I’m trying to figure out when couples sleeping positions became something that needed so much decoding.

So, like, if two people are right side sleepers by nature, it means one doesn’t want to look at the other or something?  It’s called sleeping comfortably people.

There have been a ridiculous amount of articles written about this and plastered all over Facebook.  The one I saw this morning was an article from Cosmopolitan (because we know how right they always are) and it basically contradicted itself half the time.   It, at one point says, something to the effect that couples who sleep back to back are seeking independence.  Then, two sentences later also says that maybe the couple is just doing that so that partners aren’t breathing in each other’s faces which is also pretty likely.  I mean who wants someone’s nasty sleep breath going up their nose while they sleep?

Devon is predominately a right side sleeper.  He rarely deviates from that position so he’s facing the middle of the bed most of the time.  It’s just how he sleeps.  If we slept on opposite sides of the bed, he’d be facing the wall most of the time.  But OMG, that must mean there is conflict!  He wouldn’t be facing me!  Comfort be damned!

I alternate between sleeping on my back and on my right side most of the night.  I rarely ever sleep on my left side (which would be facing Devon) because I’ve almost never slept on my left side and even if I did, he snores.  Don’t want the snoring that close to my face.  When a part of my body becomes restless it changes positions, as most people do.  I don’t turn my back to him (because remember, if I sleep on my side, it’s on my right side, which is also the same side he sleeps on) because he said something horrible about my mother; it’s because my butt is asleep from laying on it for two hours.

We never did the whole “entangled” sleeping thing that apparently “all new couples do”.  No.  There’s not a lot of contact because we both like sleeping in cold environments.  So a lot of close contact (mixed in with our heavy down blanket) would make it hot and neither of us would be able to sleep.  We’re not on opposite sides of the bed or anything, we generally stay in the middle of our King Size bed but that doesn’t mean touching.  My left arm and his right arm usually overlap a bit but that’s about it.  Does that mean we “need independence from each other” or that “we desire distance”?

No.  It means we need to sleep to re-energize ourselves (we do both deal with teenagers all day) and the best way to do that is in the way we are both the most comfortable.

I get the concept of body language and that your body can speak volumes about how you feel about someone.  But sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar.  And sleeping is just a physical need to rejuvenate yourself and not a passive aggressive stance toward your partner.  Odds are if it is, there are other signs of issues in your relationship and you don’t really need to look at your sleeping patterns to notice them.  If your relationship is fine, stop reading into things like these articles and don’t create problems where there aren’t any.  Go sleep in a comfortable position.  You’re not harming your relationship by being comfortable.