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We know quite a few couples who live separately and maintain a stable relationship – in our local area these are Merav Michaeli and Lior Shlain, abroad the “Big Bang” star Kaley Cuoco and her husband Carl, Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick have parted ways but remain married, and also Victoria and David Beckham shared apartments between continents. Couples who want to live together but also enjoy being alone have another solution – separate bedrooms.
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For quite a few people it sounds like relationships that have lost intimacy and are heading in one direction – separation or divorce, but sleeping apart is no longer associated with negative meanings, and loving couples have mitigating and understandable circumstances for this decision. There are those for whom it is important to create longing, sometimes one of the partners is too messy in the other’s opinion, there are those who work different hours and do not wish to disturb their partners, and others simply find it difficult to accommodate their partner’s habits (lighting that is too strong, temperature that is too low, TV sound, blanket pulls and of course loud snoring) and sleep better when alone. Increasingly those who create their own bathroom, which allows everyone to design their personal space as they like it.
“In a shared bedroom, fusion happens, without an iota of privacy,” explains Dr. Liraz Margalit, a researcher of behavior in the digital age from Reichman University. “Each person has his own life and his own place creates an independent feeling that restores the confidence of a person to be with himself, especially in women. A woman feels that she has a place that gives her significant mental well-being. On the one hand, distance creates a kind of desire, longing, feeling that the partner is not reached and then sneaking into the room holds the passion and the spark for the relationship. On the other hand, some people choose separate rooms when they feel full but don’t want to divorce yet. That’s why it’s better to split into separate rooms in time, when it’s not too late and there’s nothing connecting them again.”
The interior designer Lilach Wanou-Ben Yitzhak, who designed separate bedrooms for couples, says that in most homes one of the spouses takes a more active part in the process, and the design does not matter to the two. “The partner who cares less will often have ‘one small request’, such as a large TV or a special shelf, but the starting point is a normal design of two bedrooms. There are houses where there is no definition for his or her room, and only from a realistic view of a long-term relationship are We take this into account and ask to design a room where the man can fall asleep in front of the TV while watching sports without disturbing the woman or spending the night on an uncomfortable couch in the living room. According to Ben Yitzhak, “People’s sleeping habits are not a condition for a good relationship, and quite the opposite – poor and continuous sleep causes distress, nerves and sometimes even diseases. Sometimes sleeping in separate rooms makes it possible to achieve better quality sleep and cope better and in a calmer and more relaxed manner with everyday life If you don’t sleep well and wake up angry because of it, the whole day the next day will look different and of course it will affect the relationship as well.”
Really not just for couples in their third year
It is common to think that only pensioners sleep separately, but this division is also required among younger couples, for example if the couple has different schedules at work and are interested in an ultimate sleeping environment that will not disturb the other. Interior designer Yehudit Siboni tells about a couple in their 30s with three children, for whom she designed a penthouse apartment: “After a period of time, they returned to try to create separate bedrooms. She couldn’t sleep because of his snoring, and as she turned around, she turned over and put pillows on The head, she couldn’t fall asleep. The children also wake up at night, and so it turns out that she is unable to function for whole days.” The couple visited a matchmaker, and she advised them to go back to the designer to solve the problem. In the renovation, it was important to Siboni that the second room be next to the first, and not at the other end of the house, that there be an available passage between them to allow privacy but also intimacy. From a design point of view, both rooms received the same materials for the sake of uniformity, and only in one of them was a work area with a large television. “All the couples I design for are fun couples who live together happily and do not live parallel lives. I enjoy seeing how a whole life is woven behind the walls, each with their hobbies, which they don’t want to give up.”
A couple in their late 30s, with a good relationship, asked for a practical solution due to the husband’s frequent trips abroad as part of his work, at inconvenient hours. “I planned two bedrooms for them,” says interior designer Sorena Kafir. , they prefer to sleep separately and this makes it easier for them to behave. One room was not defined as a distinct bedroom for one of them, but as a study or guest room and is used quite a bit.” Design: Surna Kfir
“There is no right or wrong, different things are good and comfortable for each of us,” says interior designer Nega Thiram. “We got used to thinking that two partners should share a common room, but sometimes it is challenging. Despite the great, true and sincere love, we are different people with different loves, desires, needs and completely different habits. Sometimes I meet couples where one is tidy and the other is messy, one likes color and the other less, or have different design styles. There are so many sleeping options and great charm in each one, so everyone is free to choose what is good for them. When it comes from a good place, everyone has their corner, their arrangement and what they like. Who said it’s bad to miss a little sleeping together?”
The room designed for entertaining the grandchildren became another bedroom
In the home of a couple of retirees, the woman asked to design one room for him and one room for her, which would be similar and include the same items, only that she would add a work area that would disappear into the closet when not in use. Both couples have the same bed and the same mattress, only the upholstery fabric is different. For both rooms, wallpaper was chosen for the wall behind the bed – he has a black masculine wallpaper with a striped texture, she has a more feminine warm wallpaper with a delicate texture of vegetation. Bedside chests were chosen for each of them that fit their character, and the art-loving owner of the house chose a picture above the bed in each of the bedrooms. Design: Lilach Wanou-Ben Yitzhak
In another apartment of pensioners, the bedroom is designed as the master bedroom for the couple, and the additional room is designed and designed as a guest room for the grandchildren who come to visit. “Instead of placing a sofa in it, we decided in the middle of the process to furnish the room with a double bed so that it can be used as a room for watching football in the late hours of the night and it is possible to sleep in it without having to leave the room in the middle of the night.” Wardrobes were installed in the third additional room, which is also used as a guest room for entertaining the grandchildren and has a sofa that opens. “There are couples who always prefer to sleep separately and there are those who only sometimes, and this contributes to the quality of their sleep. There are also couples who do not plan a separate room from the beginning and this is something that arises in thought during the process. It has nothing to do with the quality of the relationship. On the contrary, all the couples I have encountered have been married for many years “Happily with a relationship full of love and good friendship and respect the needs of the other. In the bottom line, it’s all a matter of taking care of comfort and doing the maximum so that everyone sleeps well at night and wakes up relaxed in the morning.”Design: Lilach Wanou-Ben Yitzhak
The interior designer Siboni designed several houses with separate bedrooms. “People live in perceptions and stereotypes, but it is not always appropriate to sleep together in the same room. Of course it is idyllic to sleep like a pair of pigeons, but in reality this does not happen. The most important thing is to sleep well, otherwise life does not go well. Sometimes everything looks rosy on the outside, but there are A couple who keep the rooms separated from the friends and even the children.” In an apartment designed for a couple who moved from a private house to a small apartment, the bedroom is apparently shared with a shared bathroom, but there is a “closet room” with a single bed and a library – which is used as a room for men. “The couple asked for a room for a Filipino, and when they arrived, I saw that he was sleeping there at noon.”
In another apartment, belonging to a well-to-do retired couple, the two told her right from the start that they were interested in separate bedrooms and separate bathrooms. Another apartment was designed for a couple of pensioners who do not get along well and it was obvious from the beginning that they sleep separately. Siboni moved the bedroom door to the hallway and created a kind of suite with a shared bathroom, a master bedroom for the woman and a closet and guest room for the man.
When she plans the design language in such houses, Siboni treats the whole house with a certain style chosen together at the introductory meeting, and chooses colors that suit both couples. “The only thing they say is what size bed they want in each room, whether it is electric or not and what is important to them to have in it – a desk, a library, a wardrobe, a TV, an armchair. If there is a disagreement when she likes modern and he likes wood, this is one of the ways resolve frictions”.