More couples want separate bedrooms

One in ten French cohabiting couples sleep in different bedrooms, a new study has found.

One in ten French cohabiting couples sleep in different bedrooms, a new study has found.

For centuries, couples were told by the church that it was their duty to sleep in the same bed. But as Christian practices decline, increasing numbers are opting for separate rooms, with the blessing of experts who say there is no reason to feel guilty.

A further 6% said they would prefer to sleep apart but feared the consequences for their marriages, the Ifop study found. Factors pushing separation include France’s traditional small beds, different body clocks, screen-watching and snoring.

Young people are increasingly eschewing the same room. More than 20% of couples aged 65 and over slept in separate rooms, the study found. Contrary to what might be assumed, however, the pandemic and its lockdowns did not accelerate the decline in sleeping together, it said.

The shift reflects the fading of the obligation that had been imposed by church and society since Thomas Aquinas decreed in the 13th century that “the couple must have their bed and their bed-chamber”.

Still from Jules et Jim (1962).

The duty of the single bed, never observed by French aristocracy and royalty, was in full bourgeois force when Honore de Balzac wrote in the 19th century, “The bed is all of marriage”.

Couples are now being told that while physical intimacy may suffer, “la chambre a part” does not necessarily mean failure and can be healthy. “It is not so natural to sleep with another person,” Pascal Anger, a psychotherapist, said. “When you ask people if they feel good at night, they shrug and say ‘not as good as all that’,” he told RMC radio.

Francois de Singly, a sociologist, said:

“Modern individuals want more and more to retain their personal identity without giving up the company of the other.”

Damien Leger, head of the Sleep Centre at the Hotel-Dieu university hospital in Paris, said the tradition of bed-sharing was cultural. “It’s not obvious for a lot of people,” he said.

Advice has been coming from Jean-Claude Kauffmann, a sociologist and author of A Bed for Two: The tender war, a noted book on sharing lives, in or out of wedlock.

“Fifty years ago, the roles were well defined. You began life as a couple with marriage, which meant sharing the same place,” he said. “We’re now in an era when you don’t want to disappear as an individual . . .This phenomenon is being embraced as a new way of being a couple,” he told Le Parisien newspaper.