in together.
This follows an article published by AARP (a US not-for-profit organisation that advocates and provides resources for people aged 50 and older) chronicling a retreat in New Mexico called … Golden Girls Weekend. Here, groups of women in their 50s to early 70s discussed the pros and cons of communal living. There have been four of these workshops so far, with another planned for next month. They are run by the Modern Elder Academy, a “midlife wisdom school”, and it has opened next month’s event to men. The academy’s founder, Chip Conley, explained that the focus was on women because he had found that they were more likely to have seriously discussed the idea. “You don’t see guys talking with their friends: ‘What if someday we can live together?’ You just don’t.” Funny, that.
In a reader opinion poll on preferred living arrangements that Upworthy ran alongside its story, the largest group (33.7%) chose the option “Next Door? Perfect. Same House? No”, with only 16.2% going for: “Absolutely, let’s start picking roommates.” The important clarification “Yes, but I need my own bathroom” was selected by 29.4%, but a not-inconsequential 20.7% opted out with: “I prefer my own space, thank you.”
As blissful as the idea of shacking up with my female friends – or anybody who occasionally closes a cupboard door and understands that items left on the stairs aren’t an interior design choice – sounds, I’m worried it would be a mistake in practice. Not all dreams are meant to come true.
Memories of twentysomething flatshares loom large, but at least at that point we were all trying to coexist as peacefully as possible. Famously, the best part of ageing is the reduction in caring what anyone thinks of you that occurs exponentially with each advancing year. This does not sound like a recipe for harmonious living – more like The Young Ones, but old.
I once had a flatmate who regularly enjoyed daytime intimacy with her boyfriend, always leaving her door wide open. Her room was next to the kitchen, so you couldn’t make toast without feeling you were involved in a menage a trois. They had a mostly physical relationship, and I have never been thinner. None of us ever said anything, because nobody wanted to be a spoilsport. We were in our 20s, finally away from our parents and free to act in a mortifying manner and never have to be aware of it.
Imagine that scenario in your 70s or 80s – there’s a Blanche in every friend group, after all. It’s unlikely that your cohabitants would keep stumm, out of jealousy if nothing else.
It is easy to be mates when you all have separate quarters to return to, but what if you are constantly together and there are crumbs on the counter, toothpaste in the sink, an empty milk bottle in the fridge? What if – horror of horrors, irony of ironies – they don’t close cupboard doors either? Living with blokes might be (ha, might be!) challenging, but, in truth, it’s never going to be a picnic making the compromises necessary for sharing a home with any human being. Even a woman.
Let’s not forget that pulling a Golden Girls didn’t work for the Golden Girls much of the time – that’s what put the “com” in the “sit”. It seems the best way to thank someone for being a friend is to retain separate addresses.
Polly Hudson is a freelance writer
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