Caring but not sharing

Separate bedrooms are all the rage among American couples - so it can only be a matter of time before the fashion reaches Britain. But would that be a bad thing, asks Zoe Williams Zoe Williams Tuesday March 13, 2007 Guardian It is easy to think the worst of Americans. Perhaps you have just read that they are indulging a new trend, that of separate sleeping quarters for married people. Aha! you think. They are craven, status-driven warthogs, who simply wish to flaunt their wealth by the incredible amount of space they can take up, because their houses are so huge. Or maybe it is the snoring. They have to sleep separately, because they all snore. And they all snore because they eat too much. The research vice-president of that nation's National Association of Home Builders has said: "It started with the his-and-hers closet ... now the demand is for the his-and-hers bedroom. It's a market-driven demand that's going to continue." Naturally, you think: what else would it be but market-driven? What trend ever occurs in that bloated nation that isn't just the agglomerated me-me-me demands of a load of grabby warthogs? The truth is, of course, that if you have a spare room at all, which I do, then you could just as easily call this a his-and-hers bedroom arrangement, if you could just get your boyfriend to sleep in it, possibly by coaxing him up there with a trail of chocolate buttons. Or maybe I am getting it mixed up with how to get a cat to use a cat-flap. And if you snore, which I do, and so does your boyfriend, which he does, and so does your dog, who learned it off you, and so does your cat, probably, except with the least body mass she is the quietest, then there is no reason at all why separate sleeping shouldn't be a brilliant idea. I am America, in other words. Certainly to my dark psyche. All the America-hate is just self-hate with a geo-political spin. The first image that springs to mind is the 1950s film. "Like Doris Day," says Emma, my friend, when I mention it to her. She has conflated two concepts: "Hollywood classic" and "sexless marriage". Where these intersect is the area of separate bedrooms or at least twin beds. Because of the original filmic motivation - that a double bed signified sexual decadence, where twins signified propriety - one thinks of separate sleeping quarters, naturally enough, as sexless. Such a couple must be very prudish, and frigid, you think - if they were red-blooded, they would want to sleep together. Now, I don't want to depress young couples just starting out but I think most of us, being honest, would admit that double beds do not, within the context of a marriage, necessarily spell out "red-hot congress occurs here on a twice-nightly basis". Once you admit that, you can start to countenance the possibility that separate rooms, far from being the death knell of physical togetherness, might actually spice things up a bit, like that rabbi whose major sex tip is: "Try not to undress in front of one another." It's not so much the familiarity and the contempt stuff. Contempt can come from anywhere. Sometimes your husband might only just have come back from a very long business trip and still drive you up the wall. It is more about the formal structures that separate rooms would necessitate. On such occasions as it was called for, you would have to find some way of luring your other half into your room. Perhaps they had been yawning a lot all the way through West Wing; you would then know that special measures must be taken. You might have to leave a trail of chocolate buttons. Sorry - I am painting an inaccurate picture indeed of my actual boyfriend, who doesn't have a sweet tooth and wouldn't cross the street for less than a Quaver. But you see where I'm going - the more trappings there are surrounding the activity, the more scope for innovation. The more scope for innovation, the more likely you are to invent a new kind of light bulb while shagging and immeasurably improve the net profitability of your lovemaking. Of course, the other way separate rooms could enhance your love life is if you lived in the olden days, and were posh. Almost the entire genre known as "English country-house fiction" (all about sex, not to be confused with country-house poetry, which is all about houses), from The Shooting Party to Gosford Park, would be non-existent if it weren't for the fact that rich people never knew where their spouses were in the night, so never kicked up a fuss if they were having affairs. Without this feature, the aristocracy would have almost nothing to recommend it, apart from one or two recipes. That said, it will be long time before society as a whole comes naturally to associate separate beds with a healthy sex life. You only have to think of the umbrage you take when you get to a hotel room with twin beds in it. If they are apart, you think: Hmph! Rage! They can see we're a couple. What do they think - that we're having a holiday from all the enormously tiring nookie we have in our regular life? And if the twin beds are pushed together, you think: Hmph! Rage! They're not even the same height. Do they think we're not going to notice? Sometimes in an American hotel, they have two ginormous double beds in the one room, as a kind of warthog-twin-variant. It has been my eternal fear that whichsoever boyfriend I am with will decide, from a purely pragmatic perspective, that it might be fun to have one bed each, and I will be so totally hurt and insulted that our relationship will never recover. I pre-empt this possibility by booby-trapping the second double with prickly hairbrushes and knives. I stayed in a rather delightful place called the Sands family resort hotel once, me and my ex-ex; they gave us a room the size of a squash court, which had a double, two singles and a bunk bed in it. It was just confusing. One night we ended up sleeping on the beach. We were drunk, mind. But most of this stuff is about whether you are being promoted or demoted, isn't it? I mean, if your beloved suddenly wanted a separate room, that would clearly be a relationship downsize. I think you could confidently consider yourself downgraded from "life partner" to "periodical cohort". But if you started your relationship, say, in twin beds (and I really have started a relationship like this), then there is almost nowhere to go but up. Maybe these Americans with their his-and-hers suites all come from households with very great financial disparity, so that there's a constant struggle for territory, as one party holds all the cash-cards and the other tries to claw back power in other ways. Maybe in a circumstance like that, just being vested with more physical house-space is a win-win situation, and the ramifications for your sex life are secondary to the power balance. Or maybe it is just the snoring. One should never underestimate the power of the snore.