Separate Beds

Due to our fight over his stopping medication and other things related to his depression, my husband left our bed in December. He has been sleeping in a spare bed in our home since then. Several days ago as he was hitting an emotional bottoming out, he suddenly appeared in our bed. I made it clear that he was not welcome. So he left.

Tonite, we had a civil conversation about some relationship things and he asked "so am I allowed to sleep in my bed tonite?" I said yes, on one condition..."that you don't leave it again". He quickly got angry and claimed that leaving it was his "coping mechanism" and that why does he always have to be wrong in his choices? It turned into another one of his rants about how he couldn't possibly be wrong all the time yadda yadda. Again, taking a specific subject and generalizing it into an all encompassing I am out to get him tirade. I responded calmly that I understood that he needs space at times but that this was not acceptable. I am not a yo yo and that I felt manipulated by this particular behavior. I set my boundary. He was furious and stomped off to the other bed again hollering about how there is nothing wrong with his actions. I asked what he felt was accomplished by this. How did his leaving our bed for two months help the situation. His resonse was "It helped me cope".

Soooo....what do you all think? Am I being too hard headed? I want him to respect our marriage and I do not feel this is healthy. It only furthers the chasm building between us.

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tautologic said:
Soooo....what do you all think? Am I being too hard headed?
I want him to respect our marriage and I do not feel this is healthy.

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I personally do not feel that you are being hard headed on this subject..... for while I can see him needing a night or two away in the other bed when things get heated - I do not feel that it is healthy to sleep in another room (away from your spouse) for two months over a fight....... now, medical reasons are a different thing all together.

I would not want to try and force someone to sleep with me for any reason. I don't see a lot of difference between his coping by leaving and your coping by trying to control his leaving. It's a will struggle.

I have been married 35 years and I have never left our bed.

If it were an illness and needing to no disturb the other then I would say it was ok, otherwise, no.

You two need to work this out, fast. Seek counseling.
Too long away and the marriage will suffer if not be over.

I have heard of married folks sleeping in seperate beds by choice.

Is this a control issue? It sounds like you want to control how your husband deals with his depression, so you had a big fight. By leaving the bed, he makes a statement that he will deal with his depression as he sees fit. Now he's ready to move past that, but you want to control if he leaves the bed or not again. How can he promise he won't want to leave the bed again? Maybe you guys will have another blow up over his efforts to deal with his mental health and he will again feel unable to share the bed. I personally would never want to force a person to sleep in my bed. If he needs space and needs to sleep elsewhere, is it really helpful that he sleep in the bed and be miserable and feel controlled? His response to you that sleeping in separate beds helped him to cope sounds like an honest one.

I think also you are sending your H confusing messages. On the one hand, he tries to resume sleeping in the same bed, and you tell him he is not welcome. And then later, you tell him he cannot leave your bed! It would be confusing and stressful going to bed every night--who's going to be lying next to him, the wife who doesn't want him there or the wife who won't permit him to leave?

It sounds to me like the bed issue is a symptom of a rocky time in your marriage, not the cause. I agree with 50guy, get some counseling quick to try to work this out. The longer this battle goes on and the "chasm builds between you", the harder it becomes to get back to harmony. Hurry!

Thank you for your opinions. I would first like to address that we are in counseling. Have been for 8 years. Our couples counselor was quite adamant that this behavior from my husband was inappropriate. He stated that my husband was "manipulating control" by such an act.

That said, being in a marriage, my husbands depression is not his alone to deal with. It affects us all. He cannot make choices to cope that infringe upon the rights or comfort level of me or the children.

His choosing to leave the marriage bed was wrong. If it gave him some sense of control, it was misplaced and arrogant.

If we had agreed upon the situation this would have been different. We did not. He chose to wield force upon me in order to grasp at something missing within himself.

Last night I approached him again and explained that his actions made me feel disrespected. That I will not allow him to control me in an attempt to control his depression. I reminded him that "going to bed in a provoked state" is not appropriate. So that if we applied better conversation skills he could express his views without feeling so incensed as to need to leave the bed. (btw he has a huge problem with anger and rage...he has worked on this extensively in therapy) I again reminded him of the option to "agree to disagree" and leave the anger out of it. In the event that the topic was so heated as was our last "fight" over his dropping medications, we could mutually agree to sleep apart for a predetermined amount of time. That leaves each of us with the freedom to get space if we truly feel the need to go to such extremes.

Sunrise, your comments were quite prickly. I gather you have difficult relationships yourself. To allow him to simply waltz back into our bed after a two month hiatus is not acceptable. It required an appology and permission to return. Would you agree that had he left the house he could then waltz back in at leisure? I don't think so. When one spouse creates a separation, the ball is in the offended spouses court as to if and when the separation can be lifted. Otherwise, it is called enabling.

tautologic, I have quite a different view now that I have read your more detailed account and understand what you have gone through. (Your comment about waltzing back in and the extrapolation you raised about the house are not things I would have said.) I am very glad you have the help of a couples counselor. I can tell you have really worked hard on your marriage--8 years in couples counseling shows the strong dedication of both of you to the partnership.

I wish your family the best of outcomes with the situation and hope your husband can find a solution to his depression. I agree, depression affects the whole family. And yes, you are right, I am sensitive ("prickly") to this as my H took anti-depressants, which prolonged the bad situation in our family, as he reacted to the meds by becoming more content with a bad situation instead of being motivated to work on a solution. That's not just my assessment, he says it himself. I have a (female) friend who was on ADs who experienced a similar misplaced "contentment" in her relationship. It sounds like your situation, however, is just the opposite--that when your H takes meds, it helps your family immensely.

So you probably know, if he did that befor..WHY leaving your bed is a way fro him to cope?

And you feel insulted by that?
You feel he is not being hionest with you, if he leaves adn comes in your bed as he pleases....

when I saw the subject of your post, I immediately thought of the following to "separate beds"..... has saved many marriages.

It can be done while not losing intimacy.

It sounds like withdrawal of intimacy/affection is being played out here. I wonder if you've considered a few joint coinselling sessions?

well since you asked the question......since your husband is working on his anger, it must have crossed your mind that getting away from a person for a while is a way to control anger. Better to go to another room than to lose it. I dont really get how going into another room to sleep for a few months is force. Unless he said im leaving until you see it my way. If he is not sleeping with you because of disagreements over how to best treat HIS depression, i dont see the disrespect. He may very well feel that you are trying to control him by setting conditions on his return and his attempts to control his anger and depression. These are thoughts that i had and since i obviously dont live it as you do i may be off the mark. It may be your writing style or as a result of being exasperated by having lived with these problems for so long, but you do seem stern to me. People are married but that doesnt mean that they are owned. I can only speak for myself but if i were faced with having to fulfill conditions and apologies it would feel like surrender to me rather than conciliation and i would be looking for a nice comfortable mattress topper for my new bed.

HeyJoe, yes he does see EVERYTHING as his being controlled. Yes it is exasperating. My own education in this has given me the strength to be stern. For far too many years I was the wet noodle who enabled the negative depressive behaviors. No more. So like you, he has to choose his fear of being controlled or peacefulness in our relationship. He left the bed, because he didn't like that I disagreed with his disregarding of treatment. He crashed because of this and then wanted my comfort and wanted back into the bed without admitting to the problem. While he has my unending support, it isn't unconditional. He does have to take responsibility for behaviors and outcomes. While we have had a few productive conversations in the last two days, we are far from better. Today we compromised. Although he didn't apologise for leaving the bed for two months, he has admitted that it didn't solve a problem but rather made things more tense. Progress comes in baby steps I suppose. So for now I will be satisfied with the little bit of understanding he has gained. He has an appointment with his individual therapist tomorrow. It will be interesting to see what happens.

i hope everything works out for you two. I think sometimes you need to crash to realize you are going down. Hopefully its all up from here on.

Thank you. I do too. It is really hard watching him struggle. My goal this year is to help him gain insight. So far, after all these years, he still knows very little about his disease. He grew up in an environment that if you didn't talk about a problem, it wasn't there. So for years he has ignored his diagnosis. Even while taking medication and in therapy. He places blame instead of learning management.

i grew up in the same kind of environment. No one talked about these kind of things. The only conversation i ever heard was gossip about a woman who had electrical shock therapy, this is the 1960's. You were suppossed to pull your self up by your bootstraps and get on with it. This still applies to many places and jobs today.

If this is what helps him cope...after all he is depressed, then I'd let him. My husband and I go through spurts of separate sleeping and I am always welcomed back into the bed when I'm ready to return. I'd be hurt if he told me to leave especially if I'd already felt like %#@&#!. No matter how mad he is he sleeps better knowing I am by his side instead of downstairs on the couch.

Your husband is depressed...he's already down enough as it is. I'd definitely be a little sympathetic to him without degrading my side of the story. It's difficult to weigh but can be done. Talking is the best thing to do...sometimes you have to let him win. My husband's not much for conversation so when we actually do talk about serious stuff...like our marriage, I sometimes let him say what he needs to then let it be done, whether I disagree strongly or not. It's my way of not blowing him down and making him never want to talk to me about anything serious again.

Sleeping together is important so if there's a way to compromise...do it.