There’s a wonderful article in The New York Times about the psychology and sociology of bed sharing.
This is one of the most common of human activities, and like many everyday behaviours, has a significant impact on our lives and yet has been largely ignored by researchers.
In more recent research — on grief — Dr. Rosenblatt interviewed couples whose children had died.
“They quite often would tell me that they dealt with their grief by holding each other and talking together in bed at night,” he said. “It seemed that I kept being reminded of how sharing a bed impacts our lives and sense of well-being.”
And yet, no one had really studied it, perhaps because sharing a bed is so mundane, Dr. Rosenblatt said. So he wrote Two in a Bed: The Social System of Couple Bed Sharing.
The article makes the point that sleep psychology, that looks at mind and brain factors in sleep and drowsiness, largely considers sleep to be a solitary activity, yet the majority is sleeping is a social act.
The first chapter of Rosenblatt’s book is freely available online as a pdf file.
Link to article ‘People Who Share a Bed, and the Things They Say About It’.
pdf of first chapter of Two in a Bed.
Mind Hacks 