Why in the old days the husband and wife slept separately and why this custom has returned to our days

It is well known that a person sleeps a third of his life. It is not surprising that so many customs are associated with sleep. Many of them appeared in ancient times, but changed depending on religious requirements and norms accepted by society. The separate sleep of spouses, common in modern families, was also once a generally accepted rule. However, not always.

Numerous studies have shown that separate sleep has a beneficial effect on both health and the quality of married life. This fact is known to everyone and many modern couples prefer to sleep separately. At the same time, our parents, grandparents, during their youth, would have considered such a night's rest strange and would even have perceived it as a bad sign.

But in ancient times they slept separately, and it was normal and right. In ancient Rome, sleeping places and the marital bed were clearly separated. Husband and wife slept apart, and on the bed they met only for love pleasures. It was also considered bad form to sleep together in Britain in The Victorian era. As for Japan, during the shogunate, rulers and rich aristocrats there preferred to meet for sex in separate houses altogether.

In Russia in the old days, peasant huts were divided into male and female halves. In one of them men were sleeping — a father with his sons, and in the other — a mother with her daughters. To fulfill their marital duty, they met on "neutral territory" — on the bed or on the floor. Rich men and princes also had separate bedchambers in the themes and invited their wives to themselves, or went to her themselves.

Everything changed when people started living in cramped city apartments. Very few could afford separate beds and, moreover, two personal bedrooms. Therefore, the marital bed has lost its main meaning and turned into a banal double bed. This happened not only in our country. Urbanization has forced spouses to sleep together all over the world.

In 2005, sleep scientist Neil Stanley conducted a large study of joint and separate sleep. He came to the conclusion that our distant ancestors knew a lot about rest and therefore slept apart. Stanley found out that when people sleep together, they very often do not get enough sleep. The feeling of morning exhaustion that has been haunting many of us for years may be related to this.

Recently, more and more couples are listening to the opinion of science. But there are also those who believe that the separate sleep of the husband and wife signals problems in the relationship. Ken Page, a psychotherapist from the USA, after conducting many surveys, found out that this is not the case. He claims that sleeping on different beds, on the contrary, is able to strengthen relationships.

Paige says that when people don't disturb each other in their sleep, their relationship with each other becomes warmer. It's no secret that many marriages crack precisely because of unpleasant little things, such as the snoring of one of the spouses or the difference in the regime. From this point of view, medieval "sleeping dressers" can be considered ideal beds. It is very difficult to disturb the sleeper in them.