How to Sleep Apart But Stay Married
And you don't need an extra bedroom.
Last week, I wrote about why women in particular often sleep poorly when sleeping next to men (even though they may not realize it), and I addressed several myths about so-called “sleep divorce.” Then I heard from friends that some of them hadn’t read my newsletter because they thought it didn’t pertain to them. They said they assumed sleeping separately was something that people only did when their marriages were in trouble. At the very least, they said, sleeping separately would likely put their marriage in trouble.
Around the same time, a reader pointed me to a New York Times piece published last spring that argued that sleep divorces sometimes significantly boost couples’ sex lives. A couple interviewed for the piece said that when they had shared a bed, sex felt like an expectation and a chore, but that when they began sleeping separately, it “gave their sex life a much-needed jolt.”
In a great piece on the topic for ILY magazine, Krystina Wales interviewed couples about their experiences sleeping separately. I love this quote from one of her sources: “The longer we have been together, the more obvious it became that these preconceived notions or social norms of what a marriage should look like is not what ends up being best.”
The fact is, sleep divorces have become much more common in recent years, and many women I’ve talked to said that the practice has improved their relationship rather than harming it. But … how do you actually broach the subject with a partner so they don’t balk? And what if you don’t have a spare bedroom? I asked Wendy Troxel, a senior scientist at the RAND Corporation who is also a licensed clinical psychologist and certified behavioral sleep medicine specialist and the author of Sharing the Covers: Every Couple’s Guide to Better Sleep, and here’s what she told me.