A kitchen, a bathroom and a corridor separate my partner and me. Every night, I fall asleep alone in the living room, on a sofa bed with a view of the television. Emma – let’s call her that because she didn’t ask to land in the pages of L’Express – is sleeping in a duvet that’s too big, at the other end of the apartment. The room, a rectangle typical of functional buildings of the seventies, should have been our own bedroom. It became her own room.
My clothes are lying there, packed in the wardrobe that runs along the wall. There is no other place to put them. When the door is closed, I knock to collect them. For the rest, everything is hers over there: this poster dripping with yellow next to the desk, these balls of yarn, a vestige of a knitting project that is not moving forward, these little Hawaiian figurines… In the morning, we say hello to each other in the kitchen or in front of the toilet.
“Do you have guests?” a friend asked me one day when he saw my sheets folded up in a corner. I explain to him ; he refrains from answering. As if the discomfort had swelled, somewhere between the duvet and the pillows. “Are you okay between you?” dares another, recklessly. Every time I talk about our choice, eyes well up with worry, smiles dry up. Except my mother, who only sees the good in her neighbor, especially when it comes to her child. “Sleeping in pairs isn’t for everyone,” she said simply.
A not so rare practice
My mother understood in a second what took me months to understand. Before this discussion, I couldn’t help but wonder: Isn’t it strange, at 25, to sleep so far apart? Emma and I had almost never spent a night together. We got closer while we were roommates. We could easily see each other, while staying at home. We talked about it briefly. It’s simpler, more comfortable, so we continue like that and that’s it.
I later discovered that we were not the only ones. More and more Americans are sleeping in separate rooms, according to a 2023 survey for the daily New York Times. They are now one in five couples, Cameron Diaz included. The famous actress has become the muse of the practice. Like her, half of solitary sleepers say that it has no impact on their relationship, or that on the contrary, their relationship has improved. In France, Emma and I joined the 16% of French people who do this or would like to do the same, according to a survey by theIfop published in 2021. I am relieved.
Before meeting Emma, I had never thought about the ritual of sleeping when it’s a couple. There was this obvious fact: lovers sleep together or separate. Or worse, they don’t dare to separate, and spend the night between them. My grandparents have separate rooms whenever they can: they no longer hug each other since the invention of the Internet. They talk to each other through the framework, he upstairs, she downstairs. So I saw the sofa or the guest room as skimmers, where the bitterness of the couple who are no longer really one ends up.
The received idea of divorce through sleep
The idea is so ingrained that it has a name: “sleep divorce“. Literally, divorce through sleep. On the video sharing platform TikTok, the expression has 11.5 million views. However, making separate beds has not always been considered the antechamber of breakup. What can love do in the face of fashions and conventions? There was a time when we vegetated at 8, for lack of heating. Another time when couples from certain social classes were not allowed to mix, as a matter of morals. like the royal couple in The Crown, the series on the British monarchy. And then there are all these countries, like Germany or northern Europe, where the norm is two single beds, side by side or a little further apart.
The quality of sleep is at the top of the reasons given for having a separate bedroom. This one would be better, rid of the other, its snoring, its shaking, its habits, sometimes so foreign. At two, I don’t sleep. When I was younger, I had problems sleeping. The slightest noise kept me awake for hours, even with earplugs screwed into my ears. I fidget. Emma is sleepwalking. She falls out of bed, gets up, starts speaking in English, the language she uses at work. Once she screamed, “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.”
Clément, another fan of distant layers, took it personally at the beginning: “When my girlfriend left the bed, it hurt me,” confides this young 36-year-old projectionist, enthusiastic about the idea of telling his story. , after spotting my call for witnesses. His girlfriend explained to him that she couldn’t stand the noise but that she loved it. And here he is transformed into the most ferocious of free sleepers: “Never again will I sleep together again. The couple is already a lot of compromises, you might as well not make any about sleep”, he explains, although he doesn’t never had any problems: “It’s above all a comfort”.
Two sleepers, twice as many awakenings?
Do we really sleep better alone? Scientists think like my mother. “It depends on who and how, but in the long term, being together is not necessarily the best,” warns Professor Pierre Philip, head of the department at Bordeaux University Hospital, and popularizer on Instagram. He also plays the windchest solo. He explains to me that the quality of sleep is just as important as its duration and regularity. “However, the first risk is nocturnal awakenings. Together, we potentiate the threat,” he says.
People who sleep with a loud snorer are three times more likely to have difficulty falling and staying asleep, according to a 2017 study published in the journal Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine. With, as a result, twice the risk of being tired or drowsy. Those who sleep with a person who works odd hours are more likely to have symptoms of depression and cognitive disorders, notes another study, published in SSM – Population Health.
When I happen to sleep with Emma, I have the impression that she “transmits” her nocturnal awakenings to me and that they are added to mine. It’s possible: it happens to those who sleep with an insomniac person, as shown by a study published in Sleep, in 2020, conducted on around fifty couples. Contamination is stronger when one of the members of the union forces its natural rhythm to follow its partner in his habits. Another, published in Sleep Health the same year, she also observed this effect.
These phenomena worsen over time. The older we get, the lighter our sleep becomes. But not at the same speed for men or women, showed a study published in 2021 in Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine. This is not the only sexual difference. Monsieur is often more tolerant of disturbances, but also more prone to snoring, especially when he is young. Madam is, she, more often insomniac. So much risk of becoming “incompatible”. At this stage of the investigation, I have the impression of having saved myself from danger, for my health and for my relationship.
Differences between men and women
However, these harms must be qualified. Because there are also advantages to a night for two. The presence of others can help you relax and fall asleep. “There is nothing more beautiful than this moment when everything mixes skin against skin,” a friend confided to me, as if to convince me. Numerous studies have shown that contact with your partner’s skin releases oxytocin, a hormone which contributes to calming and a feeling of security. An essential element when it comes to sleep.
By reviewing the scientific literature, researchers realized that the “subjective” quality of sleep, that reported by volunteers, was better in “co-sleepers”. These results are described in a scientific article by Sleep Health, from 2021. If we feel good against each other, we’re more likely to think we’re sleeping well. This may translate into a real improvement in certain mechanisms involved in rest, according to a more in-depth study, published in Frontiers Psychiatry in 2020.
This time, the researchers asked around twenty young couples to lie down under their measuring instruments. As a result, shared sleep was associated with an increase of approximately 10% in REM sleep, which also appeared to be less fragmented. These phases, lasting around two hours in adults, occur more frequently at the end of the night. They are crucial for memory formation. Which suggests that some people get more peace of mind than nuisance. Especially if they are “compatible” at this level.
These studies are partial, piecemeal. But, one after the other, they seem to confirm one thing: when it comes to sleep as a couple, it is better not to force yourself. “We must keep in mind that sleeping alone can be beneficial, especially if we feel that our sleep is weakening. The important thing is to intervene before the pathological stage,” emphasizes Professor Pierre Philip. A lot of people ask me if I don’t miss snuggling with my girlfriend. In reality, I never stopped: while watching a series, during a nap or before going to sleep on my own.
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