This text is a part of SELF’s Hold It Sizzling package deal, a group of content material that celebrates love and lust. All through February, we’ll be shelling out recommendation and inspiration for feeling scorching, getting attractive, and nurturing romantic relationships.

The primary time I instructed a desk of girls that my companion and I sleep in separate twin beds, somebody instantly requested the query everybody has about our state of affairs, whether or not or not they are saying it out loud: “However how do you’ve got intercourse?” 

The inquiry got here amid a muted mixture of oh’s and a few “that really sounds wonderful” feedback that also appeared to telegraph a silent My SO and I’ll by no means, ever do that. However I’m joyful to report that my companion and I get busy extra typically now than we did through the years (years!!!) that we wasted making an attempt to be a one-bed duo. It’s time to face in my reality—or moderately, lie down in it with my private quilt bunched round my shoulders, unencumbered by the resentment that comes with having a kick-y leg slung over me. Enable me to clarify why that’s a turn-on.

My companion and I are incompatible in mattress. (Sleep. I imply sleep.)

My companion of 11 years and I get alongside splendidly in our waking hours. However we’re wildly incompatible in terms of that factor all of us spend about 30% of our lives doing. (I’m speaking about sleeping, not intercourse—although in case you are devoting a 3rd of your hours to the pursuit of orgasm, I’d like to fulfill you and offer you a Most Enjoyable Particular person medal.) I’m cursed with lifelong insomnia that ebbs and flows. I’m such a lightweight sleeper that, even with my trusty sleep masks and earplugs, the sound of a kitten’s cough may rouse me with a begin. As for my companion…have you ever ever seen these movies of dreaming canines that sputter and shake their legs within the air like they’re operating? That’s what his periodic limb motion dysfunction (PLMD) (a situation widespread in folks with stressed leg syndrome) seems to be like, and it kicks in—actually—each 90 seconds. 

Precisely one and a half minutes after being shaken violently awake, proper as I’d get sucked again into scrumptious drowsiness—BOOM. His double kicks would rock the mattress backward and forward. And, whereas he stayed asleep, I used to be ten-cups-of-coffee-level alert once more. Typically his arms would get into the act throughout a vivid dream too, just like the night time I used to be woke up by a flurry of sunshine karate chops to my facet. “There was a monster,” he defined, dealing with my barely seen glare at midnight. “I used to be defending you!” Humorous, as a result of I felt attacked.

Cultural stress to sleep side-by-side made us really feel extra distant from one another than ever.

We liked sharing a mattress at one level in our relationship: once we lastly moved in collectively after 15 months of long-distance courting. Possibly it was as a result of our brains had been awash in oxytocin after dwelling aside for therefore lengthy, however once we weren’t having reunion intercourse, we cozied up and fell into uninterrupted slumber collectively—on a twin air mattress on the ground of a studio residence, no much less. Certain, from the outset of our relationship, the overwhelming majority of nights discovered me stumbling from the air mattress to the futon at 4 a.m. on account of bedquakes. However, we reasoned, we simply wanted to get a kind of mattresses that would take a beating with out upsetting a large glass of Merlot, and all could be properly. In addition to, all joyful {couples} sleep in the identical mattress, proper?