Sleeping separately strange use of alone time

I enjoy your columns in the Hawaii Tribune Herald in Hilo. Regarding your recent column on separateness and connectedness, there's a problem in our marriage. My wife says she needs alone time. And this is OK. However, this alone time that she wants is to sleep alone in another room. I do not seem to get over not sleeping with her. To be truthful, I really enjoy hugging her in the morning before I get up. It is a way to be connected. It seems like we are just roommates, and I do not want our marriage to be like this.

-- R.H., Hilo, Hawaii

Let me say something out loud that is often not obvious until you say it out loud: Sleeping together is a very intimate business. It's so vulnerable. Tender. Sublime. And, in this case, of course, I'm being literal. I'm not talking about sex. I'm talking sleeping in the same bed with your beloved. Coming in and out of the mystery of consciousness with another human being. Morning breath. Morning hair. Morning face. Spooning. Lounging. Cuddling. Not something I want to share with just anyone.

Don't believe it's all that intimate? Try falling asleep in mixed company in a socially inappropriate place. In the movie theater. In class. At work. You awaken to see several people smiling at you. Then the telltale rush of self-consciousness.

The cliche, of course, is that when married people are fighting, it's the woman who banishes the man from the bedroom: "Go sleep on the couch!" Which always leaves me wondering who decided that women rule the master bedroom and the marriage bed. I know I didn't vote on that. But they do. Husbands never say to wives, "Go sleep on the couch!"

Which all leads me to say the next obvious thing: The marriage bed is a powerful, powerful symbol. Never merely a piece of furniture. The loss you are feeling is real and significant. You're not making a big deal of nothing.

There are details here that I'm missing, which might have bearing on my response. When did your wife present this preference for garnering alone time by sleeping alone? That is, did she announce this early in the courtship? Prior to marriage? Indeed, I have known occasional men and women who have idiosyncratic sleep habits of fastidious separateness. These people can and do participate in successful marriages with understanding partners.

Or did she appear to sleep contentedly at your side for several years before making this announcement? If this is the case, I would have more questions for her. As you say, the need/request for alone time is legitimate and necessary. But there are myriad times, places and ways to acquire said alone time. Why set up shop in the middle of such a powerful and intimate symbol of marital connectedness?

In short, I would wonder if there isn't more going on here. What is this about? And why now?

Here's what she didn't say: You snore. You have sinus drainage. You have restless limb syndrome. You don't trim your toenails. You sleep fitfully. You thrash. You leave the TV on all night. I have a diagnosable sleep disorder. I can't abide your weak bladder and multiple trips every night to the bathroom. Your graveyard work schedule messes with my REM sleep. "The Dream Your Way to Weight Loss" guided meditation CDs you bought from that infomercial: Well, it turns out I can't sleep and be filled with skinny self-esteem at the same time.

See, that's a list of things that can and do lead some couples to negotiate separate bedroom suites. But, alone time? It's an unusual request, and I'm curious about it. Imagine telling her that, from now on, you'll have all the bank accounts only in your name and you'll be doing all the banking by yourself because that's how you get your alone time. Or that you'll never vacation together again because that's how you get your alone time.

My sense is that I want to dig deeper. That somehow we have neither asked nor answered the right question. This is the kind of marital impasse that could benefit from a three- to four-session intervention with a skilled marriage counselor.

Separate bedrooms? For the right woman, I suppose, I could do it. If I had to. But it would be a painful loss. And I'd never be OK with it.

I'm a sucker for morning hugs, too.

Originally published in View News, Dec. 1, 2009.