There are mistakes in a marriage that can send you flying over the guardrail, flipping down a rocky cliff, and bursting into a ball of flames. You can avoid those major crashes, but everyone hits a speed bump now and then. Those are the smaller mistakes you run into that might make you bottom out but that you can quickly recover from.
One speed-bump mistake is coming into the kitchen in the morning and declaring that you had a great night’s sleep. What a stupid thing to say to the person you share a bed with. One person’s good sleep comes at the cost of the other’s misery, and the idea that you’ll both have slept well is as inconceivable as the idea that you will have romantic dinners, followed by hours of lovemaking, on a nightly basis.
“I had a great night’s sleep.”
“Yeah, you did. You snored like a whale with a sinus condition. I was up all night,” she says as she slams down your coffee.
Sleeping together is one of the most difficult things you can do as a couple. You are living this difficult life together, filled with backbreaking work. All day long you support each other like dedicated teammates. Exhausted, you crawl into bed, kiss each other good night, then the battle begins.
For every action there is a reaction, and there is no clearer evidence of that than in the bed of a married couple. If she tosses, he turns. If he snores, she listens. If he gets up to wander around in the dark, she waits for his return. The only chance you have of both sleeping soundly is if you go out drinking, come home, and pass out on top of each other.
I heard of a wife who would stop her husband from snoring by punching him in the head while he slept. This actually seems like a pretty good idea. No man really minds getting punched, especially if he’s sleeping, and if she could just aim for the arm, why not?
If I roll over on my left side or, as my wife calls it, “the wrong side,” and I start snoring, go ahead, haul off and hit me. It’s no different from pushing a cow into the barn. You need this beast to move, they’re too stupid to figure out what you’re saying, so just reach back, grab some fist, and let him have it.
Now, if your wife snores like a jackhammer, I am going to give the radical advice of telling you not to punch her. I don’t care where we are with gender neutrality; I’m going old-school and saying it’s not right to hit a lady, especially one who has access to your bank information. But, hey, a little shove to get her back to her side of the bed isn’t so bad.
The size of the bed is important. Very important. When you are young and in love and can’t believe this person is actually sleeping with you, any corner of any couch will do. An army cot, a dorm-room floor, even a cardboard box will do just fine, as long as she doesn’t ask you to leave.
It’s not just a passion thing but a physical thing as well. A twenty-year-old can sleep in a Dumpster full of rocks and all it takes to recover is a simple stretch and a glass of water. If a forty-year-old person ends up sleeping in his car, he’ll be so stiff they’ll need the Jaws of Life to get him out. So if that same forty-year-old person has to sleep in a full-size bed with his midsize wife, he’s going to wake up in a world of pain.
Can we talk for a minute about these beds and their classifications? A “twin” is not a twin, it’s a single. They call this miniature mattress a twin because you’ll have to buy two and push them together to make something that’s only slightly larger than a dollhouse bed. We’ve all been stuck on a weird vacation when you try to make a bigger bed out of two twins, but all that does is guarantee that one of you will disappear into the crack and not be seen until morning.
A “full-size” mattress is a misleading term as well because it implies that it will accommodate a full-size person, which it will not unless that person is a twelve-year-old with an eating disorder.
The “queen” is accurate because this is a large enough bed for two people to share, but when you share space with your wife she is going to dominate and get what she wants. They could just call this bed a “hers,” but why rub it in his face?
The “king” is the big daddy and is named that because it is the only way a husband will have any space to call his own. It’s actually just a queen with some extra space that she gives him so he can do whatever weird stuff he does over there.
Whatever size bed you have, it will eventually be turned into a wrestling mat filled with flailing arms and legs, snoring problems, mouth guards, sinus strips, cold feet, hot bodies, and someone getting choked. With all the horrible violence that goes on we’re pretty lucky that we’re mostly asleep.
I’m not sure why we don’t have separate beds, in separate rooms, on different sides of town. It’s as if we have to prove that we love each other by sleeping in the same bed, but if the end result is secretly hating each other, then what’s the point? It would be much better if we stayed apart for the night, slept well, and had a nice breakfast together. I think deep down this is what most people want and I believe it’s also the only reason I Love Lucy is still on TV. It’s been on the air forever not because it’s funny, but because it’s exciting to watch this married couple sleeping on opposite sides of the room.
But most of us will never sleep in separate beds. We will be forever entangled in the marriage bed, battling insomnia and fantasies about smothering our spouse with a pillow. So, if you slept well, keep it to yourself, maybe write it down in your journal if you have to, but never say it to your spouse. You’re sleeping with the enemy.