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.
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." |
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