Why It Might Be Healthier to Sleep Alone

By Sara Ost, EcoSalon. Posted September 12, 2009.

And we’re not talking about that kind of sleeping together. The couple that snoozes together, loses together. Or rather, the couple that sleeps together, doesn’t.

That’s the latest finding from British scientist Neil Stanley. While American science reporting tends to focus on banishing the endemic muffin top, our friends across the pond have a none-too-wee fixation with la difference. If it’s not a breakthrough study finding that those helpless men are distracted by breasts or are just distracted in general, it’s the juicy promise of death by nuptial that keeps the html dot uk flowing.

Marriage is depressing. Marriage is expensive. Marriage not only ruins your waking life, your night life and your sex life, it also ruins the part of your life you’re not even consciously participating in. Oh, for heaven’s sake, is there no rest for the wedded weary?

The study reports that if you’re shacked up and sharing a bed, you experience 50% more sleep troubles than singletons. Sleeping together is downright unhealthy. So weird – I’m not married for this exact reason! Strategic brilliance from Ost, yet again.

My properly chilled Scandinavian grandparents may have been onto something with their separate sleeping arrangements. As a child, I remember thinking it was sort of weird that Grandpa and Grandma had a bedroom like Lucy and Ricky’s since we weren’t living in black and white anymore, but then being glad for it because it made jumping on the bed(s) twice as fun!

Just ponder the upside of hitting the hay in different stables. You’re fast asleep when a handsome stranger steals into your bed and has his way with you (so it’s actually your hubs and he has a spare tire, but work with me here). Absence makes the heart grow hornier, as it were. Sleeping apart makes sleeping together an extra special thing. Also, you get the eternal thrill of doing it in someone else’s room. Aside from making sex just like college all over again, there’s the benefit of never again having to argue over how many pillows ought to be embellishing the duvet. Oh, and the health thing.

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