My husband positively encourages this behavior. 
He’s like a Golden Retriever. If I’m touching him, he’s happy, even if I’m only touching him with my horrid ice-cold feet. Bless him.
The sleeping & cuddling initially can take some getting used to. It was a skill I thought everyone learned in a college dorm, like Microeconomics (although ideally it should have nothing to do with guns or butter curves). Yes, there are elbows & roll overs to deal with, but there’s an art to it.
And there’s Diplomacy too: She’s not “A Cover Thief”; she’s just cold. 
That said, if you don’t accept the bad parts, how can you ever experience the good parts? Like the feel of another person’s heartbeat as felt through their back by your chest, as they sleep or as they rest? If you don’t sleep together, how can you wake up in the middle of a cold January night with blue light from a full moon reflecting off the snow through your windows and see the face of the person you love sleeping peacefully next to you? If that person isn’t next to you, how can you do your best to tease, cajole, entice, and seduce them into sex right before the alarm goes off?
I can’t be the only evil person who has taken glee, lust and satisfaction in making a partner late for work… 
I haven’t slept with my wife in almost two years.
She can no longer sleep in a bed. Her illness causes, among other things, what is known as a *patulous esophagus *and gastroparesis, resulting in severe gastric reflux if she lays down. Her esophagus is like a bottle; when it is upright, everything stays in, when it tips over, everything flows out. So for the last two years, she has slept sitting up in a recliner.
I miss sleeping with her, and she misses sleeping with me. We cry about it sometimes. I would give anything to be awakened by her snoring, or feel her cold feet against my back. Most of all, I miss the security of not waking up alone at night, or her touch when she reaches out just to see if I am there.
Cherish it while you can, it can be taken from you in a moment.
Sleeping together is, as you can tell from the thread to this point, a complicated topic, if in no other regard, simply logistically.
But it definitely is a way to bond with your partner. When the lights are out and you’re laying together, you have softer conversations. It’s a great time to talk about nothing and everything. In the dark and so close together, you naturally share more. You can communicate without words. And then some of that can translate to your waking hours. When you learn to move with/around your sleeping partner in bed, you can do the same thing through the day, physically and emotionally - the response to whatever you’re doing or feeling is natural and smooth.
And having someone there next to you is very relaxing. There’s extra warmth, and the white noise of their breathing and shuffling under the covers. Maybe I’m spoiled though. My girlfriend is the best bed-partner I’ve ever had. Both of us get better sleep together than we do apart.
In previous relationships that I’ve had, due tontheir very nature, sleeping with my partner was… detrimental to the relationship. If you’re afraid of what someone will do to you while awake, how could you be less so asleep.
That being said, in a healthy, happy, loving relationship, like the one I’m blessed with now, sleeping together is… bliss. We share intimate things… Talk about our pasts, future… Sometimes, despite being “tough as nails”, in bed, at night, I might even cry on his shoulder. We are equally comfortable in his queen or my king. Throughout a night, we will seek each other out for warmth or the comfort of knowing the other is there, or slide apart as physical comfort desire ditates. Neither of us seems to have a snoring problem, which is a beautiful first in a bed partner for me, so I can actually still fall asleep when he falls asleep before me.
I wouldn’t trade a single night of partnered sleeping for a night alone, given the choice.
I came home from work this morning at 0630. The bed was occupied and warm. I was freezing. It doesn’t get much better. And there is no denying that wake up sex is simply the best way to wake up in the known world. Turn off the sappy romance and turn on the physical truth. 
But not necessarily lighter. Apparently, my father would start thinking out loud when he relaxed… so, Mom would be half asleep, and Dad would start pondering where to get the money for vacation and when to go to visit Mom’s parents and whether us kids would or would not do decently in our exams… and then he’d mumble himself to sleep while she was now wide awake and worrying her guts out.
My other half lives on the other side of the world 2/3rds of the year…so when she’s here it’s lovely to sleep with her and snuggle. The trouble is that even her breathing can keep me awake as I’m a light sleeper! Once the snore engine is warmed up even the combined forces of earplugs and the pillow over my (it’s going to be hers one day) head is not sufficient.
That said it’s nice to have her there in the morning to attend to my needs… 8)
Thinking about it I could invest in a bell and give her the couch…
Congratulations Quartz for starting the saddest thread that I’ve read yet on the dope.
I saw your pictures on another thread and you are not horrible looking. You look decent enough - you don’t look like a drug addict and you are of average weight. You are also pretty intelligent based on what I read of your posts.
There is absolutely no reason that you shouldn’t be able to find a life partner that suits you, other than if you are setting your sights too high. Do you think that you might be doing that?
I’m unemployed. I’m just about broke. But most importantly, I can’t make people laugh.
More seriously, I’ve accepted that it isn’t going to happen. Life isn’t always a bed of roses.
Then you’ve accepted you don’t want it bad enough? If you don’t think you’re worth catching, what makes you think anyone else will?
That said, I know plenty of people that have gone through life alone that seem to be okay with it.
THAT said, I know plenty of people who I thought would go through life alone do something about it and are pretty happy in long term relationships.
Get a job, get a hobby, be interesting and lighten the fuck up a little
I have a brother-in-law. A real waste of skin. Been unemployed pretty much his whole life (he’s turning 40 this year). Never leaves the house. He’s not exactly a dating animal, either.
It isn’t all about humour. Some people are attracted to kindness, and sincerity, and can sense an inner “Buddha nature” too. I’ve met some kind but completely humourless people who seemed to be in good relationships. I’ve also met unemployed people in relationships, though I admit this does seem quite daunting when you’ve got no money.
But I won’t pull punches: falling asleep cuddling the one you love feels amazing, and really strengthens the relationship. Waking up beside someone you really care about is a charming feeling.
On the flipside, if the relationship is going bad, the contrast between prior cuddles and being cold-shouldered in the bed can be a severe amplification of the relationship’s troubles. Getting in to a bed you used to share with someone, that is now empty, is the loneliest feeling I know.
And waking up beside someone you shouldn’t be waking up beside, particularly from a drunken error the night before, can be horrible.
For me, the first time my girlfriend and I slept in the same bed nearly finished us: she likes to cuddle for hours, whereas I go stir crazy if I’m lying there awake with nothing to do for more than about 5 minutes. She got really upset because I got up; she thought I had changed my mind about her. We got it out in the open and smoothed things out eventually: I get to run around the house making coffee and breakfast as long as I return to cuddle her every half hour or so.
I used to love sleeping with my husband. Then he bought a TV for the bedroom and insisted on having it on so he could fall asleep to it. He actually liked to have it on all night. Even with earplugs (which I hated wearing for fear I wouldn’t hear one of the kids), I could hear it, and I can’t sleep in a noisy room. On my part, I developed restless leg syndrome and woke up too many mornings in pain because he had my legs tightly pinioned. He claimed it was “the only way I can get you to stop.”
We are now divorced.
Hard Lessons Learned Dept.: You can’t make someone laugh. You can present an opportunity that might be funny that gives them the option to if they are in the mood, but thats it.
"I Am Mojo Jojo! Laugh, Damn You!" just doesn’t work.
You can’t make someone smile. You can’t make someone like you. You can’t make someone love you. But like the song says, you can learn how to play the game, you can learn how to be you in time. And it IS easy.
As for the rest, better to shake a box of M&Ms and guess which two end up next to each other than to predict the future and the course of love.
Snuggling seems like a good idea until she cuts the circulation off in your arm. You need a huge bed.
If we didn’t sleep in the same bed, I wouldn’t like it. Since my husband started his own company, I now go to sleep far earlier than he does, and I miss knowing he’s there when I doze off. I miss spooning with him until we drift off and scoot to our separate corners of the bed, but with our hands stretched out and clasped together in the middle. But I love knowing that when the baby inevitably wakes up, he’ll be there next to me.
Truthfully, I’m a little afraid of the dark. Not terrified or anything, but it makes me uncomfortable if I’m out of bed, staggering around by myself in the dark. Knowing I’m just a little bit away from hopping into bed with my husband is comforting.
While I don’t think my husband would mind all that much the physical realities of not sleeping in the same bed (we both snore, both hog covers, etc.), I think we’d both be more distant or at least miss it a lot if we didn’t sleep together.
My ex didn’t want any part of me touching him in the bed. He bought a king size specifically so there would be a couple of feet between us. If I tried to rest against him he’d tell me I was hurting him. I spent a lot of nights completely pissed off, on the edge of the bed, annoyedly looking down at the carpet and wondering what the hell was so bad about me that he didn’t want to be touched.
My husband now spoons all night, and is completely wonderful, and I couldn’t ask for better.
Depends… Intaglio can’t sleep well any more without someone in bed with her - Myself, or one of teh kids. OTOH, she’s not the cuddle-up-close kinda person that I am. So there’s about a half hour of position negotiation before we finally settle down and sleep. I can sleep alone just fine, but much prefer to snuggle up close to her. The kids were never particularly welcome with me, as they always flailed, spun, and kicked in the night. My wife, fortunately, tends to hit one position and freeze. Of course, getting to that position usually involves at least one determined attempt by her to steal the covers.
So, in at least my case, there’s a bit of tossing and turning at first, then it’s warm, companionable sleep. And it’s nice to wake up and see early light turning her hair a deep warm gold-brown with twinkly red highlights. And if it’s been a cold night, I can count on her to snuggle up a lot closer whilst she’s sleeping. Which is very nice.
Snuggling is awesome, but it requires communication and a bit of compromise to get things going smoothly sometimes. I enjoy it immensely in my current relationship, but with her moving around I end up waking up frequently. This doesn’t bother me as I enjoy cuddling and going back to sleep, but it does make me more tired in the mornings. On my part, I snore, talk, and sometimes kick in my sleep, so I am also a bit of a challenge I’m sure.
Still, for me at least, none of the difficulties come close to negating the positive effects of the warmth and togetherness created by sleeping together. It’s just awesome.
And it can be funny/sweet too. Last night my GF started randomly calling out my name loudly in the middle of the night. When I nudged her, she said “Oh, you are there!” When asked why I wouldn’t be she replied “Oh… I guess it was just a dream. I dreamed I was alone and calling for you and you never came :(” Awwww! It was so sad and yet so cute and, well, it could have made for great romp material but we were both super-tired so we just fell right back asleep ^^
With the right delivery I’d find that hilarious.
(For the record I’ve met Quartz in person on a few occasions some years ago and he seemed a very nice man, albeit one which (by his own admission) hasn’t a clue how to talk to women. Just thought I’d mention it.)