Could a sleep divorce save YOUR marriage?
Once, separate beds meant your relationship was doomed. But with an epidemic of insomnia and snoring (and screens at bedtime). . .
The best thing to hold on to in life is each other AUDREY HEPBURN
Ten minutes past midnight and I’m lying in bed gritting my teeth. I bark my husband’s name and he wakes in fright. Sheepishly I explain he was snoring — Snore. Snort. Pause. Snuffle. Pause. ‘You didn’t have to shout!’ he says furiously. My tolerance of disturbed sleep is low. It’s unfortunate, as for 22 years I’ve shared a bed with a man whose requirements for rest, and nocturnal habits, are at odds with my own.
Phil tends to scratch his toenails softly against the taut cotton bedsheet as he drifts off. The sound reverberates through my head until I am violently awake. Some nights, I ask him politely to stop scritch- scritching. Other nights, I grip his ankle and hiss ‘no’.
And it seems I’m not the only one who blames their sleep deprivation on their beloved. The 2018 Sleep Wellness Survey found a third of us never get the sleep we need, with a quarter of us blaming the problem on our partner.
So fractious are the midlife marital bed wars that one in four of us is now filing for a ‘sleep divorce’ and heading off to separate beds at night.
A survey last year for the bedding store Bensons for Beds found that the main culprits driving couples to sleep apart are snoring, arguments, letting children infiltrate the marital bed, coming home ‘worse for wear’ and crashing out on the sofa. I could add to that wriggling, kicking, fiddling with
tech in the dead of night and general poor bed-iquette.
My husband is among the surprising number of Brits who favour falling asleep spooning or snuggling and presumably enjoy numb arms and someone breathing hotly in their face. I suspect there is always one partner who, the second their beloved conks out, squirms from their clutches with an exhausted sigh of relief.
I need a clear yard of space around me before unconsciousness can take hold. (I’m not a monster. I’m loving and giving in daylight hours. Honest.)
When we first got together, I owned a queen-size bed. Shortly after Phil joined me in it, I developed insomnia. Even as I gazed owl-eyed at the ceiling, it dawned on me that the main reason I remained bolt awake was snoring gently beside me, inches from my ear.
He also gives off as much heat as the sun — useful, as I can warm my freezing feet on his bare leg. But mostly it has caused conflict, as his duvet of choice is as insubstantial as a two-ply tissue. Often, I’d crossly tug it off him in a futile bid to source some heat.
My dream duvet is as thick as the Earth’s crust. I layer up in pyjamas and thermal socks so as not to wake frozen at 2am. Phil believes I’m cold-blooded or possibly undead.
Several years into our marital cold war, I hit upon the genius realisation that we were free to purchase individual duvets while still sharing a bed. So now Phil chills under a duvet-lite, yet still hankers after something called ‘fresh air’.
An open window at night doesn’t work in our country. The noise is relentless, be it foxes shrieking, sirens wailing or the dawn chorus. Also the temperature drops and an icy wind rages around my head, giving me earache. It’s May and I’ve set our thermostat at 22 degrees. Our bedroom window stays sealed.
Phil often wakes, parched, and gulps water. (‘A bit hot, isn’t it?’ he’ll croak.) I’ll notice he has kicked off his duvet. I feel cold just looking at him in T-shirt and shorts, so I kindly pull it back up to his chin.
Upgrading to a vast super-kingsize bed also reduced hostilities. Yet sharing a mattress continued to threaten the peace process. If Phil thumped his leg I’d all but fly into the air.
Occasionally, I’d abandon Phil and take my pillow and duvet to the sofa. Yet it was rare. Because for some reason, whether socially imposed or instinctive, I feel I should sleep by my husband.
There is a sense that sleeping apart is fundamentally unhealthy for the relationship. (In fact the 2017 Bensons for Beds survey found 31 per cent of couples who slept apart lied to friends about it because they felt ashamed. Incidentally, 28 per cent said their sex life had suffered.)
Is it a myth that happy couples sleep together? Certainly, one sleep expert I consulted believed the sweet peace of sleeping apart, if mutually agreed, was a pragmatic solution that didn’t reflect the state of the relationship — indeed, it could improve it.
However, marital therapist and author Andrew G. Marshall has reservations. Bluntly, he suspects that one reason couples may sleep apart is because ‘they can’t stand the sight of each other’.
It’s complex, he says. ‘What actually binds people together is not just having sex, it’s the general connectedness that comes of a late-night or early morning cuddle. The bedroom is one of the few places couples have private space together to chat over stuff and have a private conversation.
‘Once you get separate space I do think you begin to lose intimacy. Even if you say “we don’t have to sleep together to have sex”, it’s a much bigger overture to go to someone’s room and knock on the door.’
Marshall believes it would better serve the relationship for the guilty party to seek expert help to address their snoring. For Phil and I, a proper divorce was averted thanks to an ingenious option offered by a company called Vispring (not cheap, prices start from £3,699 at John Lewis, but so worth it).
It is two large single mattresses sprung to bespoke tensions that zip together in the middle, on one huge divan. We are together yet apart. This renders night-time almost harmonious. Almost. Because there’s the cat. Phil would prefer the cat to be locked downstairs. I explain that it’s normal for companion animals to sleep with their humans. Several married friends recently acquired dogs. Each declared, ‘the dog will never be allowed to sleep on our bed’.
A week later, the dog was sleeping on the marital bed. And it wasn’t the woman who soppily gave in.
That said, last night I deferred to Phil and shut the cat downstairs. This could, I thought excitedly, be a restful night. I snuggled down in my many layers, under my bespoke duvet, on my specially divided mattress and closed my eyes. Peace.
Snore. Snort. Pause. Snuffle. Pause.
PHIL SAYS: Much of our time in bed together is spent miles apart. We need a bed the size of two ping- pong tables pushed together, partly because Anna has a thing about her feet and if I inadvertently touch her feet with mine, she’ll wake from the deepest sleep to yell ‘don’t touch my feet!’ I am so used to this it no longer bothers me.
The greatest evolution in our sleep style is that we each have our own duvet. This confounds some people, but I cannot think of any good reason to share. Even under the thinnest duvet I burn up like a satellite in re- entry. Anna requires as many togs as they’ll sell her, and still crawls into bed dressed like Compo in Last Of The Summer Wine.
It annoys Anna that I am not in bed to chat or sit up reading, I am there to sleep. I could fall asleep on a rollercoaster. I get tired about half an hour before Anna does, and fall asleep within ten seconds of closing my eyes.
This is boring for Anna, who is such a light sleeper that the whole night is full of interesting things she often feels the need to share with me as they happen. Wake up! Didn’t I hear that noise? Can I hear the foxes fighting? Do I think the cat is OK? Didn’t I hear the kids throwing up? Or next door’s television through the wall?
Sometimes, if I don’t wake up, she wakes me up to tell me I should have woken up but it’s OK, I can go back to sleep now.
WE’VE SLEPT IN THE SAME BED FOR 19 YEARS, EVEN THOUGH I SNORE By Nick Curtis & Ann Hunter
NICK SAYS: Well, here’s a nice bedtime story. My wife Ann and I have known each other for 23 years and been married for 19, and most nights we fall asleep together, wake up early together and enjoy contented rest in between. We hold hands before nodding off and hug each other on waking, and if for some reason we have to spend a night apart — because of work, or when one of us is ill — it feels strange and uncomfortable. I really miss Ann if she’s not there, and vice versa.
There is no hogging of the bedclothes, no complaining it’s too hot or too cold (we both like the window open), no children or pets getting in between us and no invading of the other’s space, at least without an invitation (we are both tall, so we have a superkingsize bed).
There are, it is true, occasionally issues over snoring when one of us — OK, me — has had a late night and drunk a scotch or three. Ann will then repeatedly prod me and implore me to turn over and end the cacophony. But I think she’d still rather I was there than not.
It was not always thus. By nature I am an owl and Ann is a lark. Throughout our life together she has had jobs in advertising which require her to be in the office by 8am at the latest. She likes to be in bed by 10pm on a ‘school night’, preferably earlier.
But when we met, I was a theatre critic with an overnight deadline so I usually got to bed around 3am and didn’t rise until 11am. I’d often disturb Ann as I crashed on to the mattress in the small hours, having ‘decompressed’ with a drink after work. I am amazed she never aimed a
60 per cent of us would prefer to sleep alone 39 per cent of us get a good night’s sleep
vengeful kick at my head as she headed off, sleep- deprived, to the office a few hours later. Worse, I thought staying up was cool. It felt naughty and exciting, even if I was only reading or watching telly — a victory over our ancestors whose lives were dictated by sunset and sunrise. If I went to bed early, I feared I was missing something. When I finally stirred, I exulted that I was not shackled to the humdrum nine-to-five and a morning commute. Even when my job changed to more normal hours, I found it hard to go to bed before midnight. But marriage is not only a partnership but a constant state of adjustment to the other’s needs and habits. Now, in our 50s, and without Ann ever putting any pressure on me to change, our sleep rhythms have synced up. I have realised I’d much rather be in bed, asleep, with my wife than downstairs on the sofa with a book and a drink. And that I’d much rather wake up with her and open the curtains to see the dawn and the birds at the feeder outside our window.
Sometimes the ‘ whisky elves’ get a hold of me and force me to carouse with them. But, given another 20 years of happy marriage, I reckon I can finally vanquish them, too. And my snoring really isn’t that bad. Although Ann may disagree . . .
ANN SAYS: For the avoidance of doubt, the snoring is that bad. And it’s directly linked to whisky (no other alcohol), so at least he can never lie to me about whether he’s had a tot or two. I just know. I recorded Nick’s snoring the other night and he had the audacity to find it funny. At 3am, with a 5.30am alarm beckoning, it really is not remotely amusing. Thankfully it’s not every night.
Before I met Nick I did find sharing a bed difficult. Smaller beds were more commonplace then and, as Nick says, I’m tall, so I always felt cramped and awkward. With Nick it’s always been fine and our bed is enormous, which I’m sure helps.
I like to congratulate myself that in the course of our relationship I’ve managed to change Nick’s attitude to a few things and he now shares my excitement about holidays, Christmas and, critically, a love of sleep.
Over the wonderful restful period between Christmas and New Year, when office life largely comes to a standstill, we revel in marathon sleep sessions, exchanging messages with other middle-aged friends, trying to see who can hit the longest night. We did ten hours two nights running last year. Rock and roll!
We are fortunate that we like the same temperature of room and mattress firmness, but really I enjoy sharing a bed with him because I like him being around.
After 19 years of marriage, our sleep rhythms only synchronised about two years ago — and it has been blissful.