Two beds are bliss! Each partner can sleep on his or her own schedule, with the temperature he or she prefers, and getting together for sex is even more exciting than ever.

For my wife and I our big bed is the only way we could possibly sleep together. (In fact, the same could be said for each of the serious relationships I had before meeting her, but for different reasons.) After about a year on my regular mattress we had to go shopping for a serious mattress that would allow us better sleep together.

FYI, the sex & intimacy part was never a problem for either of us, even when we were camping in a tent in separate sleeping bags or anything else we ever slept on. And we don't read in bed, that's what we have our big-couch for.

My wife is like an electric radiating heater when she sleeps. She puts off so much heat she barely needs a sheet over her even in winter. I, on the other-hand, need a deep pile of heavy blankets to sleep. Snuggling can only last about 10min tops before I am sweating, which of course she does not find sexy or even comforting. Yes, it might seem her heat and my need for warmth & weight would work well, but it does not. Preserving my own naturally varying heat-level evenly at low humidity allows me to sleep. My asleep-skin makes her too cold after a while too.

And then there is movement. I am a light sleeper, pretty much any movement or sound can wake me. Comes from growing up poor and in bad neighborhoods, then later moving to farm country where every sound meant something. My wife is either dead still, like in a coma, or suddenly flails out an arm/leg or flips over suddenly. She can sleep on her back, front, left side or right side equally well with her arms/legs in any position. And moves without ever waking.

On the flip-side, I can only sleep on my side and I need to frequently adjust my position to one of the few arm/leg/sides that allows me to sleep. So, I cannot keep any one position for too long without having to rotate to one of the other positions.

Then there are sounds. Her whole family snores like a bunch of chainsaws you can literally hear out in the front yard. And yet somehow they never wake each other. In the last 20 years my wife began snoring like her family, but intermittently. Which wakes me and I have to reach out to touch her and her sleep level rises a little and the snoring stops. She is not aware of this unless I have to fully wake her because the snoring wouldn't stop.

I also make sounds as I am trying to get to sleep. I have a structural problem in my sinuses and it takes a while to adjust to laying down before things settle and I can sleep quietly.

Oddly, I slept really really well when our child was in that age range where she often wanted to sleep in our bed between us. I'm sure it was all mental, but I have not slept that well since she no longer came to ask to sleep with us.

Hi Nora and Richt, thanks for sharing your perspectives. I love that.