Every time I read a study on how important it is to get a good night’s sleep or you could develop a whole host of diseases, or even premature death — I freak out. Am I literally going to die from not getting enough sleep? Some days it feels that way — and this worry is just another thing that keeps me up at night.
I feel like I’m the only person who’s still awake most of the night like I was during my kids’ newborn stage. Sleep is just a distant dream to me currently.
When I heard that more and more couples are getting a “sleep divorce,” it sounded both intriguing and enticing
I often lay awake at night fantasizing about the kind of environment in which I’d actually get sleep
But I’m coming to the conclusion that as long as I’m a factor in any environment, sleep may not be within reach. Throw COVID-somnia sleep disturbances into the mix, and 70% of Americans in my age group are reporting sleep disturbances since the start of the pandemic. A good night’s sleep seems to be nothing more than a mirage in a vast desert of sleeplessness at this point — something no bath oils, meditation apps, or calming teas can even help me reach. Believe me, I’ve tried.
As mentioned before, a cozy bed awaits me in a separate room, but I’m afraid to use it. What if I still can’t access peace and quiet and sleep even when I’m alone? What if my superstitions come true and leaving our bed brings our marriage some sort of bad luck? On the flip side, some experts concur that sleeping separately may actually be beneficial to a relationship since both partners are more well rested. So maybe my marriage would improve if we weren’t both so grumpy and sleep-deprived all the time.
If queen of conscious uncoupling Gywneth Paltrow can live in an entirely separate house from her husband for the first year of their marriage to “preserve mystery,” I think I should be able to try some unconscious uncoupling by tiptoeing to another room for some shut-eye in solitude one night in the near future.
Maybe by the time our kids are adults, sleeping separately will be an entirely acceptable norm. Who knows? Maybe in the even more distant future, people will be shocked that couples ever tried to sleep in the same bed to begin with.
My young son isn’t yet programmed to think one way or another about where couples sleep, and he came home from a friend’s house the other day and announced that his friend’s dad sleeps in the bottom bunk in his friend’s room while the mom has her own bedroom. He of course thought the notion of bunking with your dad was beyond cool. I don’t know whether to be worried for my friend or jealous of her.
Here’s hoping some zzz’s are within reach for me, and that couples everywhere who are trying to navigate the nighttime hours find some peace and rest wherever they can get it.
