You're listening to Ted Talks daily, I'm Elise, you 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 Ted 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 and 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.

Fast forward to cultural attitudes that we hold today that sleeping apart is necessarily a sign of a loveless or sexless union.

We've even given a name for it, sleep, divorce. Yes, when couples, even happy couples, choose to sleep apart. Now, how Jaji is that? Here's what the science tells us about the costs and benefits of sleeping together or apart, our social brain is prioritizing our need for closeness and security at night, even if at times it comes at a cost to our sleep. That said, all of us need to make sleep a priority because healthy sleep has the power to strengthen our relationships, whereas sleepless nights can bring relationship harm.

Take, for example, this all too common scenario. He falls asleep, the snoring begins. She lives next to him, awake and in agony, until in total frustration, she gives him a fierce jab to the ribs.

Let's face it, neither partner is sleeping particularly well, and at least one partner is feeling increasingly resentful.

This can set a vicious cycle in motion of sleep problems leading to relationship problems and so on, wreaking havoc on your relationship, not to mention your health and well-being.

When we studied couples sleep and relationship quality night and day, we found that for men on nights when he slept worse, his relationship quality suffered the next day.

But for women, it was all about the relationship on days when she was not so happy about her relationship. That night, both her sleep and her husband sleep suffered sleeping together, challenges can also emerge due to differences in sleep wake patterns.

A key step in the most powerful treatment for insomnia is to reduce time in bed, not extend it. Other couples face challenges because their sleep schedules are out of sync. Some of us are owls who like to burn the midnight oil, whereas others, the larks wake up cheerfully at the crack of dawn, much to the chagrin of everyone around them.

So should birds of a feather sleep together?

Our research shows that couples who are more in sync in their sleep wake patterns do enjoy some relationship advantages.

We measured couples sleep on a minute to minute basis throughout the night and found that those who were asleep or awake at the same times were more satisfied in their relationship.

Other research shows that mismatched pairs have lower levels of relationship satisfaction, more conflict and less sex.

Now, before all you mismatched pair is run off in despair. There is hope. Research also shows that couples who have good Problem-Solving skills are able to overcome the challenges otherwise associated with being out of sync. So if you're a clerk and he's an owl, you could spend some quality time together in bed before he falls asleep, then quietly leave the room and return at your more natural later bedtime.

And if he wakes up before you, he could start his EarlyBird day, then return later to wish you good morning, ideally with coffee in hand.

After all, a key factor in any healthy and happy relationship is knowing how to negotiate our differences and find compromise both day and night.

And back to the million dollar question, is it bad if my partner and I sleep apart? The answer is no, not necessarily. Just as sleeping together doesn't guarantee a successful relationship, if only it were that easy, sleeping apart doesn't guarantee an unsuccessful one. U.S. open and honest communication to find solutions that will maximize sleep quality for both of you, and if sleeping apart seems like the right choice, then think of it not as filing for a sleep divorce, but rather forging a sleep alliance with your partner or as journalist Jessica Goldstein calls it.

Unconscious uncoupling. Bottom line, there is no one size fits all sleeping strategy for all couples, but all couples should make sleep a priority. After all, we spend about one third of our lives asleep proportionally. That's a major part of our coupled existence, much more so than sex.

And yet it's so often neglected. Research shows us when you're well slept, you're a better communicator, more empathic, happier, more attractive, all important attributes in developing and sustaining healthy and happy relationships.

Sadly, we live in a culture that continues to view sleep deprivation as a badge of honor.

Perhaps by focusing on how our sleep problems affect not just ourselves, but also our relationships, we can begin to view sleep as the pillar of health that it is.

If you're not going to sleep for yourself, then do it for your partner. And everyone else around you consider it an investment in your relationship. At the end of the day. There is nothing happier. Healthier. And even sexier. Then a good night of sleep. Ted Talks Daily, is hosted by Elise Hu and produced by Ted, the music is from Allison Layton Brown. In our Mixu is Christopher Fazi Bogon.

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