March 13, 2007--Perchance to Snore

I always thought it was the height of sophistication for husbands and wives to have separate bedrooms. You know—Nick and Nora Charles style. Fool around in the living room, smoking and drinking and bantering playfully, and then go off to one’s own bedroom when it came time to do that biological thing called sleep, an unfortunate human condition where it’s difficult to either look good or, while tossing and turning, be cool. Unspoken—it was also a way to avoid that messy thing called sex and served as an ideal form of birth control.

And now I learn that there is a growing trend for even middle-class spouses to want their architects and interior designers to arrange for bedrooms of their own. (See NY Times article linked below.) From Census data we know that a majority of adults are now living singly; but according to the Association of Home Builders, if current trends continue, by 2015 fully 60 percent of the minority who are living with spouses or partners will have what they call “dual-master bedrooms.” (Maybe to be politically correct they need to rename this feature “dual master-mistress bedrooms—though that too presents problems.)

But the reason for this sleeping alone business is not about pretending to be Myrna Loy and William Powell or sexual incompatibility. It appears to have more to do with one spouse wanting to get some sleep when children are crying or wanting to get up before dawn to hit the gym or feeling the impulse to do middle-of-the-night emails or just because his (or her, to be fair) snoring is as loud as a chain saw.

The Times quotes one wife as saying that her husband’s restlessness is so bothersome that if they hadn’t set up a cot in another room for him, “I would have killed him.” Before they could afford a second room she tried other solutions—even cutting the linens and blankets in half so his side of the bed could have them untucked to accommodate his restless legs and hers could be snugly tucked in, which she required in order to get a good night’s sleep.

But though that helped with his twisting and tugging at the bedding, it didn’t curtail his snoring. Yes, he was a snorer too. Trying to make things work until they could either get one of the kids off to college freeing up a bedroom or saving enough to be able to buy a bigger house, she bought a pair of those sound-muffling headsets they wear at shooting ranges. But as you can imagine, though they did manage to block out the sound of his snoring, she found it difficult to sleep with that bulky over-ear apparatus.

In case you are concerned about the effects of this trend on couples’ sex lives, some are actually finding it quite stimulating. After years of marriage when, how shall we put this, the flames of ardor alas have diminished, getting together on weekends, as many seem to do, is like a return to the old dating-days. In this case, after a candle-lit dinner in their one dining room, with two bedrooms, it’s a natural, after finishing a couple of bottles of wine, to leer across the table, and seductively ask, “Your room or mine?”