How To Share A Bed

How To Share A Bed

Kiss goodbye to bedroom battles with our guide to harmonious bed-sharing. Learn how to share a bed with your partner without causing any arguments!

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Step 1:

The cold war

The biggest source of tension in any bed sharing relationship is the duvet.

Do you wake up in the middle of the night, shivering in your jim jams?

Then your partner is a dirty rotten duvet thief, and needs to be dealt with severely.

They may claim they "didn't know they had rolled over with it" - but don't take this lying down.

Retaliate with some good old Pavlovian conditioning.

Everytime they steal the duvet, poke them annoyingly all over-

not hard enough to wake them, just enough to shake them out of that lovely warm dream they were having.

Within a week they will associate duvet theft with poking- and it will all stop.

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Step 2:

A bed is not a living room

You may also encounter problems if one of you thinks that a bed is just for sleeping in, and the other is convinced it's an extension of your living room.

Reading, watching TV, eating cheesy snacks, exercising, organising your DVD collection, hoovering, karaoke,

or indulging your obsessive compulsive need to turn lights on and off are all fairly inconsiderate if your partner is trying to sleep.

You can do those things wherever you want, but your partner can't sleep comfortably anywhere but the bed.

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Step 3:

Heavy breathing

What's that noise? Has a herd of farmyard animals just entered the bedroom? Is there an earthquake? Is it armageddon?

No. You've just been woken from your blissful reverie by your partner's disgusting noises.

While you might feel the urge to cut off their air supply,

you can find some more tender, loving solutions in VideoJug's How to stop snoring.

If it gets so bad you need to wake your partner up, do this subtly to avoid starting World War 3.

Make a short, sharp, loud noise-

then quickly pretend to be asleep as they jump up and wonder what's woken them.

This stops them snoring without nagging or embarrassing them.

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Step 4:

The Kraken wakes

Without proper sleep, you aren't the same person your partner fell in love with:

you are shorter of temper,

slower of response

and uglier of face.

If you have different bodyclocks, or you go to bed and get up at different times,

you must find ways of respecting your partner's rest.

If you have to get up early, try dressing in a different room-

especially if it's her lie in, and she's not exactly a 'morning person'.

If you're back late and he's turned in, then hold back those entertaining anecdotes or that friskiness for the following day.

The best way to share a bed is to love your partner

and always make their nighttime welfare your priority,

as this will leave the way clear for all the other things you can do in a bedroom….