I’m married, I sleep alone, and my relationship is great.

I’m a big Sex and the City fan. Yes, still. Yes, it is a completely unrealistic picture of living in New York City. I love it and all of its ridiculousness anyway. There’s an episode in which Charlotte and her first husband, Trey, are separating that has a line that says something about “When do separate interests become separate bedrooms?”. It’s not the first reference, and probably won’t be the last, to imply that the beginning of the end of a marriage is when you start to sleep separately.

If you whole heartedly believe that, I’m here to blow your mind.

My husband and I have been together for around five years, and I can count on no more than two hands the number of times we’ve actually slept in the same bed. AND, on top of that, we really are happily married. Yup, I promise, it’s true. I’m not in denial and I haven’t just accepted life in a loveless and sexless marriage. I truly love my husband and I think we work really hard to make our marriage great everyday. I also truly love sleep and my own health.

I am not a good sleeper.

I like to think I’m talented at a lot of things, but sleeping isn’t one of them. If it’s not my weird body and chronic pain that makes basically any surface uncomfortable to some extent, I’m just too much of a neurotic person to sit still that long. It’s hard for me to fall asleep, stay asleep, etc. It’s just not a good time. My husband, on the other hand, is a great sleeper. He could fall asleep standing up. He’s fallen asleep mid-sentence. When he wants to sleep, he will sleep. He also snores. You see where I’m going here.

Not only does he like to sleep soundly and loudly, we also have very different schedules. I need way more sleep than he does. In a comedy of ironies, not only am I bad at sleeping, but I need a lot of it. I’m not a “only six hours but I feel GREAT!” type of person. I’m a “minimum eight hours and even then I’m a little grumpy” person. Ideally I’d sleep between eight and a half and nine hours every night, and running doesn’t exactly soften the need for this to happen. I’ve accepted it, and I’m in bed by 10:30pm most nights and wake up around 7:30. My husband, on the other hand, likes to fight sleep. His words, not mine, and no I’m not kidding. He feels that going to bed at specific time or right when he feels tired is “letting sleep win”. So he often falls asleep around 2am in the middle of watching something on Netflix.

So you have me, needing her nine hours and waking up to every little thing, and then you have him, going to bed in the middle of the night and snoring but staying asleep fine. We might be a good match in a lot of ways, but we’re definitely not compatible in the sleep department. We tried it. It was bad. I was grumpy, he was annoyed, and I barely wanted to look at him the whole next day. After a few attempts we really asked ourselves, “What’s the point?”.

I’m totally on board with owning that one of the reasons I stay married is that I don’t have to share a bed with my husband. Some people might find it weird, or a sign that something’s “wrong”, but this isn’t a battle I choose to fight. Relationships are hard enough, and there’s no way I could deal with the rest of the hard stuff if I CAN’T GET TO SLEEP AND HE IS THE REASON WHY.

Moral of the story? Do whatever keeps your relationship moving forward. It doesn’t matter if it’s what you’re “supposed to” do. It doesn’t matter if no one else is doing it. If it works for you and your partner, then why fight against it? Who made up the rule that I have to share a bed with this loud man who is irrationally against sleep?

You can reject any relationship norms that don’t work for you. At the end of the day, our goal was to keep our marriage strong, not to share a bed. Focus on what matters, and ask yourself if it’s really benefitting the relationship. You don’t have to explain yourself, or what works for your partnership, to anyone.