Therapists and sleep scientists say it’s OK for couples to sleep apart, a reversal of a long-held marriage tenet
3 min
Ever tried to get a good night’s sleep with your partner snoring or tossing around restlessly next to you?
You’re gonna like this: Therapists and sleep scientists say it’s OK for couples to sleep apart as a growing body of research shows the striking importance of sleep. It’s a reversal from the long-held marriage tenet that once partners move to separate beds, the romance is dead.
Sleep is “essential for a healthy body, mind and relationship,” says Wendy Troxel, clinical psychologist, sleep scientist at Rand and author of a book on couples sleeping. “It’s important to prioritise it.”
Therapists have a caveat. If you and your partner do move to separate beds, you need to find a way to continue to be intimate, both emotionally and physically. Co-sleeping provides important benefits for a couple, such as emotional closeness and opportunities for cuddling, sex and conversation. Partners who sleep well together should stick with it.
In the beginning of their marriage, Mark and Paula White shared the same bed. But neither of them was getting a good night’s rest. Paula is a night owl who keeps the TV on, even when she’s asleep. Mark keeps a fan running at the foot of the bed and happily wakes up at 3 a.m.
Once, he flipped over in his sleep and accidentally punched her in the face. Another time, his snoring and “garlicky breath” made her snap and scream: “I can’t breathe! You’re taking my air!”
That was 32 years ago. Since then, the Whites have mostly slept in separate rooms, even choosing separate beds on vacation.
“We’re better people and we have a better relationship because we get better sleep,” says Paula, 60, a business owner in New Albany, Ohio.
When we sleep well, we stave off a host of physical- and mental-health problems, such as diabetes, hypertension and depression. Our relationships improve, because we’re less irritable, less frustrated, and better at communication and problem-solving. When we’re cranky, we tend to take it out on the person closest to us.
Better sleep can boost our sex lives, too. One of the main reasons couples stop having sex is because they’re too damn exhausted.
“This is why couples say one of their most satisfying sexual experiences is when they go on vacation,” says Sari Cooper, a certified sex and couples therapist in New York. “They get time to rest.”
Here’s how psychologists suggest you can successfully sleep apart.
Don’t stomp off out of bed. It could make your partner feel rejected. Both people need to be OK with the arrangement for it to work.
Choose a time when you are both well-rested. Don’t talk about this in the bedroom.
Ask your partner: Are you sleeping OK? Explain that you want both of you to sleep well. Be reassuring that this is about sleep and not attraction.
Don’t blame. Use “I” instead of “you.” Try: “I get cold at night,” not “you are a blanket hog.”
Keep it targeted. This isn’t the time to talk about everything wrong in your relationship. “Stay focused on how you can be a better partner if you are better slept,” Rand’s Troxel says.
This doesn’t have to be a full-time arrangement. You can sleep apart during the workweek, or take a break when one person is in a bout of insomnia.
This temporary approach is especially helpful when one partner wants to sleep apart and one doesn’t, Troxel says.
When you sleep in separate beds, there are fewer opportunities for spontaneous sex or even just snuggling. “You need to be intentional about creating the seduction, flirtation and planning to make it happen,” says Cooper, the sex therapist.
Pick a day when you know you will be most relaxed and plan to go to bed an hour earlier. (You’ll want energy!) Build the anticipation beforehand. Send a flirty text or leave a note on your partner’s bed.
And remember: Not all intimacy has to be sexual.
Cuddle. Watch a movie. Engage in pillow talk. Then say good night and head off to your separate beds.
“You can shoot for the best of both worlds: time awake in bed together and good sleep,” says Zlatan Krizan, a certified sleep scientist and professor of psychology at Iowa State University.
The Whites, who have been married 33 years, sometimes watch a movie in bed and snuggle. When they want to be intimate, they plan a date night or simply visit each other’s bedroom. Sometimes Paula tells her husband, “I’ll leave the red light on for you tonight.” Both spouses say sex is more pleasurable now because they aren’t so tired and tense.
They have one bedtime ritual they never skip, though. They go upstairs together, kneel on each side of Paula’s bed, and say their prayers. Then they kiss good night and head off to their own rooms.
“Now, when we’re together, we know it’s going to be quality time,” Mark, 61, says.
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Office-to-residential conversions are gaining traction, helping revitalize depressed business districts
4 min
Developer efforts to convert emptying office towers into residential buildings have largely gone nowhere. That may be finally changing.
The prospect of transforming unused office space into much-needed housing seemed a logical way to resolve both issues. But few conversions moved forward because the cost of acquiring even an aging office building remained too high for the economics to pencil out.
Now that office vacancy has reached record levels, sellers are willing to take what they can. That has caused values to plunge for nothing-special buildings in second-rate locations, making the numbers on many of those properties now viable for conversions.
Seventy-three U.S. conversion projects have been completed this year, slightly up from 63 in 2023, according to real-estate services firm CBRE Group. But another 309 projects are planned or under way with about three-quarters of them office to residential. In all, about 38,000 units are in the works, CBRE said.
“The pipeline keeps replenishing itself,” said Julie Whelan , CBRE’s senior vice president of research.
In the first six months of this year, half of the $1.12 billion in Manhattan office-building purchases were by developers planning conversion projects, according to Ariel Property Advisors.
While New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C., are leading the way, conversions also are popping up in Cincinnati, Phoenix, Houston and Dallas. A venture of General Motors and Bedrock announced Monday a sweeping redevelopment of Detroit’s famed Renaissance Center that includes converting one of its office buildings into apartments and a hotel.
In Cleveland, 12% of its total office inventory is either undergoing conversions or is planned for conversion. Many projects there are clustered around the city’s 10-acre Public Square. The former transit hub went through a $50 million upgrade about 10 years ago, adding fountains, an amphitheater and green paths.
“You end up with so much space that you paid so little for, that you can create amenities that you would never build if you were doing new construction,” said Daniel Neidich, chief executive of Dune Real Estate Partners, a private-equity firm that has teamed up with developer TF Cornerstone to invest $1 billion on about 20 conversion projects throughout the U.S. in the next three years.
Conversions won’t solve the office crisis, or make much of a dent in the U.S. housing shortage . And many obsolete office buildings don’t work as conversion projects because their floors are too big or due to other design issues. The 71 million square feet of conversions that are planned or under way only account for 1.7% of U.S. office inventory, CBRE said.
But city planners believe that conversions will play an important part in revitalising depressed business districts, which have been hollowed out by weak return-to-office rates in many places.
And developers are starting to find ways around longstanding obstacles in larger buildings. A venture led by GFP Real Estate is installing two light wells in a Manhattan office-conversion project at 25 Water St. to ensure that all the apartments will get sufficient light and air.
Cities such as Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Calgary, Alberta, have started to roll out new subsidies, tax breaks and other incentives to boost conversions.
The projects are breathing new life into iconic properties that no longer work as office buildings. The Flatiron Building in New York will be redeveloped into condominiums. In Cincinnati, the owner of the Union Central Life Insurance Building is converting it into more than 280 units of housing with a rooftop pool, health club and commercial space.
In the first couple of years of the pandemic, office building owners were able to hold on to their properties because of government assistance and because tenants continued to pay rent under long-term leases.
As leases matured and demand remained anaemic, landlords began to capitulate and dump buildings at enormous discounts to peak values. In Washington, D.C., for example, Post Brothers last year paid about $66 million for 2100 M Street, which had sold for as much as $150 million in 2007.
Washington, D.C., has been particularly hard hit by the office downturn because the federal government has been especially permissive in allowing employees to work from home .
“We’re able to make it work as a conversion because it was no longer priced as though it could be repositioned as office,” said Matt Pestronk , Post’s president and co-founder.
Increasingly, more deals are taking place behind the scenes as converters reach deals with creditors to buy debt on troubled office buildings and then push out the owners. GFP Real Estate reduced costs of its $240 million conversion of 25 Water Street by buying the debt at a discount and cutting deals with tenants to exit the building before their leases matured.
One of the first projects planned by the venture of Dune and TF Cornerstone likely will be the Wanamaker Building in Philadelphia. TF Cornerstone just purchased the debt on the office space in the building and is in the process of taking title.
“The banks are foreclosing and doing short sales,” said Neidich, Dune’s CEO. “There’s a ton of it going on.”
In Washington, D.C., a conversion of the old Peace Corps headquarters building near Dupont Circle is 70% leased just four months after opening, said developer Gary Cohen . Rents are higher than expected.
“If that’s the way to get people downtown, that’s what we have to do,” Cohen said.
Not all developers agree that the economics of conversions work, even at today’s low prices. Miki Naftali , who has converted more than five New York properties over the years, said he has been very actively looking at conversion candidates but hasn’t yet found a deal that works financially.
One of the issues facing converters is that even if an office building is dying, it often has a few existing tenants who would need to be relocated. Some buildings would need atriums to ensure that all the apartments have sufficient light and air.
“When you start to add everything up, if your costs get close to new construction, that’s when you get to the point that it doesn’t make financial sense,” Naftali said.
Some landlords are including clauses in leases that give them the right to evict tenants to make room for a major conversion. Others are keeping a small ownership stake when they sell buildings so that they can learn the conversion process for future buildings.
“The world is looking at these assets in a different way,” said developer William Rudin , whose company decided to learn the conversion process by keeping a stake in 55 Broad Street, a downtown New York office building it sold last year to a converter.
