Is ‘sleep divorce’ the key to marital bliss? | Coco Khan
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Some swear that sleeping separately from their partner improves their relationship. Personally, I’m in ‘team same bed’. Forgive me, I know it’s judgmental, but when I first came across the internet’s latest buzz phrase, “sleep divorce”, the name for happy couples sleeping in separate beds – with no drama; they just want a good night’s rest – I couldn’t help but think: “Well, well, well, sounds like somebody has a big house.”.
![[Coco Khan]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/uploads/2018/01/23/Coco_Khan,_L.png?width=180&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
And who am I to snark when sleep divorce appears to be helping many couples? It makes sense: sleep is the foundation of health, it affects our mood, our physical wellness, our energy levels, and in turn our ability to be there for one another. If we know good sleep at night makes the parent of an infant more present and engaged during the day, then why not the same for a partner?.
Britain is arguably at its most sleep deprived: 77% of us don’t wake up feeling well rested, with one in seven people surviving on dangerously low levels of sleep (less than five hours). Which may explain why a survey from Tielle (a bedding brand, which presumably would be quite keen on people buying an extra bed for sleep divorce) found that one in 20 couples in London are planning to move house to gain an additional bedroom for the sole purpose of sleep divorce. Oooh, well I guess some people are made of money! (Sorry, I can’t help it.).
It is true that sleep divorce doesn’t quite have the same allure when it’s not wrapped in the comforts of Egyptian cotton and a pillow-top mattress. It lacks a certain je ne sais quoi when one of you is in a bed and the other on two sofa cushions pushed together on the floor, being head-butted by the cat; or on a rock hard futon, or the air mattress that has seen one two many festivals (“What exactly is that stain?”). In those scenarios, if there wasn’t acrimony before, there certainly would be after: a one-way ticket to actual divorce, in my books.
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