You're listening to TED Talks Daily. I'm Elise Hu. Sleep. We prioritize it, fixate on it, and yet so many of us don't get enough of it. Guilty.

In today's talk from another podcast from TED called TEDx Shorts, Wendy Troxel unpacks the costs and benefits of coupled sleep,

that is, sharing a bed with your partner. Could sleeping apart actually be healthier for our bodies

and our relationships? The marital or otherwise shared bed is a window into our deepest vulnerabilities

and how we look to our relationships to help us feel safe during threatening times.

As a sleep scientist and clinician, who has spent my career studying the coupled nature of sleep.

There's a lot of pressure around the meaning of the marital or otherwise shared bed.

But this is largely a socially constructed belief system, not science-based.

Most of the groundbreaking work in sleep science over the past 60 years has come

from studies of people sleeping alone in a laboratory under tightly controlled conditions.

But sleep in the real world doesn't occur in laboratory environments.

Sleep in the real world is often noisy, interrupted, and most importantly shared.

Couples of all types, straight, gay, young, old, healthy couples, and those facing illness face all sorts of challenges

when it comes to the shared sleep experience.

Truth is, most of us are sleeping together.

Well, not together as in you and me, but with a partner.

But other data suggests a growing number of

couples are choosing to sleep apart. Throughout Western history, the pendulum has shifted back and

forth from stigma attached to sleeping together versus sleeping apart. For example, the trend of wealthy couples

opting for separate master bedrooms is nothing new. Just think of the sleeping arrangements

of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip as depicted in the crown. Now theirs is a seriously enduring

relationships, and they have slept apart for decades, at least according to Netflix.

...