The small bedroom change that saved my relationship.

My boyfriend of three years was at his wit’s end when he found himself stone cold and awake at 4am… for the third time that week.

“You’ve taken the blanket again,” he woke me rather curtly, yanking his portion of the doona back. This was the pattern we had followed for the last six months, like clockwork. Grumpy, agitated, frosty clockwork.

Our relationship wasn’t on tenterhooks per se, but Matt basically dreaded heading to bed every night, which isn’t ideal when you’re supposed to be soul mates, etc. He just knew the monster (me) was going to pry the warm blanket from his vulnerable hands the moment he let his guard down and drifted off to sleep. He never got a decent slumber while I, the deepest sleeper in all the lands, was blissfully unaware. I’d bounce out of bed every morning while his default response to how are yous was tired.

Our simple bedroom change might not be for everyone, but it has certainly revolutionised our sleep and, as a flow on, our relationship.

We now sleep with two blankets. One for me, one for him. Every night.

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At first his suggestion to do so made me rather sad; what about intimacy? We would now be separated by fluffy, thick blankets. Did this mean cuddling was out of the picture? Sex?

Being the selfish nincompoop I am, I whined about all this (and more) with reckless abandon, failing to realise that the poor man was on his last legs – one look at his eye bags was enough to realise one blanket was an option anymore.

And so, we moved to two blankets. Over a year on it remains one of the best decisions we’ve ever made for our relationship.

Clearly, the trend of having separate doonas is catching on. In January, TIME wrote:

Ikea is launching a “TOG-ether bundle,” which is basically two duvets for each person as opposed to one shared duvet; users can even choose the level of insulation of their separate duvets.

In a statement sent to Mashable, the homeware giant explained:

“Many of us find that not getting a good night’s sleep is becoming a regular occurrence… This is why we have introduced this traditional Swedish sleep trend of using two single duvets instead of a double, in UK stores for a short period, allowing couples to select a duvet from the bundle that suits them.”

Amen, IKEA. Amen.

Do you and your partner sleep with separate doonas? Let us know in the comments below.