Dorie Chevlen
Sharing a bed can be a wonderful experience for you and your partner: snuggly, sexy, serene. But many of us are likely familiar with the alternative scenarios: shivering and exposed after your partner tears away the doona; unable to sleep over their lawn-mower-loud snoring, or failing to disable your alarm clock before your beloved night owl rouses too early and none too pleased.
Not only does disrupted sleep threaten the peace of your relationship, it’s also detrimental to your wellbeing. “Sleep impacts every aspect of human physiology, whether that’s cardiovascular or metabolic or mental health,” says Dr Nathaniel Watson, professor of medicine and co-director of the University of Washington Medicine Sleep Centre. “You have to be your own personal stalwart and protector of your sleep because that’s how you present the best version of yourself to the world,” he says.
Luckily, the most common bed-sharing problems are totally fixable – or, at least, totally up for compromise.
The problem: I like a firm mattress. He likes a softy.
If you can’t agree on one mattress you both like, Craig Fruchtman, owner of Craig’s Beds in midtown Manhattan, says the easiest solution is just buying two mattresses “and pushing them together”. Two single mattresses end up being close to the same dimensions of a king mattress. Just make sure to measure if you’re buying from two different brands — not all will be the same height, though in a pinch, risers can level the gap.
Alternatively, you can top a firm mattress with a narrow foam or feather topper for the person who prefers things soft; just don’t do the reverse: “If their bed’s lumpy and they put something that’s firm on top of it, it’s just going to be that much lumpier,” he says.
The problem: I like it dark. They want to keep the lights on.
“Any light can disrupt sleep,” says Dr Ana Krieger, a sleep medicine expert at New York-Presbyterian and Weill Cornell Medicine. Ideally, your bedroom should be dark for sleeping hours, which can be achieved using blackout curtains or shades. But if your partner will be waking up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, or climbing into bed slightly after you, you don’t want them stumbling around blind. Krieger advises a compromise in the form of a low light underneath the bed, or a motion-activated night light, just bright enough for them to see and make their way.
Beyond the bedroom, Kreiger would also like to see more homes feature dimmers throughout. “That period that surrounds bedtime, like an hour, an hour and a half before going to sleep, the light exposure needs to be minimized for best sleep,” she says. Even if you’re just unloading the dishwasher or brushing your teeth in bright lighting, you may struggle later to achieve a proper night’s rest.
The problem: I’m a morning bird. She’s a night owl.
Most people’s sleep cycles are hardwired into their bodies; if you’re a night owl, you can possibly train yourself to sleep and rise earlier, but you’ll probably never transform into a true morning bird, says Shelby Harris, a sleep specialist at the Albert Einstein School of Medicine and author of The Women’s Guide to Overcoming Insomnia. And so forcing yourself, as a couple, to go to bed and rise at the same time just sets you up for resentment. Instead, she advises couples to consider cuddling – or engaging in other romantic bedtime activities – and then choosing their own adventure, whether that’s drifting into slumber or staying up with a book.
As for waking on different schedules without disturbing each other, Harris suggests looking at alarm clocks designed for people with hearing impairment. Many rouse you with vibrations, either in the form of a flat device you slip under your pillow or a wristwatch (an Apple watch can also do this, but at a much higher price). If one partner is willing to wear an eye mask, sunrise alarm clocks can awaken you with a very bright light.
The problem: He likes to scroll before bed. Surely that’s bad.
It depends. Watson makes it clear that staring at a screen before bed was ill-advised. Still, he acknowledges that “what’s a problem for one person is not necessarily a problem for another”. Research shows that the blue wavelengths of light emanated from devices like laptops and cellphones can be stimulating, but for some people it doesn’t cause sleep problems. It may also not be the blue light, itself, but rather the type of content being digested that causes sleep disruption.
If you or your partner insists on screens in the bed, Watson suggests limiting the blue light exposure by going into your phone’s settings to reduce it manually, or wearing blue-light blocking glasses. But still, he echoes most sleep specialists’ directive to keep the bed a place where nothing but sleep and sex take place. “We want that when your head hits your pillow, your body knows definitively that ‘Now is when I sleep.’ It’s not like, ’Oh, now is when I watch TV, now is when I look at my phone, now is when I have an engrossing, hour-long conversation with my kid,” he says.
The problem: I want our pet in bed with us, she does not.
Unfortunately, your partner is probably right about this one. Many people “don’t realise that their cats or dogs are disturbing their sleep because they find it so cute and so lovely,” says Krieger. This, of course, poses two problems: How do you train the animal to sleep outside the bed, and how do you train the human to sleep without the animal?
“People feel more comfortable when they have somebody in bed with them,” Krieger says, even if that somebody is a pet. “So trying to feel safe in your home environment I think is very important.” One solution she suggests is to train your pet to sleep in their own bed in your line of sight – even knowing they’re in the room may bring the same comfort as having them close.
The problem: One of us runs hot. The other runs cold.
In many couples there is a disparity in preferred temperature. But it’s better to defer to the hot sleeper. “A colder room is easier to deal with because you can always add extra clothing or have your own blankets,” says Kreiger. “But it’s very hard when people start to feel very warm at night because that affects sleep significantly.”
Many brands offer cooling mattresses, though Fruchtman points out that after you’ve pulled on a mattress protector and sheets, any purported benefits are usually insignificant.
Instead, experts suggest keeping the room cooler with air conditioning, and then opting for individualised bedding. Harris recommends the Scandinavian sleep method, recently popularised on social media, where each person uses their own blanket atop the same sheets. (You can fold a duvet in half at night and pull it across the bed in the morning if you don’t like the mix-and-match aesthetic, she adds). For the truly chilly person, an electric blanket might be a good investment. Or, “It’s not sexy for people, but wearing socks to sleep,” could help, she adds.
The problem: Their constant tossing and turning wakes me up.
Though lots of restless movement can be a sign of a sleep disorder, “Some people are more restless within a spectrum of normal sleep,” Krieger says. If you or your partner’s movement is keeping the other awake, a slightly bigger bed may alleviate the issue, and one made from memory foam will have less motion transfer, says Fruchtman.
But for the greatest reduction in movement, Fruchtman suggests looking not at the bed, but at the frame. “They should consider their furniture and the weight of their furniture,” he says, making sure the mattress lays perfectly flat. “When they lay flat, they don’t move. So that could be a reason to buy an adjustable base or a base that’s just really solid.”
The problem: ZZZZZZZZZZ!
Among Harris’ patients, snoring is one of the most common sources of sleep disruption, for both themselves and their partners. “It’s snoring in bed and that’s something that’s making them either wake up or have trouble falling asleep,” she says.
Snoring could be a sign of bigger health problems, but it could also be intermittent, aggravated by factors like allergies or drinking. Whatever it is, try not to hear it: a white noise machine can drown out quieter snoring sounds, but for a louder case, try combining the white noise machine with ear plugs. “The challenge is that often they come off,” Krieger warns, so she recommends opting for waterproof swimmer’s ear plugs, rather than the standard foam, for slightly better staying power.
The problem: Nothing is working. My partner and I cannot sleep in the same bed.
Then don’t! Kreiger says, “There are different aspects of sleeping together, right? There is the physical or sexual, kind of romantic involvement. And then there’s sleep.” Many couples actually improve their relationship when they choose to sleep apart, or “sleep divorce” as the practice has come to be known. Some couples choose to sleep separately certain days of the week, or temporarily until one partner’s sleep disorder has been resolved. “It doesn’t have to be all or nothing,” Harris says.
However long you’re apart, though, she stresses the importance of making both sleep environments as equal as possible. “If one person gets relegated just to the couch every night, that’s a pretty sad experience,” she says.
The New York Times
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