Award-winning actress and singer Bette Midler sat for an interview with Entertainment Tonight in 2024. Among other things, Midler shared the truncated secret to her almost 40-yearlong marriage: “Separate bedrooms. My husband snores.”
Midler echoes the voices of other celebrities, such as Gwyneth Paltrow, Baz Luhrmann, Gillian Anderson, and Cameron Diaz, who are increasingly speaking up about their own “sleep divorces,” or consistently sleeping separately from partners. In a December 2023 Lipstick on the Rim podcast episode, Diaz went so far as to say, “We should normalize separate bedrooms.”
In attuning ourselves to this A-list chorus, we might predictably ask: Which came first? Everyday couples sleeping apart or celebrities popularizing it? New data seems to suggest it’s a bit of both. Whatever the case, sleep divorces have awakened our collective psyche. Case in point, a 2023 American Academy of Sleep Medicine survey found that 43 percent of millennials in a committed relationship sleep alone either “occasionally” or “consistently.” Additionally, 33 percent of Generation Xers and 28 percent of Zers also “occasionally” or “consistently” sleep away from their significant others.
Sociologists have admittedly snoozed through some of the recent sleep divorce momentum. Sleep experts and marital therapists are more astute. As with Midler’s marriage, sleep experts note the resounding reason for sleep divorces is snoring. Secondary reasons include children getting up at night, separate work schedules, and restlessness. The throughline here is that partners are consistently prioritizing quality sleep for themselves and each other. Could separate snore rooms actually be the ultimate love language?
