SOLO SLEEPING
Editor-in-chief Katy Sunnassee considers the latest rise in separate sleeping and asks the question: is it healthy for a relationship?
THE TERM “SLEEP DIVORCE” is currently trending on TikTok, with the hashtag “separate beds” having received more than 2.6 million views, while “sleep divorce” has racked up 950,000 views. One viral video features a new mum discussing the benefits of a sleep divorce. The comments are divided: half agree that separate beds should be normalised, while the rest declare it spells the demise of the relationship.
To me, it’s no surprise that TikTok users would be more likely to think that sleeping separately spells the end of a relationship – after all, most users of the app are in their teens and 20s. When I think back to my university days, I used to cram myself into a small single bed with my then boyfriend of 6ft 2in, which seemed fine at the time. I’m not sure how I got to sleep but he’d often be wedged up against the wall by the morning. The things you do when young, hey?
But, to anyone 40-plus, I’d say sleeping separately is quite normal. Or is it? One friend of mine, who is in her late 40s and has been single for a while, told me that even when she got back together with her ex temporarily, she just couldn’t sleep in the same bed as him anymore and needed her own space, so would ask him to sleep on the couch. I think the older we get the more likely we are to prioritise sleep as we just feel so rotten without it. And if this means sleeping on our own, so be it.
But it’s interesting to read that now more millennial couples are actively choosing a “sleep divorce”, as sleeping separately was often considered something for older generations.
According to a recent survey of 2,000 adults by the American Academy Of Sleep Medicine, 43 per cent of millennial couples now sleep separately, which seems high.
In the UK, research by the National Bed Federation found that one in six couples who live together now sleep apart, with more than a third having done so for more than five years (that’s me in that last statistic – turn to page 98 to find out more).
The late Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip slept separately, but it’s not just a royal thing; my grandparents did it too. I used to love staying overnight at their large Georgian-style four-bedroom house as I got to sleep in Gran’s room, as she had two single beds. She’d sing me to sleep, and I’d be in the land of nod before she came up to bed. Grandad’s room had a double bed in it – so perhaps they slept together occasionally, but that never crossed my mind. It never occurred to me that it wa
