Ronald Hoang Marriage Counselling & Family Therapy Sydney

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Cameron Diaz says “couples should have separate bedrooms” - Relationship Expert thoughts

There’s a real stigma around couples sleeping in separate bedrooms, people automatically think “there must be something wrong with that relationship!” But actually, its a normal and can be a healthy arrangement amongst couples. I've worked with couples who are in healthy, happy relationships who happen to sleep in their own separate rooms at night. The difference is, these couples sleep in separate bedrooms in order to enhance their relationship, they’re not doing it because it's a solution or the result of a relationship problem. 

There are times when it just makes sense - for instance one partner is a light sleeper, and the other snores. Sleeping in separate bedrooms can be a practical solution, they can become better versions of themselves and therefore they can turn up better for the relationship.

Sleeping in separate rooms can provide a healthy sense of individuality. Just because you're in a loving relationship doesn't mean you have to spend every waking (and sleeping!) moment with each other. Its okay, and in fact healthy, to have a sense of separation from your partner - not complete separation, but some. A healthy relationship is a balance of togetherness and separateness. Just like having separate hobbies, interests or preferences, and maybe part of that is choosing to sleep in separate bedrooms. 

Sleeping separately could even enhance desire for your partner. Desire is the wanting, and you want what you can’t have. Sleeping separately can give you a sense that you don’t fully have your partner. Sleeping in the same bedroom every night, it’s predictable, safe, familiar - not exactly the ingredients for desire and attraction.

Happy, healthy couples sleeping in separate rooms is more common than you think. Its because of the stigma that nobody comes out and admits it. Its a perfectly reasonable arrangement when it enhances the relationship, rather than it being representative of an underlying problem with the relationship. 

I agree with Cameron, we should normalise it, it’s not a problem.