Judith Light Shares Why Long Distance Makes Her 39-Year Marriage Strong: 'I Love to Be Alone' (Exclusive)

For Judith Light, the key to her thriving marriage is not caring about what society thinks couples should or shouldn’t do.

During a recent interview with PEOPLE to discuss her new Apple TV+ supernatural drama Before, Light shared how she and her husband of nearly 40 years Robert Desiderio maintain their successful relationship while thousands of miles apart. (Light primarily lives in New York, while Desiderio resides in California.)

For one, the actress says she and Desiderio speak daily. “We talk every day. We FaceTime every day,” she explains. “He loves to be alone, and I love to be alone. We both love our alone time. We have that. It's also very creative for us.”

But distance doesn't mean they let things fester. “We also make sure that, when we're having something that's upsetting for either one of us, that we both make sure that we stay in the room, and we keep talking,” she continue. "Sometimes we have to take a break. We say, 'Wait, we have to stop now. Now, we have to stop, and then we're going to come back to this.'"

Light met Desiderio while starring on One Life to Live as Karen Wolek, a role that earned the actress two Daytime Emmy Awards for outstanding lead actress — one in 1980, the other in 1981 — before Light was catapulted to superstardom in Who's the Boss?  (She won an Emmy in January for outstanding guest actress in a comedy or musical for her performance in Poker Face.)

Desiderio, over the years, appeared in projects including Knots Landing, The Sopranos and Ryan’s Hope before publishing his first novel The Occurrence in February 2020.

"He calls himself a recovering actor," Light says of her husband, who stepped away from the profession to focus on writing. "Now he's so much happier than he was."

By doing what he loves, Light says that "makes our marriage and our relationship much happier."

The star, who once said she would never marry a fellow actor, warns others they shouldn't "make misstatements about things."

"You don't know what life is going to bring you, and you don't know how you're going to grow from something, how you're going to expand your world, how you will meet people that will transform you and transform your world," she shares.

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Before airs Fridays on Apple TV+.