Yet Another Way I'm Out Of Touch

The New York Times reports that separate bedrooms for married couples are becoming almost normal. This was reported on my local newscast this evening, making me cringe. I've got to blog on this, I thought, or I'll go mad.
So I looked up the article. After reading it three times and scraping my jaw off the ground, I think I'm ready to rebut the insanity.

In interviews, couples and sociologists say that often it has nothing to do with sex. More likely,
it has to do with snoring.

Uh, not to put too fine a point on it, but my wife snores. Sometimes almost loud enough to drown out one of the fans we keep running in our bedroom to (a) chill the air and (b) keep exterior noise at bay. But her nocturnal noise is nothing to what our puppy, Georgia, puts out. She can reverse the direction of all three fans when she gets going.
Also, when I'm tired--which is pretty often--I snore too.
There are many reasons people snore. Some of them, such as sleep apnea, are dangerous. Nearly all of them are correctable. The love of your life leaving the room might help her sleep, but it won't do a thing to fix your snoring problem.

Or with children crying.

Huh? Children sleep in their own rooms, if they're old enough. Even if not, what does this have to do with sleeping single? A wailing rugrat will either wake one, or both, of you up. No matter where you are in the house.

Or with getting up and heading for the gym at 5:30 in the morning.

Every Friday morning, I get to sleep in until seven or eight, but Eva still has to go to work, so the alarm--which in our bedroom is a television--blares and glares at 5:11 like usual. Sometimes I sleep right through it, as Eva is considerate enough not to blow trumpets in my face or dump cold water on me. Often, though, the TV does wake me, as after over eight years I'm pretty much conditioned to wake up when it goes off. And on those Fridays, I mumble an I-love-you to my wife and relish the fact I still have 90 or 150 minutes of sleep left to sleep.
We both do it, actually: on those rare days when we both decide to sleep in, sometimes we'll forget--accidentally or on purpose--to turn the alarm off. When the light dawns and the chefs on the Food Network start up with the sizzle and squeal, we wake up, look at each other, smile, and drop back off to sleep. It's indulgent. Decadent. Much better than just sleeping right through.

Or with sending e-mail messages until well after midnight.

Here's a thought: get the damned computer out of your bedroom, if it bothers you so much.

The article goes on to do a little mini-case study of a wife with a snoring husband who had other issues:

“He cannot have his feet tucked into any of the covers; I have to have them tucked in. So I took all the linens and split them with scissors. Then I finished the edge so that half of the sheet would tuck under and the other half he could kick out.”

Eva and I have this problem, too. I love to be completely immobilized, the more covers the better, while she's unbelieveably picky about what's allowed to touch her skin...and she too must have her feet hanging out in the breeze, in a brazen imitation to any marauding boogeymen. Here's how we solve this, no scissors required: I take a sheet and coccoon myself in it. Then I lay the quilt over both of us, tucking it in on my side. Finally, I place the duvet on the bed and fold it over so it's doubled on me. (If it so much as grazes my wife, she's liable to burst into flame.)

The newscast I saw posited shiftwork as another valid reason for separate bedrooms. This I really don't get. If I work nights and Eva works days, we both end up with our own bedroom. It's the same room. Neither of us sleeps particularly well because the other's not there, mind you. And again, on Thursday nights I've usually crawl into bed around midnight, long after Eva's asleep. Usually she doesn't wake up. Sometimes she does, mumbles an I-love-you, and drifts back off to sleep in seconds.

Husbands, the Times article notes, are less likely to opt for separate sleeping arrangements. The unspoken assumption is that men want their wives available for sex whenever they feel like it. And yet, Eva's even more vociferously against this whole sleeping solo thing, and it doesn't have anything to do with sex for either of us. It has to do with sleeping together. We sleep better together. To us, it says something if a married couple sleeps better apart, especially if they haven't done much to try sleeping together.

There is a legitimate case to be made for separate beds, sometimes. Some people like a soft mattress and others like to sleep on something approaching concrete, and not everybody can afford or is interested in a Sleep Number bed. Thats when you buy a couple of single or double beds and push 'em together.

As far as I'm concerned, the word for spouses who don't sleep together isn't spouse but something even less intimate than room-mate. House-mate, maybe. Isn't that romantic?