In Their Own Words

Based on intensive interview data from 46 couples who share a bed, this book explores how couples learn to sleep together, how they deal with their differences and how couple bed sharing changes as the two partners' bodies and life situations change. The book explores how couples deal with cold feet, temperature preference differences, partners who steal blankets, snoring, sleep apnea, television and reading in bed, nightmares, children wandering into the bedroom, health problems, job tensions that come to bed at night, and much more. For some couples the few minutes they spend talking before falling asleep is most of their time talking each day. Many people talked about valuing the intimacy of their time in bed together and many women said that they felt safer when not alone in bed. And yet many people who were interviewed said that they would get much better sleep when sleeping alone. So for many part of the challenge of sharing a bed is living with the paradox of valuing the time together but knowing that one could sleep better if alone.