This didn’t seem mundane enough for MPSIMS, and it’s not really an IMHO, but it didn’t seem good enough for GD.
The wife and I frequently find ourselves sleeping in seperate beds. I have my alleriges to everything and a minor deviated septum to blame, tho occasionally a spousal chestcold sends me running to the guest bedroom for some peace.
A good friend is destined to wed, they’re already sleeping in seperate beds due to her restless leg syndrome (oy! all these SYNDROMES!)
Another couple has slept seperately for YEARS due to the Husband’s back spasms.
So, I contend that, just like Kinsey found more people had the same sexual kinks than anyone would think, more couples that you’d expect spend the night hours further apart than a Kingsize bed can provide.
Perhaps there will come a time when I don’t wish to share the bed with my partner, but honestly, I can’t imagine it. That intimacy is so important to me.
My husband was a night owl. I am a morning person. He liked being able to read before bed IN the bed; I like wandering around the bedroom, lights on, tossing clothes on the bed, and not having to worry about being quiet.
Separate beds SAVED our marriage for quite some time.
Another thing-- when I’m really sick and throwing up, being in bed with someone who MOVES can make me throw up. If I can get some rest alone in a bed, I do much better-- sleeping with my SO makes things much worse. But if we have only one bed, then one of us has the guilt of “I made him/her sleep on the couch” and having to tiptoe past the other person’s sleeping place. Sleeping in your own bed is SO comforting when you’re sick or sleepy, even if you have another bed that you share most of the time.
I guess I’m not picking up on the “silent killer” part. I’m dense. Help me out.
Strangely enough, I was pondering something along these lines today. I don’t think I could ever regularly maintain a separate bed from my husband, and in fact, I often think we may be strange because we maintain a lot of physical contact. Not sexually speaking, but just touching. If we’re walking along someplace, we’re touching. In the bed at night, we’re draped all over each other. Sitting in chairs, our knees or legs will touch, and driving in the car, we will manage to touch each other, even across the expanse of bucket seats and consoles. I began thinking about this because I noticed many other married couples do not seem to feel the need to touch each other at all. I see married couples of all ages who maintain very separate spheres of personal space, almost like they’re not intimate. I find that disconcerting, but I fully realize my husband and I are quite likely the weirdos in this scenario.
Nah, that was just something to get you in to the thread.
We still sleep together, perhaps, 40-50% of the time. The funny thing is, after your get over the ‘sleeping together is a bedrock activity in marriage’, things even out and you realize that the act of being unconscious together is pretty unimportant.
Note, I didn’t say anything about not snuggling. That’s gotta happen.
I am kicked out to a downstairs bed for I have no idea how long. I still snore even though I had radical surgery to correct sleep apnea. It fixed the apnea but it left me with an odd snore.
I have woken up to a bloody nose twice, a black eye, and shoe marks embedded in my forehead enough times to know that I don’t want to go through that anymore so I just stay away for I don’t know how long. If you are a male, you can’t punch or hit back even in self-defense in those situations so you just do what you need to do.
Not at all. Mr. S and I are like this too. Not necessarily draped over each other all the time (we have “his and hers” couches, each pointed at the boob tube), but we often reach toward each other across the coffee table just to brush our fingers together, put a hand on a shoulder when passing even when it’s not necessary, frequently hold hands in public, steal quick smooches in the grocery checkout line, and so on. I think it’s important to sustain the connection. We don’t do the mess-around as often as some bally-hooed “average” figures, but we are quite physical nonetheless, and very close.
I read a sweet story once, possibly in one of the Chicken Soup glurge collections (shut up), about a woman who saw an old couple sitting in a restaurant booth eating their meals, saying nothing. She thought it was sad that these two old people had nothing left to say to each other. Until she dropped her wallet near their table when leaving and saw that they were holding hands under the table. That’ll be me and Mr. S in 30 years. We do it now sometimes, just sit together quietly, riding in the car or eating out, each doing our own thing. Doesn’t mean we’re not acutely aware of each other and communicating on a level that you can’t see.
Mr. Kiminy and I sleep together about 85-90% of the time. We only have one bed, and we both like to sleep in it, but…
I suffer from insomnia. When that happens, the only way for me to sleep is to turn on the radio. The radio keeps Mr. Kiminy awake. Our compromise is for me to sleep on the sofa in the living room, where I can have the radio on all night.
Sometimes one of us gets too hot to share a bed. The one who is too hot will get up and move to the sofa.
We bought a new sofa a few months ago, and we measured the inside length to make sure that it was long enough to sleep in comfortably. Neither of us is willing to get another bed, so we just deal with the sofa that we have to have anyway. Neither of us has actually kicked out the other one (literally or figuratively)–it’s pretty much a mutual decision that whoever is too uncomfortable to sleep in the mutual bed will move to the sofa, with no hurt feelings on either side.
For the record, my paternal grandparents slept in separate beds pretty much permanently, after my father was born. They even had separate bedrooms.
Hubby and I worked and slept different hours for the first five or six years we were married. Neither of us had good sleep, because one of us was always getting in or out of bed.
We didn’t start sleeping in separate beds until he had surgery, and we were worried about bumps and stuff.
We kept the separate beds (separate rooms) after he healed up. He doesn’t like the ceiling fan on; I do. He doesn’t like the windows open; I do. He’ll have the thermostat set to 72 and still want a space heater going.
Now, almost a year after my hip surgery, it’s still hard to get comfy in bed, even when I’m alone.
But we’re like FaerieBeth with the constant touching and cuddling at other times, and like Unintentionally Blank, we can skip the unconscious part.
We sleep together when we have overnight guests who need my room, and it’s cool, but we’re both relieved to get back to normal. He can snore and fart, I can toss and turn and steal all the pillows.
I should have addressed this too. We have a similar arrangement, though it’s rarely invoked. Usually either my occasional insomnia or his hiatal hernia triggers it. When I wake up in the middle of the night and can’t get back to sleep, sometimes I just need what I call a “change of venue.” I give him a smooch and go downstairs, where I watch TV or read for a bit and then usually drop off. Sometimes he needs to sit up for a while or be near the bathroom, and he goes downstairs so as not to disturb me. Both our couches are comfy for sleeping; in fact, we frequently sleep downstairs (often together, as one couch folds out to a futon bed).
But we nearly always go to bed at the same time, and my weeklong “vacation” last month (quotes because I spent it with my family, ugh; not very relaxing!) was the longest we’ve been apart in 16 years; before that it was only two “girly” weekends with my friends and the occasional sleepover at a friend’s house for convenience before/after a day trip. We also occasionally worked opposite shifts, and so each had the bed to ourselves (plus the dog, who loved getting to sleep on the bed 14 hours a day with at least one of us).
Um, your wife is beating you up at night? This doesn’t sound like a good thing, even if you are snoring.
I don’t know if my husband and I will ever sleep in separate beds. Even with the snoring and the tossing and occasional hands across the face/blanket stealing/whatever, part of my night is the sound and feel of him beside me. I won’t say never, but I don’t see it happening soon.
SLK (The Sonoran Lizard King) and I have been together for almost 3 years now. I had never considered seperate beds but this thread got me to thinking and I asked him if he had ever wanted/did want to sleep apart. His reply was no, that he would miss me and I feel the same way about him.
He and I are aware of each other and together even when we’re not in the same room. If he’s on his computer, I’ll sidetrack on my way from room to room to stop and give him a hug and kiss and he does the same with me. Sometimes we’ll wandering in to where the other is just to give a hug and kiss and then wander back to what we were doing. It’s not unusual for us to walk holding hands and in the car I usually have my hand resting on his thigh as he drives. We’re both “connection” junkies and although we do not wrap around each other in bed, I think we’d both miss the togetherness.
Yeah. Hubby and I slept together this weekend, because we had guests in my room. We went to bed at the same time, and ended up having a nonsensical little bedtime chat like we used to do. I’d forgotten about those, and I miss them more than anything. We talk in the daytime, of course, but the bedtime talk is different.
Mrs. Schwartz and myself sleep apart often enough due to my travels, or schedule. I guess we got used to it. We now have two beds and two bedrooms. We usually try to start the night in the same bed, but for one reason or another someone will get up and go to the other bed. While we are both asleep, it doesn’t really matter where we sleep.
I’m a light sleeper. A mouse farting in the next room will wake me up (and I’m not exaggerating by much).
Not a good combination.
So we start off in the same bed until he starts to snore. I then go into the guest room (which, thankfully, is on the other end of the house) and sleep there.
There’d be a very noisy killing sooner or later if I didn’t …
Years ago the missus and I were sharing a small bed in a full apartment, and we’d pass out in a tangled mess.
Things changed after my back surgery. I now tend to fall asleep lying flat on my back while trying not to move around, so it gets uncomfortable when she’s draped on top of me.
Also, she moves around a lot, and likes many thick covers to keep warm whereas I like to have just one thin one to keep cool.
We sleep in a big bed now, but not usually touching and always under seperate covers. She also likes to sleep on the sofa, so I can often fall out comfortably in bed and she just shows up some time during the night.
I have a regular sleep schedule. Lights out by 10p, by 10:05p I’m usually off in the land of Nod.
Due to Ivylad’s bad back, he sleeps odd times. He may take a nap in the middle of the afternoon and wake up at 8p, because he was unable to get to sleep until 4am the previous night. Sometimes he’ll come to bed, not be able to sleep, and get up in an hour so he won’t disturb me. Sometimes the pills kick in and he falls asleep on the couch. Sometimes a day of running errands wipes him out and he’ll crash for a nap and then stay up playing GuildWars until the wee hours, while his shiatsu chair massager runs up and down his back.
And sometimes, he goes to bed when I do, spoons me, and sleeps all night. Those are the nights to treasure. Never underestimate a good night’s sleep.
Mr. Wanna has GERD/acid reflux, and is terrible about his diet, so he often can’t sleep at night. Sometimes the acid reflux makes his throat burn, and he coughs & clears his throat constantly, and even has to spit acid into a cup. When he gets this way, he leaves the bed for the night & sleeps in a recliner out in the living room, for my sake (well, and also because the upright position helps him). I don’t ask him to, but I appreciate it, because I’d get no sleep otherwise.
I return the favor whenever I get a bad case of sinusitis or bronchitis.
On the other hand, he is very insecure, and has given me an ulitmatum that there will be no sleeping apart because of an argument, or he will file for divorce. (Yes, he takes the “fun” out of dysfunctional.)
