scrapbook

Romance and the me generation

They are in their early 20s and live together. They share a bed and the rent - for now. For this young couple, like many others, real estate and reason play a bigger role in their lives than romance.

They are together. But words like "our future" or "next year" don't crop up. They have big plans for their lives but they are not shared plans.

It was almost funny to read their testimony before the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. It provides such an illuminating picture of modern relationships among those brave twentysomethings who set up a household together.

Once it was the custom, a normal transition, to leave your parents' house in your 20s. Now all the forces, from federal laws to landlords, can combine against the young.

Sally, let's call her, a 22-year-old music student, got evicted from a communal house along with her co-tenants. At the same time Stephen, 23, her boyfriend of six months, lost his housemate and also faced a rental crisis. This was Sydney after all, not an easy place for a music student and a low-level public servant to find cheap accommodation.

So the two decided she should move in with him. They liked each other a lot. But, as they tell it, the decision to live together was driven more by practicalities than passion.

Some months later, Sally applied for the Newstart Allowance. But Centrelink refused the application on the grounds she lived in a marriage-like relationship with Stephen and his income ruled out her eligibility for the payment.

"Marriage-like" was not how the pair viewed their relationship. The law, Stephen told the tribunal when Sally appealed, fails to recognise the modern reality of young people's relationships which are shaped in large part by Sydney real estate prices.

Yes, they shared a house and a bed, but they denied a "full-on commitment". They were boyfriend and girlfriend but they denied being "really serious". They never discussed long-term plans. They shared the housework but not a lot got done.

They certainly didn't provide financial support to each other. And there was doubt on how much emotional support they gave one another. When Sally had her wisdom teeth out, her mother flew from Melbourne to look after her. They were at a crossroad in life and their future was uncertain. He was planning to go overseas and she wasn't sure.

Sally said she understood the word "commitment" to mean that two people were "in it for the long term" and that they always considered how their actions would affect the other person. But it was her practice to put herself and her career ahead of her relationship with Stephen.

Living together is not what it used to be. For the trailblazers of the 1970s, it was a defiant act. They were thumbing their nose at the sexist, boring institution of marriage. But, to be honest, the rebels were usually pretty committed to each other. Love and romance and even financial support were involved. And, as marriage became less fusty over the years, and started to resemble living in sin, many of the trailblazers tied the knot. Coming up behind them was a generation that used living together as a trial marriage. If they passed the test, they booked the church.

But the youngsters today have moved on again. They live together but it is no act of defiance and no trial marriage. It's part convenience, part love, part sex. Young people seem cautious about relationships but passionate about "finding themselves" or finding the right career. They are conditionally in love at 23 and still single at 28 or 30. They have years of tentative love-for-now relationships ahead of them.

The young women are fiercely independent; it's how we bring them up these days. Young men don't provide financial support and young women don't dream of living off a man even while living with him.

These attitudes mixed with Sydney real estate prices have changed the nature of young love and the nature of living together. In the wonderful collection of short stories Slaves of New York, Tama Janowitz described how people strove to be successful enough to have a nice apartment on Manhattan, and, if they weren't, they moved in with someone who did and became that person's slave. It was an especially acute problem in Manhattan where some apartments, for historic reasons, are rent-controlled so long as the current residents never move out. Couples who live in one of these are bound together even if they hate each other; the one who leaves has a lot to lose.

If Sydney is not quite like that, its real estate prices still exert a potent influence over how young people live. The Administrative Appeals Tribunal was savvy enough to understand that, finding the absence of commitment and pooled resources outweighed Sally and Stephen's shared bed and household. Theirs was no "marriage-like" arrangement.

It's a sensible decision. And a sensible relationship. As an old-fashioned romantic, though, I can't help but hope Sally and Stephen and the rest don't leave it too late. In the search to find themselves and establish their careers and independence, I hope they will one day experience the forever, wholehearted, committed kind of love - whatever the rent.

Posted by thinkum at April 9, 2004 03:46 PM