no-habiting

Plenty of Fish named it in its trends for 2025 (opens in a new window): “Choosing to wait longer to move in with your partner because you value your personal space.” The report found that “83% of UK daters are waiting longer before moving in with a partner after making a relationship official.” By the time Cambridge Dictionary (opens in a new window) entered the word in November 2025, waiting had become not doing: “the situation where you do not live with someone you are in a committed sexual relationship with.” Its citation, a September article (opens in a new window), announced “the revolutionary concept of… wait for it… not moving in with your partner. Groundbreaking stuff, really.”

The arrangement had a name already. Cambridge had entered LAT (opens in a new window) in 2018, “a type of close romantic relationship where the partners choose not to live together,” and in 2009 a study (opens in a new window) found that “About one third of U.S. adults not married or cohabiting are in LAT relationships.” The trend report renamed it for daters, for whom the move-in is a milestone and the delay a choice that can be announced.

Under load, two addresses keep every evening ending in a decision. Each night one party goes home, and the relationship is renewed each time by the choice to come back. That is the personal space the report valued. It also keeps the exit at the price of a drive, which both parties know, and which neither has to mention for it to be priced in.