AIBU to ask about your sleeping arrangements with your DP

[Hydrangeblueeyes]

About 3 years ago my husband started sleeping in the spare room due to his incessant snoring. Not only did it wake me up in the night, it stopped me from getting to sleep. I couldn't use ear plugs because I had to be on call overnight sometimes for my work and also my Mum was getting frail and she may have needed to contact me at night. He is also a light sleeper, and would often wake me up when he was getting up in the night to go downstairs if he couldn't sleep ( he would inevitably drop his phone on the bedroom floor when doing that , which meant I was seething with fury and couldn't get back to sleep!!) Any way..... three years later I have retired from work, my mum died and my husband lost weight and doesn't seem to snore. But, I don't want to ever share a bed with anyone ever again. My husband also seems happy with the arrangement. I love my own space, to read as long as I like, paint my nails at bedtime, have the room / bed as warm/cool as I like, listen to podcasts. So why do I feel that it is an admission of failure? That married couples should somehow sleep together, like my parents and grandparents did? I shouldn't care what people think, but I never tell friends/family that we don't sleep in the same bed if the subject ever comes up. It kind of feels like separate beds equals emotional distance too. We get on fine, we been together 30 years with the usual ups and downs. Does anyone else have this arrangement? If so do you feel a bit uneasy about it? Or are we just conditioned to sleep in the same bed as our partners?

Didn't Basil and Cybil have separate beds in Fawlty Towers?

Yet Morecambe and Wise shared a double bed.

And Laurel and Hardy!

Exactly some people ARE so judgemental and I wonder why?

As I said, I wonder if it stems (in some cases) from jealousy, and resentment because they don't have their own bedroom, or it may be even that their husband won't let them sleep away from him!

I'm not saying everyone who shares a bed with their husband is jealous of couples who have separate bedrooms, of course not, but I do believe that the majority who berate and criticise people who do sleep in separate bedrooms are jealous yes. And projecting..

My parents, aunt and uncle and both sets of grandparents all slept seperately.
My sister and her partner split into 2 different houses but still together.
So its normal to me

True! 😂

Separate beds here too. Most nights from 8+pm onwards we're cuddled up in our massive sofa before we head to separate beds for sleep whenever we're tired.

This works for us because:

1. DP tends to sleep at midnight, I tend to sleep at around 2-3am.
2. DP likes to sleep in a WARM room. Despite getting very sweaty he likes to keep the room temperature somewhere in the mid-20s. I'm the stark opposite and sleep best when it's 16 degrees.
3. DP snores, I'm a very light sleeper.

This is really common. I sleep in the bed with my partner but thats because neither of us snore. I have friends who sleep seperate and are happy.

I tickle my partners feet in my sleep so he might eventually want to sleep separately.

We started sleeping apart around 15 years into marriage. He's a snorer and we were both getting sleep deprived and more and more annoyed with each other! When we got a good dose of covid a few years ago we slept separately as were both so ill and never went back to sharing.

I honestly don't think I could ever share a bed again. We're still intimate. I think as long as you're both happy with arrangements, sleeping separately saves marriages (and health!) rather than it destroying them.

It's bonkers sleeping together as adults if you think about it. For some reason we're in a mad rush to get tiny babies to sleep separately from us, at an age when they need skin to skin contact and cuddled with their mum more than ever. That then carries on until we're fully grown adults when we start sharing a bed with another fully grown adult again.

Humans really are weirdos!

I think it isn't common amongst people I know simply because hardly anyone has the luxury of a spare room (we are Londoners though).

When the dcs leave home I'd quite like to claim one of their rooms as my own, so I am a bit envious of those with their own rooms - but I wouldn't fit a bed in there, because it would be filled with my craft/sewing/desk stuff. DH snores sometimes but it doesn't bother me and I can sleep through it. Overall I like the intimacy of sleeping together, though I'm sure I annoy him with my late night phone habit.

I know! I don't get people who put tiny babies in a completely separate room! Topsy Turvey, as you say.

Would he consider going to a sleep clinic? The snoring can be resolved - CPAP machine for example.

No it isn't. Whole households used to sleep together, even very rich people.
Naturally humans sleep in groups.

It's the lack of emotional and physical intimacy that is the problem, not the separate beds, rooms or even homes. Being in an intimacy-free relationship even in my 60s (or ever) just wouldn't work for me. But if it works for both of you, that is fine.

I would hate to sleep separately. It seems to me part of marriage and closeness.

My husband sleeps on the sofa, he doesn't have to but he prefers it as he gets more sleep than sharing a bed with me. Most nights I don't sleep well, for various reasons. Mainly being that my brain just doesn't switch off, so I'm tossing and turning most of the night. I'm also very picky with how the sheets feel and I get up every night to remake the bed, sometimes numerous times and I also get up in the middle of night for a shower, if I feel that my skin is sticky. I also have a chronic health condition which can sometimes keep me awake too. The last time my husband slept in the same bed with me was earlier this year when we was on holiday. I kept him awake until 4am tossing and turning and then I got a shower at 4am because I was convinced it was my sticky skin keeping me awake. He slept on the sofa the following nights. It doesn't make us any less happy with each other, I do feel embarrassed though if its ever brought up in front of people, but they have no idea about how little I actually sleep so it's non of their business really, it works for us

Different strokes for different folks! If it benefits you both and nobody is troubled by the arrangement then I can’t see the issue. One size does not fit all and who decided that couples should bed-share indefinitely?!

Good sleep is essential for your wellbeing. Doesn’t matter what Sandra down the road thinks, as long as everyone under your roof is happy and well rested.

How about ‘when we’re both awake’?😂

Pretty much every ‘stately home’ I’ve ever been to has had his and hers bedchambers though.🤷‍♀️

My brother and SIL have separate bedrooms and have had for twenty years or so. DH and I don't but we do have a bed which is like two small singles so have separate mattresses. Mine is rock like while DHs is an awful sink hole in my opinion! Sometimes we have separate duvets too 😄

Yes. They were set up like that in the las5 few hundred years.
Go to Gainsborough and it's a different traditional set up. The royal couple in a bedroom together above the great hall where the whole household slept. The royal couple slept in one bed but away from the household to represent their special status.

The Victorians really promoted couples sleeping apart in twin beds or separate rooms as they considered it unhealthy to sleep together and that it spread diseases. Then sharing beds was a sign of not being well off. But this idea went along with putting babies in a separate nursery away from parents.

The far longer tradition was the household sleeping either in one room, or people sleeping together in a number of rooms. Because humans are mammals, and mammals normally sleep in family groups, not individually

Hollywood also because of it's obscenity code would only allow actors acting as a couple to be shown in twin beds. That sparked a bit of a trend for middle class people to buy twin beds because it was seen as glamorous, like Hollywood.

I do wonder about this sometimes, that is partly why I posted. Although I really love my own space ( and always have, even as a child) I sometimes think my DH is only going along with this because he feels he has no choice, I should really have a conversation with him to check he is still ok with it, but what if he says he wants to share again!? I don't think he does because as I said this all started with his snoring and disturbed sleep patterns means he is up and down quite a few times a night and is reasonable enough to know this not worth it for the disturbance for me .We do share when we go away, I use ear plugs , in case of the snoring and he takes a sleeping tablet to knock himself out. As for the sex, for my part I don't miss it ,I have never really been that bothered except for the first ten years and as I said he has a low sex drive. It does cross my mind that if either one of us develops a raging attraction for someone else we would be in trouble. But we live very harmoniously and share interests and humour.

This is what I wonder/worry about

I like the idea in some ways (especially when one of us is ill or otherwise not sleeping well), but DH doesn't.

I think it's common these days, if you have the room.