Could separate beds perk up your marriage?

He’s a night owl. You’re an early bird. It’s time to kick him out says Marion McGilvary

One of the wondrous things about the first night I spent with my partner was that the euphemism was true — we did actually sleep together.

There was no awkwardness, no strangeness — it was like he’d always been there beside me, moulded perfectly to my body, his hand around my waist, the two of us entwined in the hollow in the middle of the mattress. This was what convinced me he was a keeper, and keep him I did.

However, five years on and the picture in the bedroom is somewhat less up-close and personal. After the first flush of new-couple bliss, it became apparent our sleep patterns were totally incompatible.

not only did we gravitate to our own unbreachable sides of the bed — the middle a pristine no-man’s land — but we now have our own bedrooms.

Across the pond there’s a growing trend for individual sleeping arrangements. I am seriously envious of those vast, Barbie dream houses on U.S. property programmes that almost always feature two master bedrooms with adjoining his and her bathrooms.

In the U.S., separate rooms just means you can afford them, not that you’re one step away from couples therapy. A national Association of Home Builders survey in 2015 predicted that 60 per cent of upscale homes in the U.S. would in future be planned with two master bedrooms. But even in Britain, it’s becoming more common.

One in six British couples chooses to sleep in separate bedrooms, according to a mattress company, which conducted research after noticing a rise in internet searches for single mattresses.

Bearing in mind that, unlike the U.S., there’s still stigma around the idea of the twin-bedroom relationship (the assumption being that you’re not having sex), that figure is likely to be higher in reality.

I admit the idea of losing the intimacy of sharing a bed also appalled me at first. not sleeping together seemed to negate the whole point of togetherness. But it isn’t so.

We might bowl along in the slow lane with the occasional rapid burst of acceleration, but if anything, sleeping separately has made our sex life much less routine.

We Are a late love match. I met my partner when we were both around 50, me on the wrong side, he a little way off. We had each lived alone and been married, and had our own distinctly different lives.

He has a football obsession I find less than appealing, especially when woken in the night to be told of a new Chelsea signing. I write in bed, draw in bed, eat in bed — and make a lot of mess. So when he moved in, it seemed sensible that we each have our own space.

It worked well. We had a retreat and a room of our own, but I didn’t want to take the idea a step further. I loved sleeping together, but our sleep personalities had different ideas.

We are polar opposites. I am a lifelong early bedder who likes to be tucked up with a Swedish drama on TV and/or a good book by about 10pm, turning the light off at 11pm.

My partner is more of a ‘who needs sleep?’ kind of guy.

Many’s the time I’d nod off with the light on while he brushed his teeth at glacial speed, popped downstairs to do the washing up with surgical precision then decided to make his sandwiches for the next day. He’d arrive in bed just before the birds started chirping.

I am a morning person. My partner was not as charmed by my 8am singalong-to-Beyonce habit as I thought he might be.

So I took to sneaking out of bed at dawn, watering the garden, defrosting the freezer, rejigging the furniture and taking receipt of a Waitrose delivery before he woke.

I loved those mornings to myself, just as he undoubtedly loved the quiet evenings he spent alone, but it did feel a bit like doing a time-share with a bed instead of having a relationship. Then finally — just to put the chocolate sprinkles on the whole eton Mess of our sleeping habits — there was the snoring. not him. Me.

Officially the phenomenon of sleep deprivation caused by a partner’s snoring is called ‘second-hand snoring’ and it was bringing our nights to fever pitch in all the wrong ways. I was rapidly realising my soulmate could no longer be my bed mate.

It was time for a compromise. He

moved out part of the week and wore ear plugs the rest of the time. We met in bed for box sets and breakfast, but I kicked him out when I wanted the bed to myself.

Sometimes I took myself down to his bed if I fancied a change of scene; or him. It was like Airbnb, but with benefits and was actually pretty damn perfect. And we aren’t alone. Among my fiftysomething friends, I know several very happy marriages that have thrived on having separate rooms after children have flown the nest.

I also know others who fudge it, like my friend Mel, who ‘accidentally’ falls asleep on the sofa, just to have a night alone.

There are many reasons, other than snoring, that cause sleep incompatibility — there’s the menopause for one.

The midnight hot flushes, the morning chills, the heat in the summer, the fact your partner sweats while you want a 30-tog duvet all year round, can all mean it’s simply more comfortable not to share your sheets. Dr Till Roenneberg, professor of chronobiology at Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, is a leading researcher on the science of sleep.

He explains that each individual has a uniquely programmed internal clock — also referred to as their ‘chronotype’.

If yours and your partner’s fail to match and one of you ends up compromising by going to bed after your natural sleep window or arising before your natural wake time, you end up with what he terms ‘social jet lag’.

In other words, sleep deprivation caused by your living habits. In a study he conducted, 40 per cent of participants had a social jet lag of more than two hours.

This finding doesn’t surprise Dr Guy Meadows, clinical director of The Sleep School.

He says natural sleep cycles, known as circadian rhythms, are hard to change as they are affected by a number of factors including genetics, gender and age. Dr Roenneberg’s research reveals that men’s biological clocks are often two hours behind those of women. As we age, we often find getting to sleep and staying asleep harder.

In other words finding a partner with a sleep cycle that matches yours is possible but unlikely.

‘With that in mind, my focus tends to be on finding ways to help clients work with their sleep differences rather than to align them,’ says Dr Meadows.

‘It’s incredibly common for couples to experience problems sleeping in a shared bed or even a shared room, but there are plenty of coping techniques.’

I’m feeling less shame-faced about separate bedrooms since I came out about mine.

Four of my female friends confessed they also suffer from snoring, while two other wives of snoring men confided they dearly wish they could have their own room, but are unwilling to raise the subject lest they offend their partners.

BUT it turns out their partner’s mood may be improved by sleeping separately.

Only last week, scientists at Florida State University revealed that having seven or eight hours of sleep a night means partners are less likely to focus on the negative aspects of their relationship and are more inclined to think about the bigger picture.

They asked 68 newly wed couples to record sleep patterns for a week. They also kept a diary on how they felt about their marriage and how rows affected their view of the relationship.

Husbands benefited most from a proper night’s sleep. Even on days when they had fallen out with their wives, they felt upbeat about their marital status — provided they’d had a good night’s rest.

So it’s official: having your own space — whether it’s a single bed in a room of your own, a sofa in the living room or a plush boudoir with fresh linen and a whole ocean of space to stretch your legs across — can make you feel a lot more sensual than having a man in his boxers beside you every night.

Privacy is just as wonderful as intimacy and each has its own place. You can also wear your granny pyjamas and teeth grinding guard without feeling like a character in Bridget Jones: The Menopause Years.

At this point in life, our relationships are deeper and stronger and do not need to be defined by how we choose to sleep.

We’re of an age where we should be living well, exactly the way we want — enjoying the fruits of our labour, the space we’ve longed for, the peace we’ve craved, the excitement we have put off too long.

So in encouraging your partner to leave the bedroom you may, in fact, be opening the door to a whole new sense of each other between the sheets and beyond.