That Time My Partner Stopped Sleeping in Our Bed

Some things can never be taken back

I was severely overweight. And I snored. And, according to him, I smelled. He made a point of making an ugly face when he said that.

He told me all of this because he had decided he would no longer sleep in the same bed as I did. “I rather sleep on the couch,” he explained.

Being someone who appreciates the value of a good night's sleep, it would have been enough for me to know he wanted to sleep comfortably. My issue was with his choice of words. Listening to him, it seemed his goal was to hurt me.

And he had succeeded.

I thought I was disgusting.

This didn’t come out of the blue. I already had a bit of extra weight and, after the birth of our child, I struggled with postpartum depression and gained even more. He would make comments on how I was getting too fat, always choosing the cruelest words, thinking his rudeness would motivate me to get in shape.

Unsurprisingly, that was not the case. Instead, I retreated into myself even more, thinking non-stop about how disgusting I was.

His leaving our bed was only the cherry on top of the cake. He eventually got another bed for the spare room.

We’d have sex from time to time, but I couldn't forget my body wasn’t to his liking.

He wanted to go back.

Eventually, something happened. After a neck injury, I was forced to improve my health just to keep the pain away — even something as simple as holding a book was unbearable. I had to change the way I ate and started a rigorous exercise regime.

My body changed.

After a couple of years of steady work, I was in the best shape of my life. I had energy, and even my mental health improved. And then, something quite curious happened.

My partner wanted to get back into my bed.

What normal couples do.

The problem was, after a few years of sleeping on my own, I had gotten used to it. Turns out he was right — having the bed all for myself was very comfortable.

He wasn’t very subtle about it, though. He started to mention how it was time for us to go back to being a normal couple. “Normal couples sleep on the same bed,” he said.

Funny, he didn’t think that back when I cared about it.

I realized for me this wasn’t just about losing the comfort of sleeping alone. Instead, it was about the fact that this man left me when I needed him the most. When I was depressed and hated myself and tried to eat enough to die, he decided he wanted no part of it.

That was his right, of course.

But it seems he expected no consequences whatsoever for the choices he made, as if my love subsisted in a vacuum in which his abandonment didn’t exist.

It wasn’t until I picked myself up that he remembered he “loved me” and wanted nothing but to be my side all the time.

Could this happen again?

At this point, you have probably noticed this went beyond sleeping arrangements. Instead, it was about the whole of our relationship and whether or not I could ever again feel safe with this person.

The answer was no.

I knew that, no matter what he promised or how many times he said he loved me very much, in the back of my mind, would always be the question, “Could this happen again?”

If I ever found myself in another difficult situation, would he, once again, leave me to my own devices? After all, that’s the choice he made every night for several years. And he made it clear it was because the idea of laying next to me at night upset him.

When you’ve been told something like that, it’s impossible to forget it, no matter how much you try to. After all, if you prove to someone you don’t love them, over and over again, eventually, they believe you. So, before you choose to hurt your partner, you better be sure you are prepared to deal with the consequences.

Some things can never be taken back.