A fascinating look at the social experience of sharing a bed with another person.

Millions of adults sleep with another adult, but what does it mean to share a bed with someone else, and how does it affect a couple's relationship? What happens when one partner snores? Steals the sheets? Prefers to sleep in the nude? To address these and other questions, Paul C. Rosenblatt asked couples to describe the struggles, challenges, and achievements of their bed-sharing experiences. Two in a Bed includes interviews with more than forty bed-sharing couples as they candidly discuss winding down and waking up, cold feet and tucked sheets, who sleeps near the door and who gets pushed to the edge, snoring, spooning, sleep talking, sleep walking, and the myriad other behaviors we negotiate in falling asleep, staying asleep, and waking up each morning beside a partner. In addition to exploring the routines and realities of sharing a bed with another person, these interviews reveal important information about sleep, relationships, and American society. Stressing the intricacy and importance of a previously unremarked activity, Rosenblatt's Two in a Bed shows that sleep should no longer be viewed solely as an individual phenomenon.

"As anyone who has ever spent the night next to another person knows, one can learn a great deal about someone over the course of a night. Rosenblatt's book is a sociological study of this overlooked phenomenon, and he reveals all the factors involved in bed sharing, 'couple interaction,' and the effects of a shared sleeping environment. Based on interviews with 42 heterosexual and homosexual couples, and four single individuals, Rosenblatt explores the entire nighttime procedure, pleasant and not; reading and watching television in bed, tossing, turning, cuddling and sleeping. He also spends a chapter discussing the morning routine, taking into account the differences between couples with children and without. While the study lacks any groundbreaking revelations, it highlights smaller details that may be overlooked when considering the impact of bed sharing. In one particularly revealing example, a woman explains how she and her husband divorced, in part because he refused to break his habit of leaving the television on in the bedroom when the couple went to sleep. While one does not emerge from Rosenblatt's study with an entirely new perspective on the nighttime habits of couples, the book reassuringly asserts the age-old maxims it never hurts to hear: the keys to a good relationship are intimacy, communication and plenty of compromise." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"This is the most fascinating and engaging book in the family arena that I have read in many years. It fills a significant and important gap in the social science literature. Every interview is informative and some are even hilarious." David M. Klein, coeditor of Sourcebook of Family Theory and Research

Paul C. Rosenblatt is Morse-Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor of Family Social Science at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. He is the author of many books, including (with Beverly R. Wallace) African American Grief; Help Your Marriage Survive the Death of a Child; Parent Grief: Narratives of Loss and Relationship; (with Terri A. Karis and Richard D. Powell) Multiracial Couples: Black & White Voices; and Metaphors of Family Systems Theory: Toward New Constructions.

Acknowledgments

1. Introduction
2. Forming the Couple System: Learning to Share a Bed
3. The Bed
4. Going to Bed
5. Activities in the Transition from Awake to Sleep
6. Temperature Preferences
7. Talking and Touching
8. Anger and the Couple Bed
9. Illness and Injury
10. How Can You Sleep So Soundly When I'm So Wide Awake?
11. Outside Intrusions into Couple Sleep
12. Bathroom Trips, Tossing and Turning, Restless Legs, Sleep Talking, Grinding Teeth, and Nightmares
13. Snoring and Sleep Apnea
14. Safety, Intimacy, and Why Couples Sleep Together
15. Waking Up in the Morning
16. Weekends
17. Everyday Life and the Couple System

Appendix
References
Index