Pillows, Blankets & Bedsheets Must Be Shared by Two

Sleeping Together: Resolving Marital Problems, Relieving Stress and Anxiety

A sleep specialist from the University of Michigan, Dr. Beth Malow, has stated that married couples spend nearly one-third of their lives sleeping together.

She encourages married couples to cuddle. Many marriage experts believe that peaceful sleeping together can keep a marriage healthy.

Why Share a Bed?

Why do people share a bed with a spouse if they would sleep better if they didn't? Usually the answer is because even if you don't get the best night's sleep, you find comfort and emotional intimacy in sleeping together.

Sleep Position: Spooning
When you can sleep together, many sleep experts recommend "spooning." This is the sleeping position where people sleep nested together like spoons. This sleeping position is believed to increase intimacy and lower stress.

Sometimes people worry because their spouse is sleeping with their back to them or seems to be far away in the bed. Don't jump to conclusions.

Although sleep positions can be a red flag in a marriage, experts say there is no "good" or "bad" sleep positions in a marriage.

Best Solution: Compromise
So what do you do if you have different sleep preferences? Find ways to compromise. If that doesn't work, be realistic and consider separate bedrooms or twin beds.

Separate bedrooms or twin beds can save your marriage. When couples first start sleeping together, they are willing to sacrifice comfort to be close to their partner. After about five years or so, many people just want to have a good night's sleep again.

Millions of Couples Sleep Together

The truth is, millions of us do share our beds and we do sleep with others and whether we snore or not or whether we prefer the right side of the bed or the left side of the bed. Those things do affect our partners and us. Contrary to popular opinion, there is more to sharing a bed than sexual intimacy - it's a challenging and complicated part of our marriages and one we rarely address. In fact how you and your spouse handle the complicated matter of sharing a bed can actually have a profound effect on the rest of your marriage.

When you go to bed in the evening, many couples spend at least a few minutes reflecting on their day and chatting. That time spent talking in bed may be the only time they spend totally focused on each other in their entire day. Those few minutes of conversation are critical to the overall health of the relationship and since most married couples, myself included, put a high premium on sharing a bed with their spouse - it's important to understand that when you have difficulty sharing the same bed or you go to bed alone and wake up alone - you may be isolating yourself in your marriage.

Sharing Your Bed & Your Life

The benefits of sharing a bed together include:

• Increased intimacy
• Pleasurable activity
• Increased sense of comfort
• Security in planning and decision making
• Solving problems together
• Catching up with each other

Without this time together, it can affect every other part of the couple's relationship. So when one partner snores and it drives the other partner out of the room, it's about more than just the physical act of snoring. Some couples will even forgo regular sleep in favor of maintaining their closeness together. The thing is, when we have trouble sleeping, we get cranky. When we have trouble sleeping together, we get lonely.

Cranky and lonely are two separate feelings, but both of those emotions affect our marriages and us. There's lots of help out there for sleeping problems for individuals, but not a lot about helping the two of you get a good night's sleep together and overcoming the complication of being an early bird versus a night owl versus liking a lot of pillows versus no pillows versus a firm mattress or a soft mattress and the list goes on and on and on.

Learn How to Sleep Together

When you are first married, learning how to sleep together is actually a part of orientating yourself to marriage. It's more than just a life change, it's a change in thinking, feeling and doing. There's no handbook on how to sleep together, we all figure it out for ourselves. It's about our physical and emotional security.

How do you and your spouse handle sleeping together?