We’re driving home from a trip to Totnes, when Ben asks me –
“Mummy, why do you like sleeping with Daddy?”
I look at Mike, and he looks at me, briefly. He has to look back at the road as he’s driving.
“I don’t sometimes,” I reply, “when he snores.”
I assume Ben is referring to the bed-sharing aspect of our night-time arrangements, as he’s still at the stage of thinking we’ve had sex twice, once to beget him and once for his sister.
“So where do you sleep when he snores?” asks Ben, eager to misinterpret any statement whenever possible.
“I don’t mean I don’t sleep with him when he snores, I mean I don’t like sleeping with him when he snores.”
“You both snore,” pipes up Hannah. “When I was sleeping in your room in France I heard both of you.”
“So why don’t you have your own rooms?” persists Ben.
I wonder if they’ve been discussing this, as in the process of tidying Hannah’s room, I found a list of presents for me and Mike.
On both our lists she’d written “own bedroom”. They obviously feel sorry for us.
How do I explain why we choose to share a room, when I sometimes harbour delicious fantasies of inhabiting my own minimalist bedroom unsullied by paperback thrillers, abandoned socks and half-completed paper-cataloguing tasks.
It reminds me of a friend I used to share a flat with.
Her boyfriend wanted to move in with us when a room became vacant. We agreed, but she stipulated that he could only enter her room when naked, carrying nothing, thereby avoiding the detritus that followed him around wherever he lay his hat.
Perhaps we could reach that kind of compromise in our house.
“We share because we want to, but Daddy’s only allowed into our room between eleven at night and eight in the morning.”
“We share so we can rent out rooms to lodgers and keep you in playmobil.”
“We share because we love each other and can’t bear to be parted at night.”
What I actually said was more prosaic.
“It’s what couples do.”
DON’T mention snoring!!!
My husband claims I snore – what rubbish. He snores, but sharing a room with him is nothing compared to sharing a campsite with tent neighbours from hell as we did this holidays.
What is it with men and abandoned socks? After two years of marriage, I’ve stopped getting annoyed by it and moved to the acceptance stage. It still puzzles me, though. My husband is very warm, solid and reassuring, which makes it nice to sleep with him.
Good final answer, by the way!
Thought provoking…It’s what most couples do but does not work for me and my husband. We have separate rooms and it is just as it was for your friend: “he could only enter her room when naked, carrying nothing, thereby avoiding the detritus that followed him around wherever he lay his hat.”
I like the “because we love each other” one. Or you could have just said “because it’s more convenient when we want to have sex” but I guess that would be TMI.
As the wife of a snorer, some of the above ideas actually sound pretty good. Though given that two out of our three children still have to share, the own bedroom thing would never work. Besides which, despite the snoring, the absence makes the heart grow fonder thing is a reality; I miss him too much when he works away.
Anyway, I just love the difficult questions your son keeps throwing at you. Because it’s not me having to answer them!!
mid-lifer – it’s outrageous when they make counter-claims about snoring, I quite agree. Just a distraction technique.
MatL – I, too, have learned to step over them, sometimes kicking them spitefully under the bed if I’m in a bad mood.
emmak – interesting, and good to reach an arrangement that works.
Caroline – I don’t think that reply would compute for Ben just yet.
Tracey – I sleep much better when Mike’s away, but he doesn’t… which proves it’s him that snores and not me! It does feel odd without him.
Ain’t it just? I am hankering after a mega bed though – a good six feet wide would be nice after 25 years of 4’6″.