the living-apart-together relationship sounds ideal to me in some ways and impossible in others. there's no way I could or would do it with children, and my partner would undeniably hate it, but it doesn't strike me as generally unworkable for a long-term relationship. and not living together doesn't make it any less of a marriage, any more than legal recognition, having children, or sexual monogamy makes a particular relationship any less a marriage if that's what the participants consider it to be.

I'm a little disturbed at how many of the commenters in parenting101 don't actually know the proper name for the a woman's external genitalia, given that presumably most of them are adult women.