Last Updated:
According to an American Academy of Sleep Medicine 2024 survey, 15% of couples regularly sleep divorce and 20% do so occasionally.
Snoring is one of the reasons behind why couples resort to sleep divorce.
Couples worldwide are resorting to ‘sleep divorce’ as a way to sleep better, thereby enhancing the dynamics within a marriage. Sleep divorce is the occasional or regular separation into different sleeping beds or rooms, allowing the partner to reduce sleep disruption that emanates from sleeping together. As studies show, this has a number of positive implications for health, individually and in relationships.
Some regular sleep divorces happen due to mismatched schedules, while the most common reasons involve snoring or some other way an individual interferes with a partner’s attempt to have restful slumber. According to an American Academy of Sleep Medicine 2024 survey, 15% of couples regularly sleep divorce and 20% do so occasionally.
Most people sleep better in a separate space. According to SleepFoundation.org, around 53% of people who ever tried the sleep divorce slept better. Meanwhile, couples who kept separate bedrooms slept an average of more than 37 minutes more per night compared to co-sleepers.
This enables couples to personalize their sleeping environments, be it the temperature of the room, mattress firmness, or the need to minimize noise, thus improving sleep hygiene and overall health.
A concern for some is that sleeping apart will reduce intimacy. However, experts contend it can actually enhance intimacy for couples if communication lines stay open and time is still given to each other outside the sleeping hours.
A study published in Psychological Bulletin researched the association of marital quality with sleep disturbances. It concluded that the sleep problems of spouses were associated with greater marital unhappiness which supports the fact that poor sleep may amplify relationship tensions, and efforts to alleviate sleep disturbances are important in enhancing marital satisfaction.
Poor sleep can lead to more irritability and increased potential for conflict in a relationship. When couples feel that both of them sleep better being apart, they will likely carry less resentment toward one another and may be generally much more satisfied in the marriage, says Dr. Seema Khosla on behalf of the AASM.
Although some studies reveal that sleeping apart might improve sleep quality, others warn that an unsupervised setup could increase the emotional distance between couples. According to an article in the International Journal of Current Science, the emotional connection through effective communication and spending time in common activities is very crucial for partners to prevent the feeling of rejection associated with sleep divorce.
