Social gerontology mainly addresses couples' housing arrangements in later life by focusing on partner's care, related adaptations in place, and changing role expectations within the couple relationship. Thereby, the resulting image does not fully represent today's diversity of couples' housing arrangements.

This article considers housing arrangement and relationship orientation of older couples as entangled in social practice, providing a broader perspective on the diversity and dynamics of couples living arrangements in later life.

In a qualitative study, we conducted joint in-depth interviews with ten couples from Germany aged 58 to 88 years. Couples talked about their shared biography and living together today. Data were merged with fieldnotes on housing constellations and analyzed following the documentary method.

Couples co-constitute living together by using space in different ways. We found three relationship orientations of couples corresponding to practices of couples' housing arrangements: balancing physical and emotional presence by negotiating shared space, exploring presence by having a third common place, and reducing presence by separate housing. These orientation types which are linked with spatial (re-) arrangements reveal positioning to housing preferences in past relationships and point to societal concepts of coupledom as regards housing in later life. Space gives options for both being apart from and feeling close to the partner, partially at the same time.

Diversity and dynamics of housing arrangements correspond to diversified and altering relationship orientations in later life. Considering couples' housing arrangements in later life as mutually constitutive broadens the options to examine the meaning of space in aging together. Moreover, this perspective can be combined with a critical approach towards stereotypical (hetero-) normative biases in research.

社会老年学主要通过关注伴侣的照顾、相关的适应以及夫妻关系中角色期望的变化来解决夫妻晚年的住房安排。因此，由此产生的图像并不能完全代表当今夫妻住房安排的多样性。

本文将老年夫妇的住房安排和关系取向视为与社会实践的纠缠，为晚年夫妇生活安排的多样性和动态性提供了更广阔的视角。

在一项定性研究中，我们对来自德国的 10 对年龄在 58 岁至 88 岁之间的夫妇进行了联合深度访谈。夫妻俩今天谈论了他们共同的传记和共同生活。将数据与住房星座的现场记录合并，并按照记录方法进行分析。

夫妻通过不同的方式利用空间来共同生活。我们发现，夫妻的三种关系取向与夫妻住房安排的实践相对应：通过协商共享空间来平衡身体和情感的存在，通过拥有第三个共同空间来探索存在，以及通过单独的住房来减少存在。这些与空间（重新）安排相关的定向类型揭示了过去关系中住房偏好的定位，并指出了关于晚年住房的夫妻关系的社会概念。空间提供了与伴侣分离和亲近的选择，部分同时进行。

住房安排的多样性和动态性与晚年生活中关系取向的多样化和变化相对应。将夫妻晚年的住房安排视为相互构成的，可以拓宽研究共同老龄化过程中空间意义的选择。此外，这种观点可以与针对研究中刻板（异质）规范偏见的批判方法相结合。