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As couples, historically it appears we never grasped how practical it was to sleep in separate beds.

Framing separate sleeping arrangements as a form of marital dissolution is actively harmful.

Did you know that back in the '50s, twin beds were marketed as "doctor-recommended"?

In Downton Abbey, there is a room in the mansion simply referred to as “Lady Cora's bedroom.” Lord Grantham? He has his own as well. But no one weeps or thinks this smacks of a lack of intimacy between the two. If you watched the series or caught the movie spinoffs, the couple is, by all accounts, devoted to one another. The arrangement? Perhaps it’s one that might be called... civilized.

Thing is, it appears that we never quite grasped how civilized it was in terms of what we spend a huge chunk of our lives doing—sleeping.

For most of human history, bedroom and bed-sharing had everything to do with economics and square footage and very little to do with love. It was about the wealth of space. Rich folks had it. Most others did not. So they used it. Often the two rooms were connected by a dressing room or a shared bath. Of course, the wealthiest couples each had their own set of servants as well.

The working class was crammed into small cottages and urban tenements. Like children of the Great Depression, they shared beds out of necessity. Sometimes they even shared their beds with their children. And the most destitute may have even shared them with strangers. It was about having a place to sleep. Separate sleeping was, perhaps, a privilege. And yet somewhere along the way, we took the whole thing and turned it on its head, deciding that sharing a bed was the truest measure of a healthy marriage.

While I could go into the history of all this, many of us never knew that the twin bed was........

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