\n<\/p>\n
To keep the romance alive while living apart, Ms Lim and her husband tried to spend as much quality time together as possible on weekends and planned at least two overseas trips together each year.<\/p>\n
Mr Mira said the only outward change in his relationship with Ms Wong is the wedding bands they now sport.<\/p>\n
“My friends and family who live overseas couldn’t understand why we are married with no house,” Ms Wong said. “They would ask, ‘Are you guys facing any financial difficulties?'”<\/p>\n
If a marriage feels more tangible to couples only when they move in together, then does the act of registering one’s marriage still hold significance in Singapore or has it become a mere formality?<\/p>\n
Professor Sumit Agarwal, the president of the Asian Bureau of Finance and Economics Research, sees the choice to live apart after marriage as “a very Singaporean adjustment to economic reality”.<\/p>\n
“For many young couples, ROM (Registry of Marriages) is no longer the point at which they immediately form a new household. It is often the beginning of a waiting period \u2013 for the BTO flat, for financial stability and for the couple to feel ready to take on the full cost of independent living,” he said. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Prof Agarwal also said one should not assume that couples are less committed to each other just because they do not cohabitate immediately after marriage.<\/p>\n
He added that the BTO system<\/a> has transformed marriage from a purely personal milestone into an institutional gateway to security: access to subsidised housing, Central Provident Fund use, asset ownership and long-term household wealth.<\/p>\n “That is powerful, but it also means housing delays can become marriage delays, and marriage delays can become family delays,” he said.<\/p>\n And family delays could then further exacerbate Singapore’s total fertility rate<\/a>, which dropped from 0.97 in 2024 to 0.87 in 2025, reaching a historic low.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n To keep the romance alive while living apart, Ms Lim and her husband tried to spend as much quality time together as possible on weekends…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":64106,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-headlines","wpcat-2611-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/64106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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