The Gift of Rest
After surviving a traumatic postpartum hemorrhagic stroke at 40, my husband and I began sleeping apart—not out of distance, but out of devotion.
Sleep became the most essential, yet elusive, part of my recovery. Where I could once drown out my husband’s snoring with earplugs and a sound machine, I now woke at the slightest sound or shift. Add to that a six-month-old, a toddler, and a cat, and my nights turned into a blur of fragmented, anxious rest.
Like many stroke survivors, I became hypersensitive to sound, my nervous system stuck on high alert. Insomnia crept in, one more unwelcome side effect of the stroke, and sleep, real restorative sleep, became a precious and fragile resource. It wasn’t just a necessity to get through my day. It was my medicine, essential for the deep neurological rewiring that stroke recovery demands. I didn’t just need a little more rest; I needed a lot more rest. Ten hours of uninterrupted sleep became my prescription. Our survival, quite literally, depended on it.
So, my husband made the selfless choice to move to the couch, an act of love that became central to my healing.
A Sacred Act of Care
“They got a sleep divorce.”
Let’s be honest. That phrase, often tossed out to describe couples who sleep apart, sounds bleak. It conjures up images of failed intimacy, emotional distance, even shame. But for many couples, nothing could be further from the truth.
Sometimes, sleeping apart is exactly what a relationship needs to survive, and even thrive.
The phrase fails to capture the creativity and healing that can come when couples adapt with intention. What if sleeping apart wasn’t a sign of disconnect, but of care? What if it was an act of chesed—of compassion or loving-kindness—especially for couples navigating parenting, illness, or transition?
In Jewish tradition, chesed is often understood as the acts of care and kindness we extend to our wider community, like visiting a sick neighbor, or cooking for new parents. But chesed can begin at home, in the compassionate care we offer to our partners, children, and ourselves. To build a more loving and resilient community, we must first nurture loving-kindness in these intimate spaces.
For us, sleeping apart was exactly that. It wasn’t just practical. It was spiritual. It was chesed: a small, sacred act of care.
The most supportive thing my husband could have done was give me the space and time to rest and recover. Together, we reimagined partnership during recovery and early parenting, which brought us deeper connection, not less.
Sometimes when life feels extra hard, or when we’re sleep-deprived and feeling frayed, we stand in front of our ketubah and read it together. We go back to square one. Back to the promises we made nearly a decade ago.
“We promise to unite our lives in tenderness and devotion…. May the strength of our love provide us with the determination to be ourselves and the courage to pursue our chosen paths… to be sensitive at all times to each other’s needs; to share life’s joys and to comfort each other through life’s sorrows… to establish a nurturing home filled with love and learning, goodness and generosity, comfort and compassion.”
Those weren’t just beautiful words. They were a blueprint—one we didn’t realize we’d need to follow so literally. The choice to sleep apart wasn’t a break in our bond. It was an expression of that commitment.
It turned out that the couch was the best place for him, too. Thanks to lingering complications from a deep vein thrombosis (DVT), it allowed him to elevate his leg in a way the bed didn’t. In this shared space of healing, we were both adapting and living out the vows we made: to be sensitive to each other’s needs, and to build a nurturing home rooted in care.
Prototyping With Compassion
As a designer, I couldn’t help but notice how this shift mirrored the design-thinking process I know so well: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test. That’s exactly what we did. We listened: to our bodies, our exhaustion, and our needs. When the old system (sharing a bed) failed, we didn’t blame each other. We prototyped something new. We adapted.
That, too, is chesed. It’s caregiving as design: creative, responsive, and human-centered. It’s noticing what no longer works and daring to imagine something better. In design, when a system fails, you don’t blame the user but redesign the system. In love, when the mold doesn’t fit, you iterate and prototype something new, perhaps brave, and maybe a little unconventional.
We didn’t call it a sleep divorce. We called it our Sleep Sanctuary. A space crafted for healing and restoration.
Each night, as I settled into the quiet room we set aside for my recovery, I glanced at our ketubah hanging on the wall across from the bed. The words we chose nearly a decade ago still guided us: to create a home filled with love and learning, comfort and compassion. Each morning, we woke up well-rested and reconnected on our own terms.
Sleeping apart became a healing, intentional structure designed around mutual care, Jewish values, and a commitment to meet each other’s needs during crisis and recovery. By redesigning our nights, we restored our days. This shift gave me sanctuary.
An Invitation to Reimagine Care
I’m not sharing this to suggest that every couple should sleep apart. But if you do, I want you to know: you’re not alone. You’re not failing. You’re adapting. In fact, a 2023 survey from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine found that nearly a third of Americans sometimes sleep apart from their partners. That’s a lot of us quietly redesigning our lives for rest, and love.
Sometimes, the greatest kindness we can offer each other is the space to rest, even if it breaks the mold of what a “healthy” relationship is supposed to look like. It’s not something to be ashamed of. It’s a creative act of care—an expression of chesed—that honors your unique needs and rhythms. If you’re facing illness, parenting struggles, or life transitions, it might be time to reimagine what intimacy and loving-kindness mean. To tell a different story, one that is rooted in compassion, and resilience.
My husband and I hope to share a bed again someday, but we’re not in a rush. Our marriage is stronger for it. We’ve reimagined what intimacy looks like, emotionally, and day-to-day. We’ve designed a new way to care for one another, one that prioritizes well-being over convention.
We’ve also maintained our rituals: morning hugs and goodnight kisses, sharing a pot of tea, and the occasional All Creatures Great and Small episode before I fall asleep. We still pile into the same bed for snuggles and stories with our two young daughters each night. When they have nightmares, we have them rotate which parent they wake up.
Love is not one-size-fits-all.
Sometimes it looks like sharing a bed, even when sleep is hard to come by.
And sometimes, it looks like a Sleep Sanctuary. Quiet, separate, and sacred.