When my friend Carrie got a divorce, she dreaded having to sleep alone. One night, early on, she found herself wondering if anyone had figured out a way to heat a body pillow to newly-absent-husband temperature.
But a year later, when Carrie got her first serious boyfriend, there was what she calls a full reversal. “Now I have to drug myself with melatonin or weed gummies just be in the same room with someone when I’m trying to wind down,” she says. “Forget sleeping.” In fact, she says, she’s realized she never actually liked sharing a bed, only what it meant to have someone to sleep with.
And though she may be alone in bed, she’s not unique in desire—a recent study found that a record 35 percent of couples are sleeping apart, with millennials leading the charge in the greatest numbers. And—unlike their parents and grandparents, they’re not just doing it because one of them snores—they’re doing it because they just feel like it.
I spoke to friends in gay, straight, lesbian, and even throupled partnerships who have made the switch to separate sleeping, and damned if they aren’t evangelical about it. When I asked them how it started, a common narrative quickly emerged: they were stressed out, tired, and stressed out from being tired. They longed for quality rest and more free time but didn’t know where to get it, because spending the pre-bed and sleeping hours apart seemed like more of a relationship setback than solution. Until, one day, too tired to care, they freed each other from the obligation, and that’s when marriage got—sorry in advance—dreamy.
Obviously, few of us in partnerships climb into bed like a sitcom couple every night at the same time, warmly unpacking the day’s events, one of us lotioning our arms till the other initiates sex. If we’re all being honest, evening togetherness likely requires compromise on what we’d rather be doing.
If my husband had his way, we’d end every day with a 370-minute A24 movie where a talking deer rapes Joaquin Phoenix. No thanks! Nor does he want to get into bed when I do, at 9:30, to watch me read a book about a Midwestern family learning hard truths about themselves until I fall asleep with my Kindle on my face.
I don’t know too many people who have perfectly aligned chill-time preferences, or bedtimes for that matter. So what can we give our partners as working hours grow longer and disposable time and income shrink? Perhaps … freedom. Freedom to stretch out, relax, read, watch what they want, mess around with their own genitals, release various gases, stay up late, turn in early, and snore at will.
And yeah, everybody knows how “sleeping apart” sounds. Pretty much no one I talked to felt excited about the idea at first. It’s more of a thing you feel terrible about initially and then great about later, such as taking medicine meant for diabetics to get a bikini body.
My friend Devon, who has no kids but loves an early bedtime, used to get angry when he’d find his partner, David, asleep on the couch every morning, after hours of late-night, solo TV watching. “It just seemed sad,” he says. Then, during a vacation when there was no couch to go to, they found themselves having a great time during the day but irritated with each other every night. David’s laptop kept Devon up, and both of them felt cramped and uncomfortable. Their at-home routine that made David so “mad” had actually been working great for them.
The idea that we think we should be sleeping together rather than actually wanting to was a bit of a theme. It took my friend Greg and his wife a while to admit they’re bed-incompatible—she’s a light sleeper and early riser; he likes to stay up with his reading lamp on until the wee hours. When she proposed separate beds and bedtimes, it hurt his feelings. But then came the sleep—the peaceful, on-Greg’s-time sleep. He’s now such a convert that “if we’re on a trip or something where we can’t have our own rooms, I’ll just make a little nest somewhere so we’re not disturbing each other. It’s the best.”
It’s more of a thing you feel terrible about initially and then great about later, such as taking medicine meant for diabetics to get a bikini body.
My friend Dana, a consultant married to a small-business owner, agreed: “We spend all day accommodating other people.… Why wouldn’t we want to let that go at home?” She says she loves watching the shows she wants and going to sleep in one bedroom while her husband does the same in another. “Who cares how it looks? It’s so much nicer! Why suffer?”
Why indeed! Aside from the obvious (people who actually enjoy bed-sharing), why do it? I asked Dr. Shelby Harris, A behavioral-sleep-medicine specialist and director at Sleepopolis, a Web site that reviews mattresses, what the point is, anyway. “Sleeping together can boost feelings of closeness and security, which helps lower stress and makes it easier to relax,” she explained. “Physical contact, like cuddling, can release oxytocin, a hormone that reduces stress and strengthens bonds.” Plus, I dunno, spooning, closeness, someone to fight off burglars. And sex.
What about sex? That’s better when sleeping apart, too, if you ask my friends Julia and Ian. They’re two highly successful Hollywood types who told me about discovering separate bedrooms like it was pirate treasure in their backyard. After they put their kids to bed, they cook and eat dinner together, then go their separate ways until morning. They both get double the rest they normally would, which makes for better, less obligatory, more spontaneous sex. “Who has sex in bed at 11 p.m., anyway?” Julia shrugs. “College kids?”
My husband and I still try to sleep together because I haven’t let go of the idea that it’s good to keep trying to. Culturally, it feels like there’s been a slow push to embrace the easy over the effortful, like we’re prioritizing being 100 percent comfortable at all times over long-term happiness. I’m thinking of the sudden fetishizing of canceling plans, “goblin mode,” “bed rot,” etc.
And, for all my friends’ rhapsodizing, a lot of people still see the choice to sleep apart as a, uh, “not great sign.” For many of us as kids, the confusing sight of Dad on the couch one morning turned out to be an early harbinger of divorce. And think of the well-known couples who so aspirationally and artisily unburdened themselves of the duty to sleep or even live together—Tim Burton and Helena Bonham Carter, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, Woody Allen and Mia Farrow, Miranda July and Mike Mills … Not a lot of golden anniversaries!
But maybe we just aren’t hearing all the good stories, where it does work, and everybody stays together by sleeping apart. Certainly, anybody who’s been in a years-long, committed partnership can tell you that it’s long overdue for a little modernizing. So why not the connubial bed? There are so very many parts of marriage that are hard that can’t be solved with a trip to Jennifer Convertibles. Sleep is still free. Perhaps, for our partners, it can be a priceless gift.
Julieanne Smolinski is a Los Angeles–based TV writer
