separate ways

When I told a coworker that my husband and I were sleeping in separate rooms, the response was a raised eyebrow and an insinuation that my marriage was therefore in trouble.

But nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, our marriage has been better since we decided that he’d move into the spare bedroom, leaving me alone in our room at night.

It started slowly, because of snoring. He claimed my snoring was keeping him up. I claimed the same about him. We both tossed and turned; when one would finally fall asleep, the other would be kept awake by snores. My husband would occasionally get up and go in the spare room to, well, spare us the trauma of trying to sleep through the other’s labored breathing.

But it was more than that. I’m an early morning person. I get up between four and five am. He likes to sleep in until at least 6:30. Because he’s a very light sleeper, my waking and dressing at that ungodly hour I get up would also wake him, and he’d have a hard time falling back asleep. Even if I was super stealthy about it, our dog would get up with me and start scratching on the door to get out before I was ready to leave the room.

Then there’s the matter of television. I like to fall asleep watching baseball or hockey. My husband likes total darkness and quiet. All these things added up to some very sleepless nights for both of us, where trying to compromise only lead to one of us being very unhappy. His occasional trips to the spare room became more frequent and at some point we realized this would have to become a permanent solution to what was not a temporary problem.

According to the National Sleep Foundation, one in four couples sleep separately, due to sleep disorders like snoring and sleep apnea. A survey conducted by a mattress review site revealed that 30% of couples surveyed would like to ask for a “sleep divorce.” The decision my husband and I made to sleep separately is not new, nor unique. It’s just that a lot of people keep it themselves. When I told my coworker about our sleeping arrangement in confidence, I did so knowing that it might be looked down upon. But I’ve since told family members and other friends, and some of them were downright jealous, leading me to believe that sleep incompatibility is a common problem.

We are, for the most part, a compromising couple. In our twelve years together — six of them married, nearly all of them living together — we never had a big fight. We always talk things out in reasonable tones. There was never a time where we weren’t speaking, or where we raised our voices at each other. Everything we do is on an even keel, so it was with this calm behavior that we reached an agreement on changing our sleeping arrangements.

It wasn’t a sudden decision, it happened slowly. He bought a comforter for the spare bedroom to replace the throw blanket that was on the bed. He put an alarm clock in the room. We finally talked about it and decided he should just move in there permanently, instead of getting out of bed at midnight or so and going to the other bed.

It wasn’t something we took lightly. We discussed it. I would miss snuggling him until I fell asleep. I would miss his presence next to me when I woke from a bad dream. I would miss the intimacy that sleeping together provides. But I wouldn’t miss the snoring, the tossing and turning, the feeling that we were keeping each other from getting a good night’s sleep.

So he moved into the spare room. It was a complete move. He took his clothes out of our closet. He took his favorite pillows and he hung some things in the spare room to make it look more homey to him. That room was now his. The master bedroom was mine. While we were not living separate lives, we were living separate sleeps.

At first it was weird. The dog looked for him, perched herself at the edge of the bed looking toward the door as if he would walk in any minute. I reached for him in the middle of the night. I listened for the tell-tale sign of his breath. But it was what I didn’t hear or experience that was more noticeable. No snoring. No blanket stealing. No bed hogging. I was able to watch television without worrying that I was keeping him up. If I woke during the night, I was able to check my phone and scroll through twitter without worrying about the light from the phone disturbing him. I slept. I slept comfortably. I slept soundly. I’d get up at 4:30 and turn the light on and not worrying about waking him. I turn the air conditioner on full blast without having to hear him complain about how cold it is.

The truth is, while we have a great marriage and are compatible in every other way, we are sleep incompatible. Our sleep patterns, our bedtime rituals, our nighttime behavior are so vastly different that it was causing us strain to sleep together. We needed to do something, and this seemed like the most practical solution.

We make sure to spend time at night talking about days or anything that’s on our minds. We discuss life, our jobs, the kids, watch television together and just spend some quality time, the kind of time couples who sleep in the same bed might have when they get into bed. We make time for intimacy.

There’s something to be said about having a queen sized bed all to yourself, about having the whole closet, being able to strew my clothes around the room without care. I leave the TV tuned to the sports he hates, I read until 3am. While our marriage was never in jeopardy, our sleeping arrangement did save some aspect of our marriage. No longer tired and cranky in the morning, we greet each other with a kiss. I ask how his night was. We cuddle on the couch for a little bit before getting on with our days. There’s no five minute back and forth about who hogged the bedspread and who snored the loudest.

Perhaps we solved our nightly impasse in an unorthodox way. But it’s worked for us. We’re both noticeably happier in the morning. In a world that seems to be fixated on the concept of self-care, we took that idea seriously and did what was best for our mental and physical health. Going our separate ways at night has gone a long way toward making us more compatible during the day.

Just today, I told another coworker about our separate rooms. Her eyes went wide and I expected questions about the health of my marriage. Instead, she said knowingly, “Isn’t it the greatest?” Sleep divorce may not be the proper solution for everyone, but for my husband and I, and many other people, it’s been a cure for insomnia, restlessness, crankiness and displeasure with each other. And it’s made for a better marriage.