Is It Okay For A Couple To Sleep Separately? These People Say It Improved Their Relationship

Jennifer Adams wants to emphasize that sleeping separately from your partner does not have to be a sign of relationship problems.

Quite the opposite. She and her husband slept in separate rooms for about 20 years—the entire period of their happy marriage.

Although friends and family initially feared their bedroom layout might be a sign of a relationship breakdown, Adams knew this was not the case.

On the contrary, she and her husband woke up feeling refreshed and more satisfied than at the beginning of their relationship, when they briefly tried sharing a bed.

“We lasted a week in the same bed, but neither of us slept… neither of us could function,” she told ABC RN’s Life Matters.

“We were both exhausted… and we just thought it was stupid. We were really sure we were madly in love… but we needed sleep.”

Adams says she’s not the only one who needs her own bed — so how does it work? And how do couples who sleep apart not only survive but thrive?

When sleeping separately works

Adams and her husband tried a few sleeping arrangements — like sharing a bed only on weekends — before they finally settled on this: They would be a couple who would sleep in their own beds every night.

Adams, who works in corporate communications, couldn’t do her job properly without sleep, and her husband, a tiler, also needed good-quality sleep to be able to do his physical labor.

So sleeping separately became an easy decision.

“I think it’s obvious,” Adams says.

But over the years, their loved ones sometimes had trouble accepting this solution.

“But what fascinated me most was the people, especially women, who said they wished they could sleep separately because of the lack of sleep they experienced, mainly due to snoring.

“I couldn’t quite connect the dots between you being sleep-deprived and your husband snoring, but not wanting to sleep in a separate bed.”

She says someone confided in her that she and her husband had been sleeping separately for 12 years, but they kept it a secret and even pretended to sleep in the same bed to avoid the same judgment that Adams faced.

That conversation and the stigma associated with the issue led Adams to co-write the book A Sleep Divorce: Sleeping Apart, not Falling Apart.

For the book, she interviewed about 150 people who sleep separately from their partners.

She says many of these people reported not only better relationships, but better sex lives as well. They shared that they felt less pressure to just “perform” in bed, and felt much more rested, understood, and heard by their partner.

Adams also believes the “excitement factor” of visiting each other’s rooms can add spice to long-term relationships.

Rejecting “social norms”

Adams says sleeping separately from your partner can be a difficult decision because it involves breaking away from established social norms.

“We grow up believing that when we get married and settle down with someone, we just jump into bed together. We’re taught that our parents did that (and) it’s ingrained in us.

As people age, problems such as snoring, body temperature fluctuations, and increased sensitivity to noise and movement arise.

Even though our sleep needs change, making changes to meet them “is kind of seen as negative and an insult to your partner,” Adams says.

However, he believes that the situation is changing.

As awareness of the connection between sleep and health grows, conversations about sleeping separately are becoming more common.

“Now we use the term ‘dream divorce,’ so people have an idea of ​​how to refer to it, and more and more of them see it as an option.

“And then when you have someone like Cameron Diaz who says everyone should be able to sleep separately, it helps even more.”

Diaz also popularized (perhaps jokingly) the idea of ​​couples having their own homes, with one house in the middle where they could meet for “relationships.” It’s the kind of joke you can make when you’re a multimillionaire.

If you don’t have that obligation, and don’t have the privilege of having a spare room, Adams says there are workarounds.

The couples she spoke to for the book invested in proper sofa beds that could be folded out at night, or kept a spare mattress under the master bed that could be taken to another room.

“I won’t pretend it’s a perfect solution, but there are solutions and I think it all depends on what the priority is,” Adams says.

“Is a little setup inconvenience your priority? Or is sleep your priority?”

“It’s a matter of health”

Adams says some people find it difficult to bring up the topic of sleeping separately from their partner because it could be misinterpreted as rejection, but taking emotions out of the conversation can help.

“You have to let the person know that this has nothing to do with how much you love them or how much you don’t love them. It has to do with the really practical reason for managing health, and that’s what we focus on,” she says.

“Instead of saying to your partner, ‘Honey, your snoring is driving me crazy, I can’t sleep’ — which is quite judgmental — you could say, ‘I sleep so lightly, your snoring is keeping me up at night, I’m not sleeping well enough to function. Can we talk about some options?'”

“It’s a health issue. When you sleep well, you feel well, and when you feel well, you function well. And we all deserve that.”

The information in this article should not be considered medical advice. For specific health advice on sleep, consult your GP.