Scrappy Advice Tuesday

We’re short an advice column today because [something that sounds smart and has nothing to do with the fact that they’re hard to gather sometimes — it’s like picking blueberries, and occasionally the bushes aren’t covered in fruit, and other times the blueberry picker just sits down on a log and stares into the middle distance], and so we have a couple options. One is that Dear Prudence has a doozy today:

I met my fiancé at a house party. I was there with my best friend, who happens to be gorgeous. He began talking to us and kept talking to me after my best friend left. We made plans to hang out later, and over the next three months our friendship evolved into a wonderful relationship. Recently my fiancé and his good friend had a falling out, and in an act of spite his friend forwarded me a series of emails from around the time we first met. By reading them I learned that, initially, my fiancé only spent time with me because he wanted to have a shot with my best friend. He called me plain, repetitive, and mildly annoying. I know those aren’t harsh criticisms, and that they come from the first few days of our friendship. But I’m still upset, because those are my worst fears about myself, and it hurts to know that the person I’m marrying thought those things about me too.

Her advice is brilliant as always. Another option is to do an “Ask Everyone” situation for the following question.

In what situations is it feasible for a couple to stop living together but still stay together?

I’ve looked at this from as many angles and sources as are available to me, and acknowledged the good points and bad points of my own relationship as it stands now — there are plenty of each. I feel no need to give much information about the nature of our particular situation, except to say that this idea wasn’t mine, I’m obviously shaken by it and worried but I don’t especially rule it out as a terrible idea, and that it has the potential to be a slow process because of where we live.

What I’d like from you, and the Hairpin community, are examples. Please tell me stories about yourself or people you know that have stopped living together but have maintained successful monogamous relationships. Whose idea it was to move out and why, what they had to do to get through it without hurt feelings, what kind of situation it was and turned out to be … the more details the better. Thanks in advance!

Let’s solve this.