Save a Relationship by Sleeping in Separate Bedrooms
Falling asleep in a bed with your partner sounds like an ideal relationship, going to sleep together and waking up together, but in the real world that picture of a perfect life is far from reality for most people. Talking, snoring, fidgeting and duvet hogging are the most common reasons why many people are now starting to sleep in different beds.
Research by Surrey University discovered that the traditional British way of sleeping in a 4ft6 double bed can have more harm than good to a relationship, especially when you think that a standard single bed is 3ft, which means you have less individual sleeping space than your child does. After carrying out studies, they found that sleeping in separate beds can stop arguments over duvet-hogging, snoring and fidgeting among other disturbances.
The British Snoring and Sleep Apnoea Association states that 41.5% of British people snore and 15 million have a partner who snores, and more than a third of people in the UK lose two years’ sleep because of their partner’s snoring. As stereotypically believed, snoring males outnumber female snorers by 2.3 to 1, this is because females have wider airways, and half of men are snorers by the age of 60.
The recommended amount of sleep is seven and half hours for good health, however a third of people in the UK have less than five hours because of being disturbed from a partner.
Whether it’s duvet-hogging, snoring or fidgeting, losing sleep can have more consequences than just loss of sleep, as having a poor sleep pattern increases the risk of a stroke, heart disease and divorce. Despite this survey, people are reluctant to sleep in different bedrooms because of social expectations – just eight percent of people in their 40s and 50s have separate bedrooms. Separate bedrooms are much more common in old age, with 40% of those aged 70 plus sleeping apart.
Many people will be disinclined to sleep in separate beds and for some people it’s not possible. For some couples, purchasing a new bed and mattress can help to lessen sleep disturbances for both people. The party who tosses and turns, talks, snores or hogs the duvet may do these things because of a poor quality mattress, while the person affected may find sleeping easier in a higher quality bed.
buying a larger sized mattress and bed like a king size or super king size will give you both more sleeping space, which could help to prevent these sleep disturbances, as both people will have a wider space to sleep away from a partner.
For someone who shares a bed with a partner with a different body weight, a pocket sprung mattress would also be a good choice because they feature individual springs that are pocketed within the mattress and all move independently, providing support where the individual person requires and applies it. Silentnight’s choice of beds and mattresses have an effective ‘no roll together’ design that has support running edge to edge and would prevent someone from being disturbed by their partner moving around.
If you share a bed with a partner who snores, sleeping on a memory foam mattress or memory foam pillow can help to prevent someone from snoring because it places the body, neck and head in the right alignment for the body, opening up the airways to allow air pass through properly without creating the snoring noise.
