When my wife and I stopped sleeping together, I made a surprising discovery

I always thought it was normal for couples to sleep together: until I didn’t. For the first 55 years of our marriage, my wife and I slept together – first in a double bed, then in a queen bed and finally in a king bed. Of course, before our marriage, it was the occasional single bed!

Frankly, it never crossed my mind that we wouldn’t always sleep in the same bed in the same bedroom – even though when sleeping together there were various practical sleep-loss problems related to snoring, heavy breathing, having the “right” amount of covers on the bed, and having the bedroom at the “right” temperature.

John and Liz Baker, wide awake.

My ingrained assumption about the normalcy of sleeping together in the one bed in the one room meant that when friends mentioned they slept in separate bedrooms, I am embarrassed to admit that I wondered if something was wrong with their relationship. Maybe, I thought, they aren’t as close as we are.

It’s certainly not the relationship norm portrayed in popular culture. Indeed, as regular viewers of the British TV program Escape to the Country – which we watch to relive our upbringing in the English countryside – I don’t recall ever seeing a couple look for a house with separate bedrooms for each of them.

In early-2023, my arthritis necessitated a hip-replacement operation, so my wife and I decided to sleep apart for a few weeks until the new hip had settled down. She moved into our guest bedroom.

After a few weeks, neither of us was showing any inclination to move back together. After a month or so, we both somewhat sheepishly admitted that we slept much better by ourselves in separate bedrooms, so we decided to try sleeping separately for another few months.

As it happened, a few weeks before my hip replacement, I had seen a geriatrician about my memory which I had been concerned was worsening more than I thought it should be doing, and which I feared might be the early onset of dementia. (It appears from subsequent developments that the issue was probably largely an over-active imagination on my part.)

My geriatrician advised that one beneficial action I could take was to make sure I always got a really good night’s sleep. After scoring a 14 on the Epworth Sleep Test questionnaire – equated with moderate excessive daytime sleepiness – she referred me for an overnight sleep test. However, because of the hip-replacement operation, I held off on the test until my new hip had settled down and I was back to more normal sleep patterns.

Several months later, my wife and I took stock and decided to continue sleeping apart permanently. We did this because I was sleeping so very much better – on average for an extra hour each night. I was also no longer nodding off after lunch or while watching television in the evening. On the sleep test questionnaire, my score had fallen from 14 to 5 (lower normal daytime sleepiness). My wife was also sleeping better and longer.

We found that not only were our beds in separate rooms allowing us to each have the amount of bedding that best suited us, but that I could sleep with the window open, while my wife could have hers closed to allow for a much warmer room.

Sleep deprivation catches up with you. Credit: iStock

So I cancelled the overnight sleep test, and we set about refurnishing the guest bedroom to suit my wife’s needs and make it into her bedroom. (Our third bedroom was repurposed as an office some years ago.)

I should note that sex didn’t enter into the equation because, with our children having long since left home, the idea that you need to be sleeping together in the same bed to have good sex was a myth we abandoned long ago. Anyway, all children know that their parents stop having sex once they are over 70!

I confess that prior to my hip replacement my wife and I had both always assumed – as many people seem to do – that there was something wrong if a couple didn’t sleep together. We now realise that this is a fallacy.

In terms of maintaining the relationship and intimacy that normally comes from sleeping together, we always kiss before we go to bed. Then in the morning, I get up, make a cup of tea and collect the papers so that my wife can join me in bed in my room where we chat, look at our phones, read the papers and drink our tea.

Apart from having a better and longer sleep, nothing has really changed in our lives.

You might ask: Where will our guests stay in future? Well, some time ago we had my brother and his wife visit from the UK and we put them up in a nearby motel, which worked really well – both for them and for us.

So why don’t more couples talk openly about their sleep arrangements – especially when there are such clear benefits to be realised? Perhaps it’s time to define a new normal.

John Baker is a former senior public servant, Australian ambassador and management consultant and discloses that he is 78 years old.