The end of love or the resurgence of passion? What sleeping in separate rooms can do for your partner

Raquel, a 35-year-old from Madrid, was a girl when she discovered that her grandparents slept in separate rooms.

She got upset.

"I thought they were going to break up.

I didn't dare ask my parents because I was embarrassed, but I spent weeks freaking out.

If they shared the same bed, I didn't understand why my grandparents didn't do it if they were also married.

The perception that something was wrong was not unreasonable considering that the fact that a couple chooses to sleep separately is interpreted by most as a red flag.

María Hurtado, a clinical psychologist at AGS Psiclogos Madrid, acknowledges that this is a recurring theme in couples therapy – she finds it, she says, between 30% and 40% in consultation – and one of the ones that triggers the most discussions.

"Many people are scandalized, but it is necessary to normalize that depending on the circumstances it is better to sleep in different rooms and put an end to the myth that when we are in a couple we have to do everything together," explains Hurtado.

The specialist tells ICON that when a relationship is starting, nothing bothers us and the last thing on our minds is sleeping apart if we can help it.

However, when dopamine (a substance that generates pleasure) decreases, giving way to oxytocin, the hormone of calm love, in which affective bonds are stronger than passion, rest and comfort become a priority.

Hence, she finds many cases of marriages between 55 and 60 years old who make the decision to spend their sleeping hours apart.

María and Fernando are a couple of 34 and 39 years old who live in Alicante and from the moment they moved in together they wanted to have their own bedroom.

“I have always thought that it is very important to maintain our individual space.

If the relationship is taken care of and everything works between us, as is the case, there is no need to sleep next to each other.

In addition, to rest well the best thing is that nothing bothers you and while asleep we can make noises or move too much unconsciously”, says Fernando.

“Our friends often make faces when we talk about it, almost as if we are eccentric or our relationship is on its last legs.

But it's the opposite, I feel that our bond is even stronger.

We have many moments of intimacy that do not have to be limited to the bedroom or the night and we also save ourselves many reproaches and bad moods.

Neither I bother Fer nor he me during our rest hours”, explains María.

“Sleeping apart leads us to have to ask the other to come with a spicy message, for example, or to raid their bed.

It can return the spark in long relationships”, affirms the sexologist Eva Moreno.

In the image, Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh in a scene from 'Gone with the Wind' (1939).

A survey carried out by the National Sleep Foundation of the United States in 2015 revealed that 25% of couples sleep in separate beds and 10% in separate rooms without this being a problem within the relationship.

On the contrary, according to the experts who carried out the study, this choice could bring great benefits to couples.

And faces as familiar as Melania Trump, who decided to sleep in a different room than her husband in the White House, or Queen Elizabeth, who did not share a room with the Duke of Edinburgh, have been putting it into practice for years.

The heat waves that persist this summer, with temperatures so high that any touch is annoying, have encouraged many couples to seek distance at bedtime.

Snoring, insomnia of one of the two members, the different needs in terms of room temperature to fall asleep and having incompatible schedules are some of the most common reasons that lead to making this decision.

In these cases, the specialists themselves are the ones who recommend it so that the relationship does not end up suffering.

“For this life change to be beneficial, it must be clear why it is being done.

It is common for one of the two to feel that this decision is the result of the absence of love or passion, for this reason it must be explained that the benefit is greater since when one rests well, the state of mind is much better,

In 2016, the Paracelsus Medical University in Nuremberg, Germany, published a study showing that sleep problems quickly led to relationship problems.

A finding that reinforces what was already discovered in 2013 by research from the University of Berkeley: the sleepless nights of one member of the couple that prevented the other from sleeping gave rise to great conflicts in the relationship.

Elena and Roberto, 39 and 42-year-olds from Asturias and Madrid who live in the capital, are one of those couples who have begun to dominate each one on their own this summer.

“At first I resisted because I didn't want to be like those typical couples that have been together for so long that they no longer pay attention to each other.

But Roberto convinced me that you have to be practical and he was right.

Luckily we have more than one bedroom at home and we have been able to make this decision.

Now we rest better, we don't heat each other or soak the bed with sweat.

Of course, as soon as the temperatures drop we will share a bedroom again, ”says Noelia.

Not sleeping because of the partner ends up generating frustration and rejection towards her, "it makes us irritable and puts us on the defensive", comments the sexologist and couples therapist Eva Moreno, who adds: "We confuse love and sex with the fact sleeping together and it shouldn't be like that."

Sleeping in separate rooms or beds does not mean that you do not continue to share a bed for other activities, on the contrary.

The sexologist tells ICON that it can become an incentive when having sex.

“Being separated leads us to have to ask the other to come with a spicy message, for example, or to assault his bed.

It can return the spark in long relationships.

It also leads us to be a little more imaginative and not relegate sex to the bedroom, because it's something we can do at any time, not just at night,

In addition, the couple's relationship can be nurtured outside the bedroom based on communication, common hobbies, frequent displays of affection and a fair distribution of obligations.

"There are many ways to maintain complicity and they all involve sharing quality time: spend some time simply telling us how your day was or talking about a book that we loved, going for a walk or having a drink without distractions," argues Hurtado.

The coronavirus crisis did nothing but increase sleep problems, and therefore couples.

So taking the step of separating spaces during the day and also at night has become, since the pandemic began, something fundamental for many.

The same is happening now with the high temperatures that we are experiencing.

The only trick to come out of these situations stronger is to keep the core strong, listening and attending to the needs of the other.

"Needing to sleep separately does not mean that you cannot share a bed from time to time, either during the holidays or on cold days when we feel like keeping warm," Moreno and Hurtado agree.

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