For years before they divorced, in fact, for as long as I can remember, my parents slept in seperate rooms. There was my mom’s room, and there was my dad’s room. From earliest childhood, I figured this wasn’t exactly usual- on TV and in the movies, married people slept in the same bed. But at the same time, I didn’t see anything too weird about married people not sleeping in the same bed. It sort of made sense to me, in a childish way: grown-ups are big, beds are small- two grown-ups are too big for one bed. Plus, grown-ups have so much stuff- so many clothes and shoes and other things, that it seemed like two seperate rooms just to hold all their stuff made sense.
As I got older, and starting bringing friends to the house and having pajama parties and such, I used to hear a lot of questions about this. “Your parets don’t sleep in the same room?” “Do they hate each other?” “What’s wrong with them? My mom and dad sleep in the same room.” And I used to get a little angry. Not that I ever expressed it, but it sort of irked me that in my friends’ eyes, it was weird and messed up that my parents weren’t like their parents.
But my parents had good reasons. First of all, they didn’t really like each other. They loved each other very much, but they didn’t like each other. They’d committed themselves to a more-or-less asexual relationship by that point, in which both parties worked hard to support the family. I suppose it wasn’t really a marriage in one sense- there were to the best of my knowledge, no romantic feelings left between them. But they decided to push that aside, largely for my sake, and make life work anyway. And they did- it worked. I had a happy childhood, and although the divorce was rough (which came after I’d moved out), I can’t really blame them. It did make me a stronger person and better able to deal with other people’s problems when they become my own.
To this day, I don’t see anything wrong with not sleeping in the same room just because you’re married. I don’t believe it leads to distance in the relationship. There’s no real point to forcing yourself to be in the same bed with someone if you’re not there for romantic reasons. And it’s not as though you can’t be romantic anyway; having sex with someone does not mean you can’t go to sleep in another bed.
Don’t get me wrong. I understand the bonding part of sleeping in the same bed. I see how it could be comforting and intimate, even while you’re unconscious. I suppose, in a way, it’s a measure of trust at its most primal level- I believe so strongly in your good intentions that I feel comfortable being completely unconscious and therefore defenseless in your presence. Okay. But still, to me, I see nothing wrong with it. In fact, I prefer not to sleep in the same bed as my boyfriend. We have sex, we cuddle for a while, and then when he falls asleep, I go back to my own bed. It’s just more comfortable for me, since I am very selfish about my bed space- no other person’s breathing, or snoring, or limbs in my back. I have compromised a bit with the waiting-'til-he-falls-asleep part; it’s my concession to more usual practices. But I’ve told him that if we ever get married, we will have seperate rooms, and so far, he’s okay with that. (He’s pretty selfish about his bed space, too.)
Also, and this is maybe where more of my own personal weirdness comes in: I don’t see anything automatically sexual or romantic about sharing a bed with someone. I’ve had to share a bed with my cousins and my friends many times. Every summer we’d go visit my aunt in New Jersey, and there’d be us four girls sharing a twin bed in a tiny little house. When I went to France with my friends, we stayed in the cheapest hotels we could find, and there was often only one or two beds. Since no one wanted to sleep on some filthy hotel floor, we shared. Of course it was uncomfortable, but hey, the situation demanded it, so I could deal. I shared a tent in Kenya for 8 months with four other people, mainly strangers to me at first. Sleeing in the same bed as another human being is to me not a preferred activity- it’s the product of shortage. In my own house, with plenty of room, I see no need for it.
This has really rambled, I know, but it’s hard to put into words something so ingrained in me. Does anyone want to share opinions or theories on this? Do you believe it’s strange for a married or cohabiting couple not to sleep in the same bed?
