Chitra Ramaswamy: What is a bad bed partner?

Published on Thursday 23 April 2009 14:25

SOMEONE who participates in a spot of duvet-wrestling, stealing pillows from sleeping heads the way sleight-of-hand waiters whip tablecloths out from underneath plates? Someone who rants, raves, wriggles and giggles in their sleep?

Someone who tells their hollow-eyed partner their dreams in the morning or, worse, wakes them in the night to relay tales of being chased by one-armed monsters with the head of their old geography teacher?

OK, these are just some of the things I do, but is that any reason for a partner, in my case poor underslept C, to head for the spare room?

Apparently an increasing number of us are doing just that. A survey has found that one in four people regularly slinks off to the sofa in the night and seven per cent of couples have separate beds.

I know of older couples who have been together a long time and want their bed back. This, I understand. If you've slept alongside someone for decades and tolerated snoring, slavering and a procession of children hopping in and out, it's fair enough to call time on your nightly kingdom being invaded. We can't all be Brangelina, constantly adding square footage to our beds to admit more adopted babies.

And get this: apparently women sleep better alone. The theory is that we're lighter sleepers because we need to be on the alert for grizzly babies, whether we have them or not. How typical. We've got so much to do that we're better off sleeping alone and forgoing any snuggly intimacy that would only distract us from our true evolutionary purpose. We would probably be more efficient if we didn't sleep at all. Think how much cleaning we would get done.

I have no intention of sneaking off to the spare room and am determined not to let C out of my sight between the hours of 11pm and 7am. Sleeping apart is a farce, something for the likes of the Queen and anyone else who has a different bedroom for each night of the week. For the rest of us it's just yet another area of relationships to problematise. Do we really have to make the bed another battleground?

The thought of it is enough to make me crawl under the duvet.