Ray Orr and Elizabeth Tuten are platonic life partners, or as they describe it, they’re each other’s “life wife.” They’re like-minded women in their 30s who live together and lean on each other during the good and bad. They also often make financial decisions together. But they’re not dating or romantically involved in any way. In fact, their commitment was born out of conversations about what it would mean to decenter romantic partnerships in their lives and instead emphasize community. “We were both asking, ‘What is dating to us? What are we actually looking for? And what would it mean if we could fill some of those roles for each other?'” Tuten says.
“We both came into each other’s life when we didn’t have the level of friendship that we were creating together and for each other.”
Orr and Tuten met in 2019 through a shared hobby of collage art. But it wasn’t until the pandemic hit that they ended up in an online women’s art group and became friends. With so many similarities – they both lived in Washington DC, worked in journalism, had cats, and loved to thrift – their friendship developed organically and progressed when they started sending each other video messages through the app Marco Polo. “We built this really interesting intimacy of monologuing at each other and deeply listening to each other,” Tuten says. “I think that’s really what built our intimacy, because something in us was so trusting of the other that we were allowed each other to be imperfect from the very beginning.” Orr adds: “We both came into each other’s life when we didn’t have the level of friendship that we were creating together and for each other.”
So when Orr was looking for a new apartment, they started to explore living together and solidifying what their platonic commitment would look like. Ahead, the two share what a “life wife” looks like in practice, from how they date to how they manage their finances.
On How They Became Life Wives
Elizabeth Tuten: I had this really powerful moment where I had a heartbreak and called Ray, and she came over, canceled work meetings, let herself in, and just held me. That was a big turning point of what would it mean to turn to people at vulnerability and intimacy to the depth of which I’ve only known with romantic partners and my mother.
We were already starting to explore what it would mean to show up in more intimate emotional friendship, and then when the move potential happened, living with each other felt like a step in the direction of subligating this postmodern, capitalist idea that the highest performing adults among us get to live by themselves. And that it’s a privilege. And anyone who doesn’t live by themselves is doing something they could be doing better.
Ray Orr: We found this perfect spot and we loved it, so we decided to make this decision. We moved in at the perfect time. It was a few months later when I started experiencing deaths of different people and animals, and I also got sober in the middle of that. And I’ve said to Elizabeth, I couldn’t have done all of that by myself. I was falling apart and needed community, community that I lived with. I desperately needed somebody to reflect me back to me when I couldn’t see myself. At the same time, big changes were happening for Elizabeth, too, at varying points. There’s that thing where you can’t fall apart at the same time. We definitely take turns.
ET: Sometimes we are both crying in the kitchen and sometimes we are both dancing in the living room. This notion of taking turns is really important because when I have this conversation with people, the question I like to ask, especially to women, is, “How badly would you want a boyfriend if somebody else was emptying the dishwasher?”
Heteronormative romantic partnership has always been a social impetus that doesn’t really exist anymore. If marriage is no longer about social safety and no longer an economic imperative – which it still is for many people, we’re speaking from our privileged position of being set up to earn our own money – then what is it for? Obviously, there’s the companionship, helping out around the house, love, romance, and maybe even sex. But we can do almost all of that for each other.
RO: And if we did give each other almost all of those things, what freedom would that allow for the other relationships in our life? What if we were dating not because we felt like we needed to eventually end up in a partnership? For me, it’s really freed up who other people can be in our orbit.
On How They Date Differently as Life Wives
ET: We approach dating very differently, yet that’s still a really important piece of our lives. But I would say we’ve completely met the challenge we set out for ourselves of what would it look like to decenter romance as part of our lives. Our home is the nexus point, and romantic partnership is one of the things that’s orbiting us. Since we’ve been in the setup, when I’ve contemplated living with a partner as an imminent question, the conversation becomes group house.
RO: The more that we’ve lived together, the more that we’ve realized to do it intentionally. . . . We’ve both lived with other people. I have lived in a group house with eight strangers. I’ve lived with partners. This is so much better and more supportive. My well-being is like 75 percent better because I live with this person. I don’t want to not do that. And if we have a romantic partner, how can that be incorporated into the way that we want to live?
ET: So we do take each other into account when having conversations with romantic partners or even just learning about someone else, another person that we’re dating. Like, “Hey, would you be open to a setting? How about a farm commune?” It’s not us or die – it’s part of a conversation. It’s also really important for the people who come into our lives to get to know each other. Ray and I were having a conversation the other day that one of her lovers didn’t make much of an effort to get to know me, and contrasting that with how a current lover of mine is really making an effort with her and how it’s become this interesting litmus test.
On Their “Choiceful” Financial Responsibility
ET: We operate in a flat hierarchy – a chairperson model is what we call it. I’m chairperson of the electric bill; she’s chairperson of the compost. We split the costs, but I’m in charge of paying it, and she’s in charge of taking the compost downstairs once a week. We also share a car. The financial stuff, honestly, is probably the biggest thing that sets what we’re doing apart.
When I lost my job, Ray went through several processes with her job to see if I could be added to her insurance, which would’ve raised her insurance rate. Not only does that factor into our thinking of each other, but when I was starting to get my feet back under me and off of unemployment and starting to run my own business, she took almost $500 off of my rent and absorbed it. So we have a level of choiceful financial responsibility to each other. That definitely goes far beyond anything I’ve ever even experienced in a romantic partnership.
RO: The conversations we had about the rent split were some of the most honest conversations I had. I come from a family where there’s strings attached to money, as a lot of people are, so we wanted to make sure I was giving freely and wasn’t going to be judging on how she was spending the money that I was taking off of the rent. I want to see her thrive, not have to go back to a corporate job, and I want her to start her own business, so how can I support that and how can we maintain this safe incubator that we’ve created for ourselves to live and thrive together? Knowing that if she wouldn’t be able to pay rent at the price she was paying, then we would probably have to move. I don’t really want to move. I can afford more rent, problem solved, through several conversations. But to be able to do that and not expect it to come back around.
ET: And yet I hold the intention of being able to be the safety net when it’s my turn, from a sheer place of desire for reciprocity, not because it’s her expectation. . . . We split grocery costs. We don’t nickel and dime each other. We don’t go Venmo charging back and forth all the time. If something’s big – more than $5 or $10 – we have a notes app and at the end of every month, we reconcile and send each other one Venmo a month.
RO: We sit down once a month and we go through it together.
On What Happens When They Move Out
ET: A really important piece of what we’re doing is that we’re not trying to replicate heteronormative romance cohabitation. We specifically are trying to make a more liberated way of living happen where we aren’t promising to live together forever; we’re promising to love each other and to let each other change and to be present for one another, but within contracting and dilating degrees that will look different from decade to decade. But I have no doubt that I will be there when both of your parents die, and that we will hold each other to that degree of lifelong intimacy, even if we’re not living together.
RO: I don’t see a world in which we’re not having extensive conversations. I’ve never once ever felt that you’re going to leave one day and we’re never going to talk again. It’s not that kind of relationship. We’ve talked about not living together at some point, feeling like that’s probably necessary and likely. We both are in transitional periods in our careers. We’ve done so much work together, so I’m curious to go out into the world and do that, not by myself, but in other ways, and then coming back together.
We often say that we’re co-birthing each other. We’re both the mother and child at different points. And we’ve had this period of time living together, in this apartment specifically, that has been the perfect environment for that to happen. It’s inevitable that we won’t be in this apartment forever, and whatever iteration that we do live in or configuration next, it’ll just be different.
Yerin Kim (she/her) is the features editor at PS, where she writes, assigns, and edits feature stories and helps shape the vision for special projects and identity content across the network. Originally from Seoul and currently based in New York City, she’s passionate about elevating diverse perspectives and spreading cultural sensitivity through the lenses of lifestyle, style, wellness, and pop culture. A graduate of Syracuse University’s Newhouse School, she has over six years of experience in the women’s lifestyle space.
