My husband is my best friend. He’s my lover. He’s my No. 1 co-parent. He’s a great provider and problem solver and an all around amazing partner whom I never want to leave. And I’m able to see these things much more clearly now that we do not sleep in the same bed.
I am not the first person to “sleep divorce” my partner, and multiple studies and personal accounts have proven that more and more committed couples are choosing to sleep in different beds, with nearly 18 percent choosing to sleep separately every night, according to a 2025 survey conducted by the sleep-health company Resmed. When I tell you, though, that this decision has changed my marriage for the better – and possibly saved it – please understand how multilevel that declaration is.
With mounting marital resentment that’s based on lack of sleep, the only real prescription was to . . . sleep.
My husband and I were in a commonly challenging stage of marriage when we decided to call it sleep-quits. We were several years married, both with full-time jobs, and had a toddler-age son and a preteen daughter. My husband is a natural hustler, and had been getting on me to take more “ownership” of major responsibilities like swimming lessons and preschool management. I am a natural neat freak, and I had been getting on him to take more ownership of smaller responsibilities, like throwing away trash. So when he would wake me up in the middle of the night to put on my “snore teeth” – which I had purchased out-of-pocket after not qualifying for insurance coverage for a nightguard to prevent snoring – I would snap back, enraged that he was asking me to do yet another thing. How dare he ask me to put on my snore teeth at 2 a.m. when he, also a snorer, couldn’t even put his used tissues in the garbage?
I always woke up feeling like a monster after those kinds of frequent, petty episodes. I even upped my meds in an effort to quell my rage and anxiety around my husband. But with mounting marital resentment that’s based on lack of sleep, the only real prescription was to . . . sleep.
Our sleep divorce started surreptitiously. One of us would “fall asleep” on the couch, unspokenly knowing it was a conscious choice based on all those snore teeth incidents. Then on nights when his daughter, my stepdaughter, was at her mom’s house, my husband would “accidentally” fall asleep after a long night of work in her room, which doubles as his WFH office.
Eventually, these accidental sleep-away habits became the norm. We tiptoed around the issue with each other, ashamedly admitting it felt “bad” from time to time. But then, we started texting each other stories about celebrities normalizing this experience, and eventually the shame associated with breaking from dominant married-couple paradigms started to fade – especially when we realized how many specific aspects of our marriage were benefitting from sleeping in separate bedrooms.
So, for all those other struggling couples out there, here’s my case for getting a sleep divorce.
We Carve Out Alone Time For Guilty Pleasures
At the end of a long day, I’m usually desperate for alone time. It’s not that I can’t unwind in the company of my husband or others – it’s that I prefer solitude, so I can watch reality TV, eat leftovers, and melt down my phone in a judgment-free space.
Most of those activities are extremely fun to do in bed, and, for me, are tranquilizing. Their natural end is a full night’s sleep. Knowing that I can fall asleep to the comfort of my own guilty-pleasure TV shows while my husband watches his sports has all but eradicated the end-of-night remote-control war we used to experience, and now our pre-bed couch time results in the expansion of cultural horizons (sometimes I even watch Bill Maher with him!).
We’re Able to Show Up For Each Other in Different Ways
When we were running on empty all the time, my husband and I would trade off the grocery store and shuffling-the-kids-around slog. Now, those types of mundane tasks feel like fun times with my bestie. When I get a text from him that says, “Want me to come pick you up from your spinning class and we can take [our son] to Trader Joe’s together?,” I get fanny flutters.
Our Sex Life Has Actually Improved
When COVID first hit in 2020 and everyone in the 9-to-5 world was sent home to work, it was a weird, scary, and confusing time. In addition to a pandemic taking over, I was also working at a major entertainment brand at the time, helping with the launch of a new streaming service. To mitigate the stress of figuring this out from my bedroom, I felt grateful I was able to waltz into the room where my husband was working and just hug him . . . and sometimes more. (Before you judge, just think of this as a lunch break with dessert. And sorry to my old boss, if he’s reading this.)
That’s when I learned that I actually prefer off-hours intimacy. Night sex seems boring now, if I’m being honest, and predictable – midday sex is more of a revitalizant for me, due to the spontaneity of it. I’m glad we don’t have the pressure of defaulting to nighttime sex just because we’re sleeping in the same bed.
We Have More Meaningful Date Nights
Because there is so much intimacy and connection associated with sharing a bed with a partner, my husband and I channel a lot of that into scheduled date nights at restaurants, shows, and movies. I’ll admit I have some strengthening to do on my end here; I’m not the world’s best event planner, as I pour a lot of my energy into my career and self-care/health endeavors. But now I know how truly important this skill is, and I have a renewed sense of commitment to practicing it.
We’ve Figured Out More Equitable Childcare, Especially in the Mornings
My husband and I have a scheduled rotation for the clothing, brushing, feeding, and packing of our kids in the morning before school or camp. When I used to be up all night because my husband was snoring or vice versa, though, getting up with the kids felt like violent punishment. Waking him up to take my place on my scheduled morning because I was too exhausted resulted in fights, stressful mornings, and sometimes ruined days, for both of us. Since our sleep divorce, I haven’t violated the morning schedule rule even once.
We’re Trying to Balance Chores, Housework, and Life Admin
. . . OK, OK, we haven’t fully figured this one out yet. There is still some imbalance on both our ends. But – we want to. We want to figure this out so badly. I want to be better at the life things he wants, and he wants to be better at the life things I want. And believing in this commitment is a step forward from where we were, which was a place of resentment over managing diaper orders and laundry and preschool applications and dates and keeping the damn kitchen counter clear. Now that we don’t sleep in the same bed at night, though, I know I am going to become a better school mom, and I know he is going to become better at putting his ripped-up envelopes in the recycling bin.
In conclusion: partners have to prioritize sleep, in whatever ways work for them, and we should all destigmatize any associated shame. Take it from my husband and me, a pair of symphonic snorers.
Joanna Brenner supports the curation and production of newsletters at PS, ensuring readers engage with PS stories across health, fitness, and overall lifestyle in ways that make them feel seen, but not judged. She has overseen and managed editorial strategies at Peacock, Vanity Fair, ProPublica, and the Pew Research Center, and works with digital publishers to strengthen voice and credibility across all platforms (especially newsletters, the love letter of the 21st century).
