Night Divorce

Audio By Carbonatix

A new trend that is emerging in marriages is couples sleeping apart. Some people call it “Night Divorce.” It’s when couples decide not to sleep in the same bed, permanently. It’s not because they are fighting, but because she can’t sleep when his snoring is too loud or he can’t sleep when her body is taking up more than half of the bed. It might be because one spouse gets up earlier than the other one or that one spouse gets up in the middle of the night and wants to check their phone, which wakes their partner.

While I can totally understand temporarily choosing to sleep apart if one person is sick, I’m not sure it’s a good idea to make it permanent. It doesn’t promote the unity that already seems to be missing in a lot of marriages, which is often because people want more independence. Couples have separate bank accounts. They take separate vacations more often than together. It’s like they are single, but married. Marriage is supposed to bring two people together as one, not set them up to continue to maintain separate lives while living in the same house.

Take the issue of couples who choose to keep their money separate. I’m not sure of the reasoning behind that move because after you get married, most of your assets are community property. What happens when one person loses their job? Do they have to borrow money from their spouse to live? I know couples who don’t even know each other’s salary.

My thought is that you might as well be roommates at that point, because those kinds of actions seem to reflect two people who share a home rather than two people who are creating a home.

Creating a home is about establishing an environment of trust and unity with one another (and your children, if you are parents). The more activities you do separately, the more you risk having disunity in your marriage. Of course, there will be people that will say their marriage is great and brag that they have separate bank accounts and sleep in separate rooms. But just imagine how much better their marriage could be if they practiced more togetherness.

One of the greatest lessons we learn in marriage is how to think of ourselves less and our spouse more. If you are practicing that kind of behavior with your spouse, then it will likely extend to other people you know. And that’s good for everyone. If we all become less selfish and more helpful, it would actually improve the way we treat each other in this world.

Most of the people I talk to say they couldn’t imagine sleeping apart from their spouse. They love the closeness of having that person near. Others actually deal with some of the sleep issues mentioned above by adapting and purchasing a good set of ear plugs. It’s a great example of putting someone else’s needs ahead of your own.

Everybody has to decide for themselves what to do, but for me, I think the closer we can stay to each other in marriage, the better chance we have to win at home.