Partners Are Choosing Separate Bedrooms To Get More Rest, And Experts Say It May Not Mean Trouble

For years, sharing a bed has been treated as one of those unspoken rules of being in a relationship. You find someone you love and eventually get used to sharing a mattress, a duvet, and whatever temperature one of you insists is just right. However, what happens when the person you want beside you at night is also the reason you spend your mornings exhausted?

For some couples, the answer has become an increasingly popular arrangement with a name that sounds far more dramatic than it actually is. It’s called sleep divorce, and new survey data suggests that it is no longer an unusual choice reserved for couples with serious relationship problems. According to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, 31% of U.S. adults have slept separately from a bed partner, either in another bed in the same room or somewhere else in the home.

That figure raises a bigger question than whether couples are tired of listening to each other snore: what is happening behind closed bedroom doors that makes so many people reconsider one of the most familiar parts of sharing a life together? The numbers become even more intriguing when you look at who is making this choice. Adults aged 35 to 44 are the most likely to report sleep divorce, at 39%, while only 18% of adults aged 65 and older say they have done it.

Clearly, the question of how couples sleep involves more than simply deciding who gets which side of the bed. But is sleeping separately a sensible way to protect your rest, or could it introduce a different kind of strain into a relationship? The answers are more nuanced than the word “divorce” suggests. Looking at the research, the practical considerations behind this growing trend reveal why the way couples sleep deserves a closer look, and why the decision may be more complicated than either partner initially expects.