It takes me hours to get to sleep, whilst my partner could doze off during an earthquake at a heavy metal concert. Unless you’re extremely lucky, it’s unlikely that you and your partner will be on the exact same page when it comes to settling down for the night.

Or you need to read in bed for an hour or two to send you off to sleep. Perhaps you like to get straight into bed and are out like a light. People can do that through mindfulness, eating better, reducing the booze and nicotine, and reducing stress.” It’s all about compromiseĮveryone’s night-time routine is different. “Take the time to wind down for sleep and focus on improving your sleep quality. “Restlessness and things like hogging the doona or kicking the other person and moving around too much can be indicative that your sleep quality is not great, and you might be a bit overstimulated,” Dr Junge says. One trip to IKEA later and the improvement in our respective nights’ sleep was immediate.ĭr Moira Junge, CEO of the Sleep Health Foundation, also points out that blanket-stealing and flailing around can be signs that you’re overtired. Whilst it might sound like a drastic measure, the Sleep Health Foundation suggests the dimensions of your bed can greatly affect how you co-sleep. We tried to harmoniously work through this problem (him poking me awake in the night and hissing “MOVE OVER”) like the adults we are (I shouted “NO” as I wriggled to get comfortable again) but in the end we opted to get a bigger bed. Or, as he puts it, “You don’t want to be near me, you want to be in the exact space I am currently trying to sleep in.” Make some spaceĪs my partner is infinitely fond of telling anyone who stands still long enough, I am a classic bed hogger. Here are some tips to help you get an excellent night’s sleep whilst sharing a bed. I’m happy to report that, one year on we have found our groove. But my smugness was sadly misplaced as the first month or two of spending every night in the same bed was peppered with many a sleepless night and extremely cranky morning.

It turns out that whilst staying at each other’s house three nights a week might feel like adequate practice, transitioning from your own bed to ‘our bed’ is harder than you might think. What I didn’t anticipate was that the biggest adjustment would be sleeping in the same bed. When I moved in with my partner last year all those worries crossed my mind. Do you really know someone until you live with them? What if they leave the toilet seat up? What if they’re the kind of person who lets food turn into a veritable science experiment in the fridge? What if they leave their socks in the bottom of the bed?

Why dont i want to sleep