Comments on: Sleeping together and sleeping together: a post about beds

By: william

william — Tue, 15 May 2007 07:35:46 +0000

Your article on couples who don’t sleep together amounts to a great first step for those married couples who wish to practice total abstinence. My wife and I have normal sexual desires, but we decided immediately after marriage that we would be totally abstinent, permanently. All of our sexually active friends, married or unmarried, develop serious relationship problems, and they all have one thing in common: the wives, shortly after marriage, don’t want any sex at all with their husbands, and most, not any kind of sexual touching. They’ve been to “therapy,” read books, communicate well with their husbands, but they just don’t want sex with them. My wife and I have a great marriage without any sex at all, and I have more time and energy to concentrate on her needs, not mine. Marriage, whether men accept it or not, is about fulfilling the WOMAN’S needs, not the man’s. Men have absolutely no right to coerce the wife into sexual submission; and most wives who say “yes” desperately want to say “no, not ever.” Wives are not property. My wife and I are intensely attracted to each other because it’s only natural to crave what you can’t have; but because we realize that after a woman has submitted to sex, she usually feels that she has been “used,” we have decided never to give in to our sexual lust. Irritation, disappointment, boredom, and eventually anger and divorce are the consequences for well over half of all married couples who engage in sex. We don’t want to go down that road, especially when we realize that other couples, like us, who abstain completely, are much happier than those who give in to their sexual urges. We only wish that all married couples could enjoy the benefits of total abstinence after marriage.

By: Jayne

Jayne — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 16:06:50 +0000

What a great post..certainly several things that have been on my mind lately. My boyfriend and I somehow managed to actually sleep all night the first time we shared a bed and that meant more to me than the first time we ’slept together.’

I never sleep well by myself, but it’s part of a neurotic tendency I have. I always sleep more soundly with him. I even count it lucky that we have similar sleep patterns and habits.

By: Hugo

Hugo — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 20:43:21 +0000

Thanks, all, for the interesting comments and kind words. And thanks for “de-lurking”, Naomi!

Now, I was always taught that beds were for two things: sleeping and sex. That meant no studying on the bed in college (a rule I stuck to scrupulously; I usually studied lying on the floor); it also meant not having kids in bed with you. I wasn’t in my parent’s bed as a child, except when I was very tiny (a few months old). But maybe it’s a WASP thing to see the bedroom as the parents’ sacred space.

By: Naomi Patrao

Naomi Patrao — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 21:15:09 +0000

Oh Hugo! What a lovely, lovely post!
You don’t know me, but I have been reading your blog with great interest and an increasing sense of affection. I plan to write to you, but have been so busy with my University apps, (Master’s in Public Health - International Health and Health Policy), that I have pretty much been putting it off. But I soon shall!
Warm wishes dear blog-friend
Naomi.

By: Sarah

Sarah — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 19:04:33 +0000

Sleeping together (just sleeping) is a social adaptaion that humans haved used for centuries and centuries for safety, the development of intimacy, and dammit it feels good. In our sex-driven society, just sleeping together has become sexualized so that sharing sleep with anyone other than a sexual partner is weird, gross, taboo, wrong. I never thought about this much until I had children and we decided to share sleep with them (or “co-sleep” as many call it). The reaction from mainstream Americans is that sleeping with your children is making them dependent on you, is a sign of your own neediness, etc. This is laughable since people have been sharing sleep with family for eons. It’s not like the cave-men carved another hole in the cave for each child! While it does bring up some challenges that require creative solutions (sex on the kitchen counter, anyone?) I have loved the months we chose to sleep with our daughters. They are now sleeping most of the night in their own beds (and they are 3 years and 18 months, respectively).

By: Elle

Elle — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 13:36:19 +0000

I certainly sleep with my boyfriend more often than the euphemism, lol! One of the things that made us want to live together quickly was so that we could sleep in the same bed every night. It is absolutely incomparable as a bonding tool in a relationship. Every night when we go to sleep, some part of our bodies are touching. Maybe we’re spooning, or maybe my foot is just touching his foot. We might go to bed at the same time or hours apart, but as you said, we sleep sounder when we’re both there. If we’re apart, we have to take steps to be as tired as possible before we go to bed, or neither of us can get to sleep. We both snore, but it doesn’t bother either of us.

The concept of separate bedrooms is so alien to me, I can’t imagine how couples do it!

By: Catty

Catty — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 19:08:46 +0000

Sleeping together is OK. I slept in the same bed with my sister until my early teens. After that, my best friends often slept over and vice-versa, so I was usually sleeping with another person. As an adult, when I was single, I used to always crash out a various friends’ houses and crash out in the same bed with them (male or female). I admit that my very favorite sleeping partners are my cats. I just like having another living soul dozing on the bed- whether it’s my friend or my cat, or my BF…

By: *Christopher

*Christopher — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 00:09:55 +0000

Snuggling up together and falling asleep is simply one of the simple pleasures of life, and I must say that this is something I always valued with my past lovers and now with my partner. Sex was often great, but sleeping together was calming, nesting, humanizing, and even healing. A few times, young and horny though we were, we were happy simply to sleep together.

I must say, however, that my partner snores awfully, has been to the doctor, etc. Often, I end up on the floor in the front room (we live in a very small flat), and sleep disruption can be a serious problem. So, I value those few nights I can stay in bed with him.

By: debbie

debbie — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 23:23:44 +0000

I was very moved reading about your father being able to share his bed with your mother on his last night. My grandfather was also able to spend his last nights with my grandmother. He died in his own bed, surrounded by his wife and children, listening to Frank Sinatra (his favourite musician).

By: lilcollegegirl

lilcollegegirl — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 19:35:27 +0000

As far as sleeping on teeny beds goes, I have a somewhat of a solution. (This only works well if one of you is rather small and the other is not, and whoever’s bigger can sleep on their back while the smaller one sleeps on their stomach.) Being an undergrad, with a boyfriend in the dorms and me in an even smaller room, twin beds are all we’ve got. Since my boy is rather bigger than me, (I’m 5′2″, 98 lbs) I tend to get scrunched against a wall. So now when I sleep over or vice versa, I sleep on top of him, with my head on his chest. Listening to his heart helps me go to sleep faster, (but only if I don’t focus on where various bits of me are situated in relation to him, which of course makes it rather difficult to sleep.) He also snores on occasion, but I stopped feeling bad about telling him to be quiet, which usually works. And I’m definitely with Jendi on the separate blankets, especially since I get cold very easily and he doesn’t.