Separate Beds Does Not Equal ATroubled Marriage

Today I listened to a conversation between two men concerning married couples sleeping in separate beds.

One man contended that if a couple sleeps in separate beds there is definitely trouble in the marriage. He would be devastated, he said, if his wife ever slept in another bed because he would know, then, that the marriage might as well be over.

The second man's opinion was that just because a couple has separate beds it doesn't mean there is anything wrong with the marriage. He said he and his wife have separate beds and their marriage is as strong as it was in the beginning.

For some couples, the separate bed issue is a big one. For others of us, it is practically a non-issue.

So, what makes sleeping in separate beds a big deal for some and not for others? The answer, I think, is security.

If a couple is secure in their relationship, if they know that their love is committed and the relationship is strong, sleeping in separate beds won't be seen as a bad omen for the marriage.

But if a couple's relationship is not secure, if one or the other of them needs constant reassurance that they are loved and that the relationship is not on shaky ground, then sleeping in separate beds will be intolerable because it will be interpreted as visible proof that the love is floundering.

One night, a couple years after our marriage, I laid down on the guest bed to read because I wanted to stretch out and my husband says he can't sleep with a light on. I fell asleep and my husband woke me the next morning, angry and upset. He tried to make me promise that I would never sleep in a separate bed again. I thought that his reaction was way overboard for my having accidentally fallen asleep while reading.

I questioned him on it and he confessed that finding I had slept in the guest room made him feel unloved and abandoned. He said that his first wife used to sleep in another bed when she was mad and that she ended up divorcing him. As a result of that, to him, my sleeping in a separate bed was equal to trouble in our marriage.