I don’t remember the first night my husband and I realized that sleeping in the same bed together wasn’t all that great, but I’m going to ballpark it in 2004, three years before we were married.
My husband and I sleep apart now for the same reasons we always have: because we have different bedtime habits and sleep quirks.
When we first met in 2002, he lived about 7 miles away from me. Spending the night at his apartment on the weekends was easier. But then he moved into an apartment upstairs from mine. One night, after dinner, a movie and our, ahem, “together time,” I must have said, “So, maybe I’ll just go back downstairs?” And he must have said, “That sounds good.”
There was no less sex. Just better sleeping.
And that’s the way it’s been ever since. In 14 years of marriage, we’ve probably only slept in the same bed a few dozen times, usually because of hotel stays or vacation house rentals. If there’s any rub in our current sex life, it’s preteens who stay up too late, not our separate bedrooms.
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In fact, I don’t know how I would have made it through this past year of pandemic togetherness in our tiny Cape Cod-style house if, each night, I couldn’t shut the door to my bedroom and be alone. I’m grateful for the health and safety of my family, and that we had each other. But those 120 square feetI could call my own became essential to weathering the storm.
My husband and I sleep apart now for the same reasons we always have: because we have different bedtime habits and sleep quirks. I read every night before bed; he watches television. He snores and often has sneezing fits in the middle of the night; I have a tendency to jump in my sleep. He likes a warmer room; I like a colder one (especially now that I’m dealing with hot flashes from early menopause).
Mostly, we just like our space and the feel of stretching out, unencumbered, for seven to eight hours. And I realized during this past year of forced togetherness how the choice we made for nighttime solitude has been a mutual gift.
I didn’t start out this way. When I had my first serious boyfriend in graduate school (I was a late bloomer), spending the night together was a barometer of devotion. Not staying over meant something wasn’t quite right.
I was less likely to think that by the time I met my husband. But even if I knew that sleeping in separate beds didn’t mean we lacked intimacy, I still thought we must be missing out, especially when I would watch romantic movies featuring couples having cozy pillow talk or waking up lovingly wound around each other. The idea of a woman snuggling up to her significant other and then drifting off into blissful sleep lived large in my imagination.
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So I tried to make it a reality. Though my husband and I clearly preferred our arrangement, I yearned for us to be a couple with traditional sleep arrangements at various times — most notably in the early 2010s, when we were having some marriage struggles. I would listen to friends talking about how much they valued the closeness of sleeping in the same bed and think, “Oh, that must be what we’re missing.”
Of course, it wasn’t. The bottom line on our marriage struggles was simply this: We both had to grow up. For me, growing up meant finally accepting that doing things in our marriage differently than the norm was what made us better. Like sleeping in separate beds.
Every few years, a study comes out with findings about the sleep problems associated with couples sharing a bed or how many couples don’t actually co-sleep, like 2013 research from the University of California, Berkeley, that found a poor night’s sleep together can make couples fight more during the day, or a 2017 Better Sleep Council survey finding that 63 percent of couples sleep most of the night separated.
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Sleep scientist Wendy Troxel, whose name I saw associated with at least half of the studies I scanned, gave an entire TED talk about the topic of couples sleeping apart. She pointed out that not only is the study of couples’ sleeping habits relatively new (traditionally, most sleep studies had a person come into a sleep lab, alone), there’s barely any research on whether sleeping apart hurts a couple’s intimacy.
It’s an area, though, in which data can’t tell the whole story because it’s the couples themselves who decide if it’s unhealthy for the relationship. My husband and I have better intimacy now because we fundamentally get each other. We got here because of all the conversations and moments of vulnerability that happened during the day — not during sleepless, snore-filled nights.
I know we’re not alone, and during the close quarters that came to define 2020 for so many couples, I bet our situation was enviable. And yet, sleeping apart is nearly always represented as a sign of trouble in a relationship. In movies and shows, the trope of one person sleeping on the couch when partners are fighting is ubiquitous. I used to bristle and take these scenes personally. Now I just laugh. It’s such an unoriginal storyline, and so untrue.
It’s the couples themselves who decide if it’s unhealthy for the relationship. My husband and I have better intimacy now because we fundamentally get each other.
Of course, our kids also see these same representations, and I doubt the majority of their friends have parents with separate bedrooms. Having recently written a book about honesty, I don’t shy away from having frank conversations about taboo topics with kids. The thing I’ve emphasized in our conversations is that having separate bedrooms isn’t a sign of a problem; it’s a sign that we love and respect each other more than we care about the optics.
Married couples sleeping apart has lately been called a “sleep divorce.” The incipient discussion and reporting about the topic is a good thing, but the term stinks. It’s a misnomer, and inherently negative — and reinforces all the social pressure against taking a step that can be both healthy for a relationship and a person’s body.
Maybe I’ll think of some better, funnier term tonight, in my quiet, chilly, sneeze- and snore-free bedroom. And the next day, I’ll walk into the kitchen, kiss my husband good morning and, well-rested and glad to be reunited, we’ll laugh about it together.