CJ Kaplan

Out of Touch by CJ Kaplan

I love sleeping with my wife. But, it hasn’t always been that way.

Maybe I should explain.

When Lisa and I started dating in college, she had a standard issue sorority twin bed that barely slept one comfortably, much less two. I was living in an off-campus apartment and had a bed that was only marginally bigger. As soon as we began spending the night together it become readily apparent that we wouldn’t be doing much sleeping. And not for the fun reasons either.

On the narrow confines of her wafer-thin mattress, Lisa and I quickly discovered that neither of us liked to be touching the other while we were trying to sleep. Cuddling, spooning, the intertwining of legs and such were for other couples. We desired only the contact of pillow and blanket rather than the skin-on-skin slumber that some people enjoy.

As two people who are newly in love often do, we pretended that our sleeping issues were but a minor inconvenience. I would cram my 6-foot, 3-inch frame up against the wall while she balanced precariously on the other edge of the mattress where the slightest shift in weight could send her tumbling to the floor. Then, we would smile at each other in an attempt to convince ourselves that these were the most natural sleeping positions in the world. Invariably, I would wake up with a stiff back and Lisa would greet the morning with the imprint of the mattress piping on her face. All this to maintain a hairsbreadth of empty fitted sheet between us.

My father-in-law will be pleased to know that, on many occasions, I gave up trying to sleep in the same bed with Lisa altogether and ended up crashing on the throw rug in the middle of her room. What it lacked in padding, it more than made up for in sweet, sweet open space.

When we graduated from college, she lived at home with her parents while I took an apartment with a couple of friends. Among the things I moved into my new place was the double bed I had slept on as a teenager. The first time Lisa came to visit, it was like a revelation. We could sleep on our backs, side by side, without coming into contact with each other. Our lives and our relationship were complete. Or, so we thought.

Having had the double bed to myself for my whole life, I was used to sleeping in the middle and stretching out in all directions. And while Awake CJ was very cognizant of his place on the mattress in relation to Lisa, Asleep CJ reverted to his old bed-hogging ways. As soon as my eyes were closed, I inched my way into the middle of the mattress and let my arms and legs do as they pleased. Lisa was once again relegated to the edge of the bed and while I slept soundly, she seethed. Often, in the small hours, a well-placed elbow would send me rolling back to my original spot and order was temporarily restored. But, we knew this arrangement could not last forever.

At last came the day when we got our own place together. Though we really couldn’t afford it, the first thing we did was shop for a new, king-size bed. We spent an inordinate amount of time in the mattress store trying out each model as though we were test-driving cars. The salesman finally closed the deal by showing us a mattress whose individually wrapped coils guaranteed that a person could jump up and down on it like a trampoline while their bedmate slept on blissfully unaware. We were sold.

The night before they delivered our new mega-bed (with its magical, shock absorbing coils) we could barely sleep. Partly because of the excitement and partly because we were still in my old double bed. When the delivery guy rang the doorbell early the next morning, we greeted him like an old friend. Our dreams, both conscious and unconscious, had come true.

In talking to friends over the years, we’ve found that people are fairly split on how they sleep with their partners. Some, like us, prefer to keep their distance. Others claim they can’t doze off unless they’re wrapped around each other like vines. As far as our relationship goes, a bigger mattress has actually made me feel closer to my wife than ever before.

As long as she stays on her side.