This quirky couple has a secret to a happy marriage — try not to live together!
Allen Sheinman, 58, says he and his wife, Collette Stallone, 56, kept separate homes for the first four years of their marriage, but when hard times hit in 2009 they did the unthinkable and moved into the same apartment.
Battle lines were drawn and plastic walls went up, as the kooky pair divvied up her tiny, 576-square-foot West Village apartment as though it were postwar Berlin.
“I told her I could handle getting married and living together, just not both,” Sheinman old The Post.
There was no crossing into each other’s domain without permission: She took the bedroom, he walled off the sofa-bed in the living room. The kitchen and bathroom were kind of a demilitarized zone.
Almost nothing is communal: They each have their own newspaper and magazine subscriptions, and when they watch the same TV show, they do it from separate rooms.
By keeping apart, they’ve made their marriage a blissful one, Stallone insists.
“I don’t need to see Allen brushing his teeth,” she explained.
A former staffer at High Times and Swank magazines who now serves as managing editor at Meetings and Conventions, a trade publication, Sheinman has piled all of his earthly possessions into his room. His wife did offer him a small corner of shelf space.
The kitchen — which jarringly hosts the apartment’s shower and only sink — is the only area for both parties ‘round the clock.
The apartment’s toilet is located in the rear of Stallone’s room, which requires Sheinman’s entry when nature calls.
“That’s a problem,” she said.
A Harlem high-school teacher before retiring to start a homemade-jewelry business, Stallone said constant intermingling is not only unnecessary, but harmful.
The couple, who are featured in a Gloaming Pictures documentary titled “Two’s a Crowd” that will have its New York premiere at the Rooftop Films Summer Series on July 21, met on an AOL personals site.
And despite their unusual living arrangement, they’re often a picture of marital bliss while holding hands during strolls through the city.
“I don’t know where this idea came from that you always have to be in the middle of whatever the other person is doing,” Stallone said.
“When you’re young, you think, ‘Oh, we’re in love,’ all that. But when you get older, you say, ‘You know, I love you, but I need my space.’”
The rules
Collette Stallone and hubby Allen Sheinman swear these policies make their marriage happy.
1. Doors stay closed unless previously arranged.
2. Unannounced entry into each other’s rooms is prohibited, unless it’s a weekend.
3. No common toiletries.
4. No TV watching together — they have their own TVs and cable boxes.
5. No sharing of the newspaper.
selim.algar@nypost.com