When you agree to love your spouse for better or worse and in sickness and in health, you don’t always think about what that might really mean. For tens of thousands of married couples, it means coping with someone’s severe snoring issues.
Snoring disrupts the sleep of nearby people, and their attempts to stop the snoring will disrupt the sleep of the person snoring. It is a vicious feedback loop that can do real damage to the relationship between spouses and their individual mental health due to sleep deprivation. As many as one in six people with a spouse who snores have seriously considered divorce because of it.
Could a sleep divorce be a solution to help save your marriage?
What is a sleep divorce?
A sleep divorce involves a couple deciding that they aren’t going to share a marital bed anymore. Instead, each spouse will have their own bed and possibly their own bedroom so that both of them will sleep more soundly at night.
A sleep divorce gives each spouse the opportunity to regulate their own body temperature and sleep environment, in addition to providing separation between the person snoring and their spouse that is tired of waking up at night because of it. There are numerous benefits to deciding to sleep separately ranging from better sleep to a bedroom and bed more closely tailored to your personal preferences.
Sometimes, medical necessity forces a couple to consider a sleep divorce. If one partner needs to use a CPAP machine, for example, sharing a bed may no longer be a realistic practice. Even those who can theoretically continue to share a bed may realize that they will be happier and their marriage might be better if they don’t sleep in the same room together anymore.
Better sleep will fix some but not all problems
Not having enough sleep and put a lot of strain on an individual and their interpersonal relationships. If you and your spouse have always shared a positive dynamic until snoring began to impact how much rest you got, then asleep divorce might be all that is necessary to address your current marital issues.
If, however, snoring is only one of many serious issues making you unhappy in your marriage, then just moving to another room may not resolve the matter. Being realistic about whether a change in situation or a change in marital status is what you need can help those who believe they may soon need to file for divorce.
