Sharing a bed with the person you love most is often thought to be a sanctuary of intimacy and comfort. But if your partner is a restless sleeper, that sanctuary starts to feel like a battleground for slumber. Their struggle to get to sleep, relentless tossing and turning and frequent awakenings can test your patience and leave you longing for those peaceful single nights.
Finding ways to preserve both intimacy and sleep in a shared bed requires delicate handling, but it can be done. Here’s how to shield your slumber from the disruptions of a restless sleeper, help your partner navigate their sleep troubles with patience and kindness and decide when it’s time for a sleep divorce.
Understanding Restless Sleep
If you share a bed with a restless sleeper, you’re not alone. While we don’t have an exact number of people who deal with chronic restless sleeping, over 70% of Americans report experiencing poor sleep at least once a month. But what exactly is restless sleep? Since restless sleep isn’t recognized as a disorder, there’s no official definition or outline of symptoms. However, those who deal with restless sleep may have a hard time falling and staying asleep or have frequent nighttime awakenings.
This restlessness can have a big impact on the quality of your sleep. According to the NIH, sleep deficiency is linked with serious health problems like diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease, stroke and depression. It can interfere with your ability to function at school or work.
Not only can it harm your health, but it can also harm your relationship. A 2022 study found that sleep-deprived couples tend to have more signs of stress and fewer positive emotions when discussing a recurring conflict than their well-rested counterparts. “Sharing a bed with a restless sleeper can lead to lots of frustration and resentment, especially if it’s not brought up. It can lead to relationship issues,” explains Julia Kogan, a health psychologist who focuses on behavioral sleep medicine.
Shavon Terrell-Camper, a licensed therapist who has helped clients overcome burnout, sleep issues and relationship concerns, recommends having a direct conversation with your partner in an honest and compassionate way.
“They might not even realize how they sleep or that they’re restless at night,” she says, adding that approaching the conversation with gentle curiosity can help encourage them to open up and look for solutions. Let them know that you’ve noticed they’ve been sleeping restlessly and want to understand what’s going on.
“Coming at it with curiosity has a different vibe than coming at it with judgment,” Terrell-Camper says.
There’s a long list of reasons why someone might deal with restless sleep. It could be related to chronic stress or unresolved trauma, says Terrell-Camper. Or, a sleep disorder, such as sleep apnea, restless leg syndrome or insomnia, might be to blame.
Regardless of what’s causing the restless sleep, remind yourself that it’s not your partner’s fault, and encourage them to seek help from a professional, such as a physician, sleep specialist or mental health provider. They can help your partner uncover the root of their sleep issue and find a treatment.
In the meantime, you can hack your bedroom, lifestyle and sleeping habits to try to preserve your own slumber.
3 Tips for Getting Good Sleep With a Restless Sleeper
Hack Your Sleeping Space To Protect Your Slumber
Adjusting your sleeping space can help insulate your slumber from your partner’s restlessness.
“At the most basic level, get separate pillows and blankets,” says Kogan. “Building a wall of pillows in the middle can help if the person you share a bed with moves around a lot.”
Upgrading to a larger bed can help, too, says Terrell-Camper.
“If you sleep in a queen-size bed, consider getting a king-size so you’ll have more space for movement without someone touching you or feeling it in the mattress,” she says.
If you’re thinking about upgrading your bed, there are many mattresses that offer motion separation technology, which helps reduce and isolate movement, helping you get those uninterrupted zzz’s. Our Sleep Experts® recommend Serta Perfect Sleeper® Charlotte 2.0 Medium Euro Top Mattress or Tempur-Pedic TEMPUR-Adapt® 11" Medium Mattress, which are both great options for motion isolation.
Another great option for couples is a split king, which is the same dimensions as a king mattress but is two twin mattresses of equal size placed next to each other. This option is great as it allows you and your partner to sleep in the same bed but almost completely eliminates feeling your partner moving throughout the night.
Think beyond just the bed and look for ways to make the entire bedroom better for your individual sleeping preferences.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends keeping your bedroom as dark as possible, so consider removing electronics with flickering lights and investing in black-out curtains for the windows. If your partner needs light when waking up in the middle of the night, they could keep a small flashlight on their nightstand or plug in a relatively dim nightlight in an inconspicuous place to reduce the risk of waking you up. You might also consider wearing an eye mask.
Noise is another thing to address. “If one person needs complete silence and the other person needs some noise to sleep, try to come up with a middle ground,” says Kogan.
The partner who needs quiet could sleep with earplugs, while the partner who finds some sound soothing could wear sleep headphones or put a sleep timer on their white noise machine so it shuts off after they drift off.
Adjust Your Sleep Schedules
Many couples tend to head to bed at the same time. But there’s a whole spectrum of chronotypes (our body’s natural sleep and wake preferences) that don’t align with one another. A night owl might not be ready for sleep at the same time as a morning lark, which could lead to restlessness and poor sleep for both people.
“There’s lots of pressure on people to keep the same sleep schedule when they share a bed, but that doesn’t always work. Don’t force yourself to have the same sleep schedule,” says Kogan.
She adds: “Just make sure there’s still opportunities for cuddling or anything else you do in the bedroom, even if you don’t sleep at the same time.”
The same principles apply to wake-up times, as well. An early wake-up call for one person doesn’t mean the other person should automatically get up if they're not ready to start the day—and using a quiet alarm clock (such as a vibrating fitness tracker) could help minimize disturbing someone who’s still sleeping in the bed.
Lifestyle Tweaks for Couples To Get Better Sleep
Your daily habits can make a big difference in the overall quality of your sleep, which could help offset some of the impact of sharing the bed with a restless sleeper. In fact, making lifestyle tweaks together as a couple could help you both sleep better at night.
Regular physical activity, for example, has been consistently shown to improve sleep quality, reduce how much time it takes to fall asleep and lead to better overall sleep, according to a 2023 systematic review. Research also shows that exercising with a romantic partner could potentially help both people be more successful at working out on a consistent basis. So, it could be worth finding a physical activity you both enjoy, whether that’s pickleball, cycling or walking around the block, and doing it together to help develop a routine and support your sleep.
Shifting the timing of your meals and what you eat could also make a difference in your sleep quality. A 2020 study found that eating a meal within 3 hours of bedtime led to more frequent nighttime awakenings. Timing your dinner a little earlier in the evening could help improve sleep for both of you. Be mindful of what you eat and drink close to bedtime, too. A cup of coffee or a nightcap could exacerbate restlessness and make it harder to catch quality zzz’s.
“Another big adjustment you can make is having a nighttime routine where you’re teaching your mind and body that it’s time to wind down,” says Terrell-Camper.
She recommends trying to avoid certain activities if they tend to wind your partner up at night. For example, try to avoid talking about a problem you’re going through at work right before bed if that tends to cause your partner to feel stressed about their job. Focus on calming activities you both enjoy, such as reading in bed, journaling or gentle stretching, which will help you relax and ease into sleep.
Do You Need a Sleep Divorce?
In some cases, the best way for couples to get the sleep they need is to sleep separately, aka get a sleep divorce. Around 35% of Americans already sleep in a different room than their partner on occasion or consistently, according to a 2023 survey from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.
“A sleep divorce isn’t necessarily a negative thing,” notes Kogan. “There are plenty of couples in very healthy relationships who sleep better separately, maybe because one snores loudly or they’re on different schedules.”
If your partner’s restless sleeping still affects you after you’ve tried different solutions, it could be worth doing a trial run sleep divorce to see if it helps. You could sleep separately a couple of nights a week or try sharing a bed only on the weekends. Have an open, honest conversation with your partner to see if they’d be on board for separate sleeping arrangements, at least some of the time.
“It’s a good solution if it’s not coming from a place of resentment but rather from a place of mutual agreement,” says Kogan.
Finding ways to adjust your lifestyle and bedroom could make a big difference in your ability to get sound slumber when you share a bed with a restless sleeper. Keep the lines of communication open and encourage them to work with a medical professional to address underlying issues that might be causing their sleep concerns. And don’t be afraid to try unconventional solutions that help you both sleep better. After all, a well-rested couple is a happier couple.
