I Love You, But Please Sleep Elsewhere

When you are born, you are given your own bed. First, it is a bassinet or cradle, which for a tiny human is basically a luxury penthouse with excellent wriggle room. Then you move into a cot, perhaps with a dummy, a comforter and one loyal teddy, but even then, the whole thing is still yours. Every inch of it.

Then you graduate to a single bed, maybe later a king single or a double, and for years your bed belongs entirely to you. It is your sanctuary, your recovery ward, your scrolling station, your winter cocoon and the one place where nobody is asking anything of you. It is peaceful, and it is all yours.

Then somewhere in adulthood, usually when romance has made everyone temporarily lose good judgement, we decide that love means inviting another human into the very place designed for uninterrupted rest.

This, I would argue, is one of society’s great cons. Movies and TV shows have a lot to answer for, showing loving couples getting into bed together, at the same time, rolling towards each other, and then apparently cuddling all night. Most likely, the actors did that for ten seconds while filming, then got up and said, right, that’s enough of that. The rest of us watched on and thought that was the standard. So we try. For years, we try. We fail, we try again, and we fail again.

That is not what happens in real homes. Or at least not what happens in mine.

What actually happens is that two adults, each with their own bedtime routine, body temperature, sleep habits, noise levels and deeply selfish relationship with mattress space, attempt to occupy the same horizontal surface for eight hours and call it intimacy.

For a little while it can feel lovely, mostly because everything is still new and you have not yet realised that one of you snores like a lawn mower, one of you steals the doona, and one of you lies diagonally while the other clings to the edge of the bed, knowing there is a very real chance I will be on the floor by morning.

At some point, most of us have had that moment where we are lying there in the dark, wide awake, listening to the snoring and looking at the spare pillow with fresh perspective. Not in a criminal way. More in a practical, acoustic-management sort of way.

Because for some reason, as we get older, the number of decorative and entirely unnecessary pillows on the bed multiplies wildly, and in that sleep-deprived state you start to wonder whether one of them could be gently placed over their head, not to harm them, obviously, but simply to soften the sound. Just enough to mute the lawn mower. Just enough to take it from full backyard landscaping mode down to something more manageable. Just enough for you to maybe, finally, fall asleep.

Then comes the classic midnight poke in the ribs, the blanket tug carried out with a strength you did not know you had, and the dramatic sigh that even the awake neighbour would hear and likely understand as they glare at their own bed partner in exhausted solidarity.

This is why I have come to believe that sleeping separately is not a sign of trouble in a relationship, but common-sense prevailing. A separate bed could save a marriage. Frankly, there is a missed ad campaign in that for bed companies everywhere: save your sleep and your marriage for one low price.

The older I get, the more I think the older generation has it right. When you go into the home of an older couple, you often find separate rooms made up. They will tell you it is for when family comes to stay, but when the bedding has changed since your last visit, you know there have been a few solo nights in play. When you ask, they usually admit it. Yes, sometimes we do. We need to sleep, you know. Age has a lovely way of stripping away nonsense, and one of the great gifts of getting older seems to be finally admitting that being exhausted all the time is not romantic. It is just annoying.

Imagine if society had been honest from the start and simply said, shared beds are overrated, grab your own pillow, your own doona and, if you can manage it, your own room.

Because real couples do not spend the night arranged beautifully like a sheet set display.

Real couples get into bed, say goodnight, turn in opposite directions and begin their own personal battle for comfort. Sometimes the deepest act of love is not spooning. Sometimes it is sleeping in another room and turning up fresh, cheerful and genuinely pleased to see each other in the morning.

These days, I am convinced the dream home is not one giant master suite with an enormous, shared bed and twelve decorative cushions nobody asked for. The dream is a bedroom for every member of the household. One for me. One for you. One for each child. One for the dog - who lets face it has always had their own room (kennel), and frankly, they may have been onto something long before the rest of us. That way everyone gets some actual sleep, nobody starts the day blaming anyone else, and perhaps, quite ironically, everyone becomes more loving because they are no longer functioning as overtired lunatics.

Maybe that is the real romance after all.

Not lying beside someone all night while they snore like a two-stroke engine and steal half your bed, but waking up refreshed, cheerful and genuinely delighted to see them at breakfast.