Don’t Sleep Together After Sleeping Together
September 9, 2009 1 Comment
The BBC reported today on a study examining how sharing a bed affects people’s health and state that bed sharing is “bad for your health”.
Perhaps I am biased, having grown up in a bed-sharing culture, or perhaps the BBC did not report on the important points of the research, but I cannot see why they want to discourage people sharing beds.
The only result reported from the research was “when couples share a bed and one of them moves in his or her sleep, there is a 50% chance that their slumbering partner will be disturbed as a result”.
Nowhere does it say how often this happens or how much the other negative consequences of poor sleep quality (i.e. “depression, heart disease, strokes, lung disorders, traffic and industrial accidents, and divorce”) are actually caused by sharing a bed. Rather, it is unprofessionally implied that sleeping together might be the cause of these other problems in the world without any evidence.
I wholeheartedly agree that if someone is having trouble sleeping and they need to sleep on their own then they and their partner should try to be open to it and not take it as a personal rejection.
However, I also think that when the majority of people seem to enjoy cuddling with their partner and don’t have any problems caused by poor sleep quality, then there is no reason not to sleep with your partner after sleeping with your partner.
I don’t like to share my bed with anyone except perhaps my pets.
Based on a random study of married couples that I know, the ones who have separate beds and washrooms have the happiest marriages. One of them told me it is because everyone needs their “own” space in which to allow the “private” self to come out and feel relaxed in. The private self when not nurtured properly and suppressed in a relationship eventually comes out in the couple dynamics as a form of frustration. I know for myself, that when my siblings were living with me, we always argued about the washroom….:)