July 27, 2010--Perchance to Tweet

I'm old fashioned and have always thought that half the reason to get married was so that you could sleep together. Not euphemistically where "sleep together" means having sex, but literally sleeping together. Though, to my generation, to have sex represented the other half of why we got married.

But now I'm hearing that a growing number of the coolest people, who are of course having sex all the time without the benefit of marriage vows, now that they are married, for whatever reason that might be, are sleeping in either separate beds or more commonly in separate bedrooms. Not because they can't stand each other anymore or because one partner snores louder than the New York City subway but because they want to stay up half the night texting and twittering and checking out their Facebook page.

According to a recent article in the New York Times (linked below):

Nearly one in four American couples sleep in separate bedrooms or beds, the National Sleep Foundation reported in a 2005 survey. Recent studies in England and Japan have found similar results. And the National Association of Home Builders says it expects 60 percent of custom homes to have dual master bedrooms by 2015.

In the past, one reason to sleep separately was to practice a form of birth control--after having a dozen children enough was enough and the only sure method of contraception was a form of separate-bedroom abstinence. Nowadays, in addition to wanting to stay up all night to tweet, couples report that they sleep apart because one has restless-leg syndrome (again in the past who knew about such things?); or one partner is addicted to ESPN's SportsCenter ( I think we know which partner that is likely to be) and thus has the TV blasting so he can get the late night baseball scores from the west coast; or one spouse has to get up early for yoga (I think we know which spouse that is likely to be); or the Misses, who can blame her, prefers having their pooch to cuddly with than her ice-cold-footed husband.

Not surprisingly, with this phenomenon growing, there is a cottage industry emerging among pop-psychologists who are writing books and showing up on Oprah to help couples deal with the problem of, forgive me, co-sleeping.

One, professor of psychiatry Paul Rosenblatt of the University of Minnesota, interviewed 42 couple and published his findings in Two In A Bed, a book devoted to co-sleeping. He found that sleeping together is better for one's sex life (as in real estate, it's all about location, location, location); it makes co-sleepers feel more secure (though his finding that this is especially true for women seems overly gendered to me); and that sleeping together is good for one's health--if you have a seizure in the middle of the night and you are in your own separate bedroom, your chances for survival are greatly diminished. It's hard to train your dog to dial 911.

Others getting in on the act have devised and marketed versions of nine-step programs to help separate-sleepers overcome their issues.

Here from the paper of record are three of the steps:

1-Declutter the bed. Feng shui masters say that adjusting the environs around a bed can bring couples closer. . . To improve harmony, Steven Post, a feng shui consultant in San Francisco, recommends wrapping the legs of your bed in red (the color of romance and prosperity) or draping a red cloth over the line that separates the two box springs under a king mattress.

2-Sanctify it. Sleep specialists say that those who pray before they go to bed are more likely to get a good night’s sleep. Dr. Meir Kryger, [just such a specialist at Gaylord Hospital in Connecticut], says any ritual will do, including meditating, reading a poem or keeping a journal.

3-Choreograph it. Dr. Rosenblatt found that most couples sleep best when they face away from each other, the better to avoid flexing knees and “that little gush of bad breath.” Map out a strategy, he said, and adjust it frequently. “Sleeping together is an achievement.”

So, brushing my teeth when I get up 10 times a night to go to the bathroom sounds like a good idea, though I do like the red-wrapped bed legs. Maybe I'll give that a try.