It amazes me that people still need to be told what constitutes a happy romantic Relationship. Even worse is an emerging trend for ditching the marital bed.

Signs of love

On Wednesday, November 23, The Times published the results of a Costa Coffee-sponsored poll of 2,000 adults who gave ten key signs that a romantic relationship is a lasting one. The conclusion follows:

The top ten signs of love

1. Regularly asking if your partner is OK — 58% of respondents
2. Always having each other’s back — 56%
3. Saying “I love you” daily — 53%
4. Making time for intimacy — 50%
5. Telling your partner they look nice — 50%
6. Being able to sit in silence without awkwardness — 49%
7. Holding hands — 47%
8. Knowing how the other feels, without having to ask — 46%
9. Regular banter — 40%
10. Never going to bed until an argument is resolved — 39%

The first sign — ‘regularly asking if your partner is OK’ — is off-putting. I would go barmy if I were asked that. Maybe I’m too old or have been married too long.

I also disagreed with two that, thankfully, didn’t get enough votes to make the Top 10:

Amid the challenges of modern dating, allowing your partner access to your mobile phone was a sign of true love for less than 20 per cent of respondents, while only 11 per cent said that it was shown by liking each other’s posts on social media.

Good grief. Allowing someone else access to one’s mobile phone is like giving them access to one’s email account. What are people thinking? And who cares about liking each other’s posts on social media? Again, I’m too old for such fripperies.

For me, in the budding stages of a relationship, this one is the most important:

6. Being able to sit in silence without awkwardness — 49%

If one can do that early on, it will last for the rest of the relationship.

In a well-established relationship, this one is the most important:

10. Never going to bed until an argument is resolved — 39%

This one comes as a close second:

9. Regular banter — 40%

It was heartening to read this statistic:

The study of 2,000 Britons commissioned by Costa Coffee showed that eight in ten of those in happy relationships believed love was the most important thing in the world.

The Times then followed up with an antidote to the survey. Stuart Heritage wrote about what really matters — to him, anyway — in a relationship (emphases mine):

If you have the strength to drag yourself away from your phone for long enough to say good morning to the person you’ve chosen to spend your life with, you must be in love. With that in mind, here’s an alternative, much more accurate list of love’s definitive hallmarks.

• • Taking the bins out before they overflow
  • Remembering your anniversary (the date, not the number of years)
  • Hanging out with their awful friends without being too outwardly hostile
  • Telling them when yesterday’s underwear is poking out of their trouser leg
  • Eating in the same room together a minimum of once a week
  • Coming up with the perfect insult but being self-aware enough not to say it out loud
  • Taking the things that have deliberately been left on the stairs to the top of the stairs
  • Remembering not to put the cast-iron pan in the dishwasher again
  • Knowing when to take the children away for a few hours
  • Daily eye contact
  • Not talking all through the start of a movie, leaving you both unsure of what the movie is about
  • Agreeing on the optimum temperature of a room, instead of passive-aggressively wrestling with the thermostat when the other one isn’t looking
  • Having sex all the way through without checking your phone

There were several more, but you get the idea.

One thing he did not put on his list is daily touching — lips, shoulders, hands — which is just as important as daily eye contact.

Again, it must be a generational thing, but I cannot imagine being intimate with someone and checking one’s phone at the same time.

Ditching the marital bed

Around the same time the British survey appeared, The Times posted a report from their Paris correspondent Charles Bremner about an Ifop poll — ‘Couples opt for separate rooms and less ooh-la-la’:

A recent study found that 10 per cent of cohabiting couples Sleep in different rooms and a further 6 per cent would like to but fear the consequences.

Young people are increasingly eschewing the same room. More 20 per cent of couples aged 65 and over sleep in separate rooms, the Ifop study found. Contrary to what might be assumed, however, the pandemic and its lockdowns did not accelerate the decline in sleeping together, Ifop said.

The French blame the Catholic Church for the marital bed. I’ve never heard of a crazier thing. What about every other country and culture?

For centuries, French couples were told by the church that their duty was to sleep in the same bed. But as Christian practices decline, increasing numbers are opting for separate rooms, with the blessing of experts who say there is no reason to feel guilty …

The shift reflects the fading of the obligation that was imposed by church and society since Thomas Aquinas decreed in the 13th century that “the couple must have their bed and their bed-chamber”. The duty of the single bed, never observed by French aristocracy and royalty, was in full bourgeois force when Honoré de Balzac wrote in the 19th century, “The bed is all of marriage”.

Yes, I am aware of separate bedrooms. The Queen and Prince Philip had their own rooms, and Downton Abbey had them, too.

However, how can one not want to sleep with one’s nearest and dearest, barring severe or chronic medical problems? Maybe I’m too much of a romantic.

Experts are telling French couples not to feel guilty if they have or want to have separate sleeping arrangements:

Couples are now being told that while physical intimacy may suffer, “la chambre à part” does not necessarily mean failure and can be healthy. “It is not so natural to sleep with another person,” Pascal Anger, a psychotherapist, said. “When you ask people if they feel good at night, they shrug and say ‘not as good as all that,” he told RMC radio.

What’s unnatural about sleeping with the one you love? This all sounds rather selfish:

François de Singly, a sociologist, said: “Modern individuals want more and more to retain their personal identity without giving up the company of the other.” Damien Léger, head of the Sleep Centre at the Hôtel-Dieu university hospital in Paris, said the tradition of bed-sharing is cultural, not natural. “It’s not obvious for a lot of people,” he said.

It sounds like some of the devil’s finest work, especially when explained like this:

Advice has been coming from Jean-Claude Kauffmann, a sociologist and author of “A Bed for Two: The tender war”, a noted book on sharing lives, in or out of wedlock. “Fifty years ago, the roles were well defined. You began life as a couple with marriage which meant sharing the same place,” he said. “We’re now in an era when you don’t want to disappear as an individual… This phenomenon is being embraced as a new way of being a couple,” he told Le Parisien newspaper.

My feelings will be well and truly hurt if that ever happens to me.

Snoring, probably the most common complaint, can be easily solved by rolling up the bed pillow underneath one’s neck before going to sleep. With a down pillow it’s comfy, and one breathes properly.

The Times offered another perspective. Alice-Azania Jarvis suggested separate duvets, saying she could appreciate the survey results:

I can relate. Or, at least, I could. For years I, too, was separation-curious. In the small hours, after yet another tug of war over the duvet, nothing was more appealing . . . but in the cold light of day, full sleep divorce seemed a step too far. Never mind the lack of intimacy: we live in central London and just don’t have the space.

I know, from conversations with friends, that I am not alone. Which is why I’d like to share what has proved a life-changing, no exaggeration, solution. It won’t insulate you from snoring (that’s what earplugs are for) but neither will it necessitate the addition of an extra wing, nor the requisitioning of your home office. Crucially, it is almost totally free from unsexy housemate vibes. It is this: separate bedding.

I promise, it is magic. My husband and I discovered this happy fact long before we were married, after a tip-off from another couple. I admit, I was sceptical, and reluctant to introduce any more laundry into our lives. But that first night was a revelation — the freedom to hog my own duvet, the luxury of a full cocoon. My husband loved it too: aggressively possessive in sleep, I’ve been known to kick, hard.

We’ve never looked back. Over the years, this arrangement has evolved to accommodate our individual preferences: a sheet or very light duvet for me (no overheating), the full marshmallowy shebang for him. It looks a little strange, but we have a pleasing bedspread, and an elaborate selection of scatter cushions, which cover the worst sins.

Now that’s the sort of advice worth reading and following.

The Christmas widow

At the same time the aforementioned surveys appeared an ‘Anonymous author’ first-person story showed up in The Telegraph: ‘How did I become a Christmas widow?’

Surely, if one is married, one of the highlights of the year is spending Christmas together, right?

Not so for one husband, who prefers to be away from his wife and children for most of the day. I wonder what their sleeping arrangements are like.

She writes:

For the last four years I have become a Christmas widow. I have my children, aged 17 and 12, to keep me company but my usually attentive husband is nowhere to be seen. My children and I will eat a Christmas lunch – turkey and all the trimmings – without him. We’ll watch the King’s speech wondering when he’ll get back. We’ll play charades with no dad jokes to laugh at. 

At around 4pm my husband will come in, all smiles and laughter, re-heat his Christmas dinner and sit with it on a tray on his lap on the sofa. From this position, he’ll regale us with all the selfless things he’s done that day. 

For the past four years my husband has volunteered every Christmas in a homeless shelter. He stands behind a counter in a pinny handing out lunches to those in need. It’s supremely ironic that he finds such fulfilment in this, because he never lifts a finger in our kitchen at home. 

Hmm.

She must be kicking herself:

I married my husband because I loved his big heart and unquenchable kindness. In fact, it was me who introduced him to this homeless shelter through a friend who also volunteers there.

This is where selflessness can go wrong:

I was proud of him at first but over the years he’s become a boastful virtue-signaller whose do-goodery turns my stomach every Christmas. He goes on and on about it for the rest of the day and most of the Christmas week, telling all our friends and visitors of who he met and their troubles. I roll my eyes at girlfriends and relatives hoping he’ll shut up. To be honest, it all bores me. 

Originally, the idea was that his design company would help make signs and leaflets for this charity, but he became more and more chummy with the organisers and slowly started to get more and more personally involved until we got to where we are now: he a virtue-signalling bore and me a Christmas widow.

According to her, he wants to get the children involved:

This year it’s got even worse, as he has started asking our children to go with him. The eldest would never be up in time anyway, but I put my foot down about the youngest. He deserves a Christmas he can enjoy and remember, opening his presents, not serving up gravy to people he’s never met before and who I believe might well have a host or problems he is too young to understand and not equipped to deal with. 

I understand what she’s saying:

I long to have a relaxed Christmas lie-in with him, to exchange gifts, and hold his hand as the children open up the presents we’ve carefully picked out for them, watch our favourite Christmas films and perhaps even get a bit of help serving lunch. It’s really not the same toasting your 12-year-old while the 17-year-old stares at their mobile phone.

I may come across as heartless. I may come across as selfish, but is it so wrong to want my husband home, present and there for our one special day of the year as a family?

However, he might be one of those people who doesn’t like the home rituals of Christmas very much.

As the article is behind a paywall, I cannot read the comments to it.

This one has me torn. I can appreciate both points of view.

What do you think? Feel free to comment below.