Separate Bedrooms it is!

February 10, not coincidently, probably, just before Valentine’s Day, Ronda Kaysen writes, in The New York Times, about people who live together, who love each other, who choose to sleep in separate bedrooms (“I Love You, But I don’t Want to Sleep with You,” https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/10/realestate/couples-separate-bedrooms.html).

Acknowledging that when someone is deeply annoying (for example, because they snore) some sort of fix is in order and that people do indeed need their own space, a territory that’s all their own (for their mental wellbeing) is too rarely done—but it doing so can have positive effects on mental and physical health.

As Kaysen reports, “One in five couples sleep in separate bedrooms. . . . And interior designers have reconfigured homes to transform separate bedrooms into adjoining ones. . . . according to the International Housewares Association, a trade organization, 31 percent of surveyed couples who said they sleep apart reported that the arrangement had no impact on their relationship, and 21 percent said that their relationship improved because of it. . . About 46 percent of the people surveyed who said they had called the shared bed quits blamed a partner’s snoring or tossing-and-turning for the change, according to the International Housewares Association. The survey found other