Every time I read a study on how important it is to get a good night’s sleep or you could develop a whole host of diseases, or even premature death — I freak out. Am I literally going to die from not getting enough sleep? Some days it feels that way — and this worry is just another thing that keeps me up at night.
I feel like I’m the only person who’s still awake most of the night like I was during my kids’ newborn stage. Sleep is just a distant dream to me currently.
When I heard that more and more couples are getting a “sleep divorce,” it sounded both intriguing and enticing
I even bought myself my own bed in a separate room to pursue that ever-elusive blissful night of slumber, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to leave my husband’s side to slip under that plush bedding down the hall, solo.
In recent years, the term “sleep divorce” has been coined to describe the increasingly popular decision to sleep separately from your partner for myriad reasons. Studies have shown that 63% of couples sleep most of the night separated, and 26% of people reported sleeping better alone. Additionally, another recent survey determined that 75% of Americans polled admitted their shared sleep space results in poorer sleep quality and another 35% want to give a sleep divorce a try.
Culturally in America, sleeping separately from your partner depicts relationship trouble
My own reservations surrounding the topic stem back to my childhood. Even as a young kid, I was programmed with this belief by watching the cartoon mom point her finger to the backyard, followed by the cartoon dad angrily stomping to the literal and proverbial dog house outside. He’d slide in next to the dog, and the couple would sleep apart as a form of punishment.
Countless TV shows and movies beyond cartoons also demonstrate the woes of couplehood by showing a husband being tossed a flimsy set of sheets and a scratchy blanket to sleep on the couch after an argument with his wife. It’s difficult to undo all of this hardwiring and to embrace the notion that sleeping separately from my husband doesn’t have negative connotations and bad energy attached.
There are so many factors at play in my poor sleeping environment: a dog in the bed who frequently repositions himself, “runs” in his dreams, and snores; a husband who snores loudly, tosses and turns, and wakes me when he slides into bed hours later than I do. Of course, then there are all of my own sleep issues like anxiety, insomnia, the inability to find a cozy sleep position, and frequent waking, when and if I ever do fall asleep.
I often lay awake at night fantasizing about the kind of environment in which I’d actually get sleep
But I’m coming to the conclusion that as long as I’m a factor in any environment, sleep may not be within reach. Throw COVID-somnia sleep disturbances into the mix, and 70% of Americans in my age group are reporting sleep disturbances since the start of the pandemic. A good night’s sleep seems to be nothing more than a mirage in a vast desert of sleeplessness at this point — something no bath oils, meditation apps, or calming teas can even help me reach. Believe me, I’ve tried.
As mentioned before, a cozy bed awaits me in a separate room, but I’m afraid to use it. What if I still can’t access peace and quiet and sleep even when I’m alone? What if my superstitions come true and leaving our bed brings our marriage some sort of bad luck? On the flip side, some experts concur that sleeping separately may actually be beneficial to a relationship since both partners are more well rested. So maybe my marriage would improve if we weren’t both so grumpy and sleep-deprived all the time.
If queen of conscious uncoupling Gywneth Paltrow can live in an entirely separate house from her husband for the first year of their marriage to “preserve mystery,” I think I should be able to try some unconscious uncoupling by tiptoeing to another room for some shut-eye in solitude one night in the near future.
Maybe by the time our kids are adults, sleeping separately will be an entirely acceptable norm. Who knows? Maybe in the even more distant future, people will be shocked that couples ever tried to sleep in the same bed to begin with.
My young son isn’t yet programmed to think one way or another about where couples sleep, and he came home from a friend’s house the other day and announced that his friend’s dad sleeps in the bottom bunk in his friend’s room while the mom has her own bedroom. He of course thought the notion of bunking with your dad was beyond cool. I don’t know whether to be worried for my friend or jealous of her.
Here’s hoping some zzz’s are within reach for me, and that couples everywhere who are trying to navigate the nighttime hours find some peace and rest wherever they can get it.
