![\"Gabrielle](\"https:\/\/tuenight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/userphoto\/376.thumbnail.jpg?is-pending-load=1\")
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\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t This article is syndicated from\u00a0Adulted<\/a>, an online wellness magazine for actual grown-ups, covering sex, mental health, sleep and everything midlife, brought to you by\u00a0Stripes<\/a>. You can join them at our all-things meno community\u00a0The Hot Spot<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n There are two things you learn about me immediately upon setting foot inside my home:<\/p>\n Ironically, when I\u00a0was<\/em>\u00a0a horny teen humping around at summer camp, all I wanted was to sleep in a queen-sized bed with my boyfriend. Back then, sleeping in a bed with a partner felt mature, romantic. I stayed attached to that idea \u2014 that shared beds meant adult love and sex, and anything else meant something less \u2014 long after I grew up, even though it often led to poor sleep for me. I even clung to it after chronic insomnia hit me in 2013. As I lay awake all night, resentful of my sleeping husband\u2019s every toss and turn, I kept wondering: Didn\u2019t people who were in love figure this kind of stuff out? If you needed to be separate from your partner in order to sleep through the night, were you really even a couple? \u00a0<\/p>\n Can you blame me for being scared? Yes, talking about\u00a0sleeping in separate beds<\/a>\u00a0has become more common, to the point where one in five couples currently report\u00a0sleeping in separate bedrooms<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Architecture Digest<\/em>\u00a0recently proclaimed that \u201cThe Stigma of Sleeping in Separate Bedrooms Is Over<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n But\u00a0is<\/em>\u00a0it? If you want media images of happy couples in separate beds, you\u2019ll have to go back to the\u00a0twin beds Lucy and Ricky Ricardo slept in<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0\u201cI Love Lucy\u201d\u00a0\u2014 which existed not so Lucy could get some decent shut-eye, but so viewers would never have to contemplate the forbidden lustful acts that brought Baby Ricky into the world. I can\u2019t think of one recent movie or TV show where a cool, relatable couple who still have sex head off to sleep in different beds or rooms; separate beds always signify a relationship that\u2019s in decline. There\u2019s even a myth that sleeping in a\u00a0shared king-sized bed<\/em>\u00a0is a sign of trouble, a belief propped up by a 2014 study that claimed the\u00a0happiest couples sleep the entire night in physical contact<\/a>, while unhappy ones tended to sleep 30 inches apart (one is tempted to ask exactly how long these happy, touching couples have been sleeping together, and how many of their partner\u2019s sleep-farts they have suffered through\u2026but I digress).<\/p>\n Even approving coverage of sleeping apart typically uses the deeply discouraging term \u201csleep divorce<\/a>.\u201d A mostly positive February 2023\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0article on the practice exclusively quoted psychologists who viewed it as an excuse to\u00a0ignore relationship problems and have less sex<\/a>. Never mind that\u00a0couples sleeping in separate beds was considered the norm<\/a>\u00a0from about the 1860s through the 1930s \u2014 today, the phrase \u201cseparate beds<\/a>\u201d is so loaded with negativity that when I put the words into an image search engine just now, I got a lot of pictures of couples fighting\u2026but no\u00a0actual\u00a0<\/em>photos of two separate beds. Despite our personal behavior, in the cultural imagination, twin beds remain a sign of marital doom.<\/p>\n I, on the other hand, finally embraced separate beds,\u00a0because it was the only way to keep my marriage together.<\/p>\n My\u00a0insomnia<\/a>\u00a0story begins like anyone else\u2019s:\u00a0One summer night,\u00a0I couldn\u2019t sleep<\/a>. The next night, it happened again. And again. On nights when I did manage to fall\u00a0asleep, I\u2019d almost always be woken up by my husband\u2019s late-night trips to the bathroom. While he\u2019d be snoring within minutes of getting back in bed, I\u2019d be up the rest of the night, stewing over how\u00a0he<\/em>\u00a0had ruined\u00a0my<\/em>\u00a0sleep.<\/p>\n I spent the next five years in a whirl of extra-large coffees and sleeping on the couch. I tried Ambien, trazodone, hypnotherapy,\u00a0pretty much everything short of a lobotomy. My husband got so nervous about waking me up that he surrounded his body with pillows to try to stop moving in his sleep. But nothing worked \u2014 I was still up every night, more often than not raging at his sleeping form for waking me up with a single movement. If sleeping 30 inches apart is bad for your marriage, I invite you to imagine how bad being awake at 3 a.m., making a mental list of everything your spouse has ever done wrong, is for your marriage. I was never closer to divorce than when I was sharing a bed with my husband.<\/p>\n But when he suggested we try two beds, I cried (OK, I was on three hours of sleep most nights\u00a0by that point,\u00a0and crying about a LOT of stuff, but still). Our marriage was suffering because I resented his every snore. And yet I was scared that getting separate beds meant giving up. I broke down. \u201cDoes this mean we hate each other?\u201d I asked.\u00a0<\/p>\n What I didn\u2019t realize was how much I was already giving up by continuing to sleep in the same bed \u2014 I was not just surrendering my sanity, but chipping away at my profound adoration for my husband, a feeling which had been one of the central foundations of my life up until that point. I didn\u2019t understand that by clinging to whatever sleeping in the same beds symbolized, I was making our actual, lived lives a mess.<\/p>\n As you may have guessed based on the article title, sleeping in separate beds did not break us up. Quite the opposite. For starters, it stopped me from waking up every time my husband moved. But more importantly, when I\u00a0did\u00a0<\/em>wake up in the night, I realized that my sleep problems weren\u2019t all his fault. I had to admit that the culprit was my own body and brain \u2014 and it was my responsibility to figure out how to fix it.<\/p>\n Between the two beds, blackout curtains, talk therapy,\u00a0and an industrial-grade white noise machine, I am now sleeping better than I have in years. And more importantly, I rarely find myself awake all night raging about how my husband sleeps \u2014 and I believe that refraining from silently cursing your spouse at 3 a.m. is truly the backbone of a lasting marriage.<\/p>\n The funniest part is, when I talk to women my age and older, nearly all of them tell me that they have separate beds or sleep in the guest bedroom sometimes. It reminds me of other common secrets, like nipple hair or embarrassing bodily sounds during sex:\u00a0A\u00a0lot of us have lived it, but no one wants to be the first to talk about it.<\/p>\n But things only stay taboo when we don\u2019t talk about them. So let\u2019s talk about it. And let\u2019s end the myth that we have to choose between romance and getting eight hours of sleep a night.<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\tBy Gabrielle Moss\t\t<\/a>
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\n<\/section>\n\n
Why Do All TV Couples Share a Bed?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\u201cSleep Divorces\u201d and Real Divorces<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Related Posts<\/em><\/h3>\n<\/p>\n