Good News: You Don’t Have to Sleep With Your Spouse
Therapists and sleep scientists say it’s OK for couples to sleep apart, a reversal of a long-held marriage tenet
3 min
Ever tried to get a good night’s sleep with your partner snoring or tossing around restlessly next to you?
You’re gonna like this: Therapists and sleep scientists say it’s OK for couples to sleep apart as a growing body of research shows the striking importance of sleep. It’s a reversal from the long-held marriage tenet that once partners move to separate beds, the romance is dead.
Sleep is “essential for a healthy body, mind and relationship,” says Wendy Troxel, clinical psychologist, sleep scientist at Rand and author of a book on couples sleeping. “It’s important to prioritise it.”
Therapists have a caveat. If you and your partner do move to separate beds, you need to find a way to continue to be intimate, both emotionally and physically. Co-sleeping provides important benefits for a couple, such as emotional closeness and opportunities for cuddling, sex and conversation. Partners who sleep well together should stick with it.
In the beginning of their marriage, Mark and Paula White shared the same bed. But neither of them was getting a good night’s rest. Paula is a night owl who keeps the TV on, even when she’s asleep. Mark keeps a fan running at the foot of the bed and happily wakes up at 3 a.m.
Once, he flipped over in his sleep and accidentally punched her in the face. Another time, his snoring and “garlicky breath” made her snap and scream: “I can’t breathe! You’re taking my air!”
That was 32 years ago. Since then, the Whites have mostly slept in separate rooms, even choosing separate beds on vacation.
“We’re better people and we have a better relationship because we get better sleep,” says Paula, 60, a business owner in New Albany, Ohio.
When we sleep well, we stave off a host of physical- and mental-health problems, such as diabetes, hypertension and depression. Our relationships improve, because we’re less irritable, less frustrated, and better at communication and problem-solving. When we’re cranky, we tend to take it out on the person closest to us.
Better sleep can boost our sex lives, too. One of the main reasons couples stop having sex is because they’re too damn exhausted.
“This is why couples say one of their most satisfying sexual experiences is when they go on vacation,” says Sari Cooper, a certified sex and couples therapist in New York. “They get time to rest.”
Here’s how psychologists suggest you can successfully sleep apart.
Have a conversation
Don’t stomp off out of bed. It could make your partner feel rejected. Both people need to be OK with the arrangement for it to work.
Choose a time when you are both well-rested. Don’t talk about this in the bedroom.
Ask your partner: Are you sleeping OK? Explain that you want both of you to sleep well. Be reassuring that this is about sleep and not attraction.
Don’t blame. Use “I” instead of “you.” Try: “I get cold at night,” not “you are a blanket hog.”
Keep it targeted. This isn’t the time to talk about everything wrong in your relationship. “Stay focused on how you can be a better partner if you are better slept,” Rand’s Troxel says.
Try it part-time
This doesn’t have to be a full-time arrangement. You can sleep apart during the workweek, or take a break when one person is in a bout of insomnia.
This temporary approach is especially helpful when one partner wants to sleep apart and one doesn’t, Troxel says.
Plan regular intimacy dates
When you sleep in separate beds, there are fewer opportunities for spontaneous sex or even just snuggling. “You need to be intentional about creating the seduction, flirtation and planning to make it happen,” says Cooper, the sex therapist.
Pick a day when you know you will be most relaxed and plan to go to bed an hour earlier. (You’ll want energy!) Build the anticipation beforehand. Send a flirty text or leave a note on your partner’s bed.
And remember: Not all intimacy has to be sexual.
Get in bed together for a little bit each night
Cuddle. Watch a movie. Engage in pillow talk. Then say good night and head off to your separate beds.
“You can shoot for the best of both worlds: time awake in bed together and good sleep,” says Zlatan Krizan, a certified sleep scientist and professor of psychology at Iowa State University.
The Whites, who have been married 33 years, sometimes watch a movie in bed and snuggle. When they want to be intimate, they plan a date night or simply visit each other’s bedroom. Sometimes Paula tells her husband, “I’ll leave the red light on for you tonight.” Both spouses say sex is more pleasurable now because they aren’t so tired and tense.
They have one bedtime ritual they never skip, though. They go upstairs together, kneel on each side of Paula’s bed, and say their prayers. Then they kiss good night and head off to their own rooms.
“Now, when we’re together, we know it’s going to be quality time,” Mark, 61, says.
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Artificial intelligence is making it easier than ever to build a business without building a team. As AI takes over coding, customer support, marketing, administration, and other day-to-day tasks, a growing number of solo founders are scaling startups to millions in revenue with few—or even no—employees. While the trend is lowering barriers to entrepreneurship, it is also reshaping hiring, raising questions about the future of work and how businesses will grow in the AI era.
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Ben Broca launched a company last December that offers AI tools to entrepreneurs. He’s already added 10,000 paying customers and is on track to bring in $10 million in revenue this year.
One thing he hasn’t added: any other employees.
The 40-year-old is part of a class of entrepreneurs who are launching, and then often running, new companies on their own. Artificial intelligence tools answer Broca’s emails, help write and debug code, field requests from customers, sign up new subscribers and grant refunds when issues arise.
Broca relishes his ability to make whatever decisions he wants on his own, often from his sun-drenched Sausalito, Calif., living room. “I think compromises make lukewarm results,” he said.
Once upon a time, running a business of a certain size required a team. AI is turning that assumption upside down, and more aspiring entrepreneurs are going it alone.
An analysis by the payments company Stripe shows there are thousands of solo operators on the company’s platform that are generating over $1 million in revenue, with their ranks doubling between 2023 and 2025. The number of solo operators crossing the $10 million threshold nearly tripled in that same span.
In the past, people without business contacts or particular savvy might not have known how to get their ideas off the ground, said Ernie Tedeschi, Stripe’s chief economist. “Now, AI can be a built-in business partner,” he said.
AI’s ability to handle various administrative tasks makes it potentially useful for launching solo businesses in many fields. But the technology’s ability to also handle key tasks in tech, like coding, make that field a particular hot spot.
Analyzing Census Bureau data, Bank of America Institute economist Taylor Bowley found that among all industries, new business applications in the information sector have seen the biggest percentage increase—nearly 45%—over the past year. At the same time, the rate of information-sector applicants saying they plan to hire workers has experienced the sharpest decline of any measured industry.
This Census dataset doesn’t track solo-operated businesses. But the numbers broadly show—in tech and beyond—that applications are flat among businesses likely to hire workers, but generally rising elsewhere. Economists say that’s a strong sign that solo operators are on the upswing.
“The bar for getting started has never been lower,” said Julian Weisser, who runs a San Francisco-based accelerator for solo founders working in tech. The accelerator—which offers founders seed money and mentorship in exchange for an equity stake—attracted 4,500 applicants for 10 slots made available in its most recent cycle, nearly five times the number it drew when it launched last May.
Going it alone with AI can still be surprisingly expensive. Broca said he was losing money on many customers’ accounts while paying to access Anthropic’s Claude to run his clients’ requests—that AI company, as well as others, charges based on usage. He has since switched to free open-source AI models from China.
Broca said he has raised $30 million from investors and, at the same time, has saved millions in salary since he hasn’t needed a team of software engineers.
Another risk: If it’s easy for one entrepreneur to launch an AI-assisted business, copying them can be easy, too. This creates anxiety for founders like Troy Johnston, who runs an AI-assisted business alone in Orlando, Fla.
“Everybody has the sword and we all have the ability to unsheathe Excalibur now,” said Johnston, 40, who used AI to code an app that helps people get the most out of credit card benefits. The company makes around $3,000 a month in profit, with no employees, and is continuing to grow.
What one-person businesses will mean for the labor market remains to be seen. Polling has shown Americans are worried that AI will replace jobs, and top economists are wrestling with that possibility, too. But AI is also creating lots of new jobs, and the go-it-alone entrepreneurs show how the technology can both open doors and limit employment opportunities.
“If everyone’s hiring less, but you get four times more firms, what does that do to head count?” said Rembrand Koning, an associate professor at Harvard Business School who studies entrepreneurship. He co-authored a recent study that found that among 50,000 startups the researchers examined, those focused on AI tended to operate with 25% fewer employees.
Koning also believes a soft hiring environment that’s left some people mired in long job searches has encouraged more to try their hand at launching businesses.
Some founders cite different motives. “It’s a perfect storm of post-pandemic burnout and a re-evaluation of one’s priorities, and also booming AI and a sense of what’s possible,” said Samir Ahmad, 39, who lives in Breinigsville, Pa.
Two years ago, Ahmad decided to leave the corporate job he had worked at Verizon for almost two decades to start a solo coaching and consulting business. He had been seeing social-media posts touting the ease and virtues of AI, which he used to chart a business plan and help with marketing. “It was like my chief of staff, a second in command,” he said.
The business ultimately petered out within months, though, and Ahmad is now back to a full-time corporate role with a utility company.
For Claire Vo, 41, AI helped her turn a passing impulse into a business. She was working full-time as a tech executive when she tapped AI in late 2023 to help code an app that would help her manage documentation and design for new products, with customers ranging from financial services to healthcare firms.
“I was copying and pasting from ChatGPT,” said Vo, who lives in San Francisco.
She put the app online for $1 a month, and within weeks people downloaded it thousands of times. Nearly three years later, Vo’s company—which she ran solo for nine months before hiring an engineer—now has 100,000 users and is on track to make seven figures in profit this year. AI handles the company’s marketing, sales and customer support.
While AI is a shortcut, Vo said her network and credibility in the industry were key. “I think people over-index on how easy AI is and under-index on how much I did to get to this point,” she said.
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