Is it OK for a couple to sleep separately? These people say it's improved their relationship

Jennifer Adams is here to tell you sleeping separately from your partner does not necessarily signify a relationship in trouble.

Quite the opposite. She and her husband have slept in separate rooms for about 20 years — the entire course of their happy marriage.

And while early on friends and family were concerned their sleeping arrangements indicated the relationship was ending, Adams knew it wasn't.

Rather, she and her husband were waking up refreshed and more content than at the start of their relationship when, for a short stint, they attempted to share a bed.

"We did last a week in one bed and neither of us was getting any sleep … neither of us could function," she tells ABC RN's Life Matters.

"We were both exhausted … and we just thought, this is silly. We were really certain that we were madly in love … but we needed our sleep."

Adams says she's far from alone in needing a bed of her own — so how does it work? And how do couples who sleep apart not only survive, but thrive?

When sleeping apart works

Adams and her husband tried a few sleeping configurations — for example, sharing a bed on weekends only — before they finally called it: They would be a couple who slept in their own beds each night.

Adams, who works in corporate communications, couldn't do her job properly without sleep, and her husband, a tiler, also needed good sleep to do his physical work.

So sleeping separately became a simple decision. 

"I'd call it a no-brainer," Adams says.

But over the years, those close to them have sometimes struggled to accept the arrangement.

"But what fascinated me were the people, and especially it was women, who said how much they wished they could sleep separately because of the sleep deprivation they suffered, mainly because of snoring.

"I couldn't quite make that link between 'you're sleep deprived and your husband's snoring, but you don't want to go and sleep in a separate bed'."

She says one person confided in her that she and her husband had been sleeping apart for 12 years, but they kept it a secret and even pretended to sleep in the same bed to avoid the same judgement Adams had received.

That conversation, and the stigma around the issue, prompted Adams to co-author a book, A Sleep Divorce: Sleeping Apart not Falling Apart.

For the book, she interviewed around 150 people who sleep separately from their partner. 

She says many of those people reported not only better relationships, but better sex lives. They shared feeling less pressure to just "perform" in bed, and feeling a lot more rested, and understood and listened to by their partner. 

Adams also thinks the "excitement factor" of going to each other's rooms can add spice to a longer-term relationship.

Rejecting 'social norms'

To sleep apart from your partner can be a tough call to make, because it entails shirking some pretty established social structures, Adams says.

"We grow up to believe that when we get married and we settle down with someone, we just hop into the same bed together. We've been taught that parents did it [and] it's just ingrained in us.

As people age, issues present themselves like snoring, differences in body temperature, and more sensitivity to noise and movement.

Yet, despite our sleeping needs changing, making changes to accommodate those needs "is somehow seen as a negative and a slight against the partner", Adams says.

However, she believes the tide is turning.

As the connection between sleep and health becomes better known, she says conversations about sleeping separately are becoming more commonplace.

"We now have the term 'sleep divorce', so people have got a really quick term to refer to it, and more and more people are seeing it as an option. 

"And then when you have someone like Cameron Diaz saying that everyone should be able to sleep separately, it helps even more." 

Diaz also spruiked (perhaps in jest) the idea of couples even having their own houses, with one home in the middle to meet at for "relations". That's the kind of joke you can make when you're a multi-millionaire.

If you're not, and nor are you privileged enough to have a spare room, Adams says there are workarounds.

Couples she spoke to for her book had invested in good fold-out couches to pull out at night, or had a spare mattress kept under the main bed that could be taken to another room.

"I'm not going to pretend that's ideal, but there are solutions, and I guess it depends what your priority is," Adams says.

"Is your priority a little bit of inconvenience to set up? Or is your priority getting sleep?"

'It's a health thing'

Adams says that for some people, raising the topic of sleeping separately with their partner is tricky because it can be misinterpreted as rejection, but taking the emotion out of the conversation can help.

"You've got to let the person know it's got nothing to do about how much you love them, or how much you don't love them. It's got to do with the really practical reason of health management and that is the focus," she says.

"Instead of saying to your partner, 'Honey, your snoring is driving me insane, I can't get any sleep' — which is quite judgemental — you could say, 'I'm such a light sleeper that your snoring keeps me awake during the night I'm not getting enough quality sleep to function properly. Can we talk about what some of the options are?'."

"It's a health thing. When you sleep well, you feel well, and when you feel well, you function well. And we all deserve [that]."

Information in this article should not be taken as medical advice. For specific health advice regarding your sleep, see your GP.