It can be a strange experience getting used to sharing a bed with someone and there are some stages of getting used to sharing a bed that you're going to experience together.
You’ve spent anything from 15-20 odd years sleeping alone and now there is this whole other person in your bed – every night. You’ve established your own sleep patterns and positions and habits and now they’re all disrupted. Without getting all scientific about it, there are various stages of getting used to sharing a bed with someone.
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The Tangled up Stage
The first of the stages of getting used to sharing a bed is the hardest to get used to. The first few weeks will be an exploration of just how tangled up two people can become in a single night! You will fall asleep comfortably in each other’s arms, but by 4am the pins and needles will start to kick in and when you wake up you won’t even know how you possibly got in to the positions that you have found yourselves in! Legs, arms, hair, anything that has the ability to intertwine with something definitely will! It’s all about learning special awareness.
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The Snoring Stage
If you yourself are a snorer, it will never have bothered you before because you are always asleep when it’s happening! Everything can change, however, if your new bed partner suffers from the same affliction! Things can get serious real fast if one of you cannot sleep because the other is making too much noise. Start out with a soft elbow or low cough to try to stop the snoring, but if nothing works then it might be time to invest in some ear plugs!
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The Starfish Stage
We all try to be as respectful as possible in the early stages of sharing a bed with somebody, but when you start to get more and more comfortable, some of your old traits run the risk of coming out, and one of the worst is the tendency to starfish out and take up all the space! You might feel bad about it in your waking hours, but when you are in dreamland there is nothing more comfortable than spreading out in a big old starfish! Comfortable for you, but uncomfortable for your sleep partner.
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The Taking the Couch Stage
This is stage that may happen when your partner has a super important day ahead and they need the best nights’ sleep possible. Offering to sleep on the couch rather than disturbing them is one of the kindest acts of love you can display in a relationship, as you are essentially sacrificing your own comfort for theirs!
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The First Nightmare Stage
We all like to pretend that we are grown, mature adults with no irrational fears, but all of that pretence comes undone when your new bed partner experiences your waking up in a cold sweat after having a nightmare! This can be a great thing in the long run, as they can learn how to calm you down and reassure you in that horrible period when you aren’t quite sure what has just happened.
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Meaning is not what you start with but what you end up with.
The ‘I Prefer Sleeping Alone’ Stage
A few months into the starfishing, the snoring and everything else, you will definitely decide that you would rather go back to sleeping alone. The urge might be real, but on the whole this is just a reactionary emotion that passes soon after.
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The Realizing You’d Still Rather Sleep with Your Partner Stage
Stage 6 is quickly followed by this stage - the final stage in completing your bed sharing journey! As soon as you spend a few nights without the warm presence of your partner next to you, you realise that you have grown accustomed to both the good and the bad and can no longer deal with anything else! You prefer sleeping together.
