***2016 has started off a little intense for this ole blog of mine.  So, I am going to break things up a little with a fluffier piece.  This will segue nicely into some posts that are waiting in the queue to go up.

There was an article that came out recently that compared sleeping arrangements between those in the baby boomer age, to those of today.  Specifically focusing on the idea of sleeping separate in two single beds versus the current norm of couples sleeping in a queen or king size bed together.   Baby boomers slept in separate beds and/or bedrooms.  A lot of the research shows that the main reason for this was child raising.   The mother would sleep with the babies and the father could get a full nights rest for work in the morning.  Our generation however has made this sleeping in different spaces quite the taboo.  If a couple is not sleeping in the same bed then it is a sure sign that something is amiss in the relationship.  Every solid couple sleeps in the same bed, hence why we have gone to great lengths to even make mattresses with two different levels of firmness in one queen sized frame.

I was right on board with this level of close minded thinking right up until December.  I read the article and began to ponder why sleeping on the same bed was so critical to a solid relationship.  In the back of my thinking, I recalled E saying that he and a former girlfriend used to have two beds in the same room pushed together.  Thereby creating a massive room for beds.  With E being 6’6″, this meant he could actually get a full out sprawl on in a queen sized bed.  The gears in my head were really spinning.  If I could for a moment, pretend that sleeping in separate beds did not indicate that there was something wrong in the relationship, could this allow a fuller nights sleep to have two beds in the same room?

I took out a tape measure, and discovered to my amazement that we had a combination of box springs and mattresses in the house that were within a few centimeters of being level.  I excited asked E, if he would like do do a complete rearrange of the furniture upstairs to create our room full of queen sized beds.  I’m pretty sure that by the time I returned with furniture moving beer, he had already taken the old bed frame apart and was well on his way to helping me create our sleeping bliss.

After a few months of sleeping in separate beds, I can tell you that the benefits far outweigh any social stigma that was weighing on my mind.  He comes over to my side of the bed to snuggle while I read, or to have some adult time.  But when the time comes for sleep, I have the complete luxury of cocooning my blankets and cooking myself out with a pile of blankets.  As for E, he can keep his sheets perfectly tucked in around him.  He can sprawl and move from side to side without interrupting my sleep in the slightest.  We can even get out of bed most times without the other person even waking up in the morning, as there is no motion transfer.

Our room for beds has been an amazing experience for the both of us.  Solid nights sleep, no loss of intimacy of any kind, and we were lucky enough that there were minimal costs with making the transition.  So just another example of why questioning social norms can be a really good thing, at least for the two of us.