Throughout our lives, we live with other people. We live with our parents, our siblings, friends in college and friends after college. In all those years of living with other people, we at least had our own cozy beds to sleep in. But not when you’re married. When you’re married, you better be prepared to share your sleeping space.

For most people, this is fine. But for some, it can be an all-out war, fighting for foot space, pulling the sheets in a desperate attempt to hog more of them while claiming, “It’s even! Look! Look! You even have more on your side!” It can be a recipe for disaster.

This is one of those things that you don’t think about when you’re on Cloud Nine planning your most special day. You don’t think about the fact that you’re not only entering into holy matrimony, but you’re also entering into the possibility of sleepless nights filled with huge sighs and angry grunts over the fact that your partner has once again hogged all the covers, leaving you shaking in the cold, planning tactical moves with which to steal them back while he’s fast asleep. Not that this happens to us…

One thing I came to realize about my husband since we got married is that he likes to sleep with the covers untucked. This is fine if it is what your prefer. It is NOT what I prefer. I remember going over to his apartment when we were in college and walking into his bedroom. His sheets and comforter were literally in a ball in the center of his bed. I asked him if he was stripping the bed to do laundry, and he said, “No this is how it was when I woke up.”

That’s right, people. My lovely, 29 year-old husband sleeps like a four year-old child who thrashes about during the night. At the time, I remember finding this extremely adorable. After all, it is kind of cute. But when I actually started having to share a bed with this sleep monster, the cuteness factor took a nose dive.

At first, it was like a battle of the blankets. I normally sleep with everything tucked in neatly, rarely moving a muscle while sleeping, leaving everything still tucked and neat when I wake up. It sure makes it easy to remake the bed in the morning. Marshal likes everything untucked so he can sleep with his feet outside of the blankets, tugging and pulling the covers in every direction. This makes for a miserable bed-making experience in the morning. So when it came time to go to bed, there was obvious tension about who would steal the blankets, and who would eventually give in to the other for the sake of our relationship.

Sleeping is one of the more sensitive topics in a relationship, because it’s one in which it’s difficult to reach a compromise. Sleep is valuable, so you want to make sure it’s as comfortable as it can be. Combining two different sleeping schedules/styles/patterns is trying. Over time though, we adjusted, as most people do. We would each give in little by little, until we could meet somewhere in the middle. I got over my obsessive need to have the blankets tucked in at the bottom of the bed, and Marsh learned to curb the nightly thrashing. I softened to the idea that he could have more of the sheets if I could have more of the comforter. He agreed to letting me choose what kind of comforter we used, as long as I was okay with him keeping his weird rubber pillow. We’ve reached our middle ground, and as long as there is no more tug of war taking place, we can both sleep soundly.

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