It’s time to face facts and admit the truth: my husband and I are not a good match in bed.

I know, right?

The thing is, our rhythms and routines make us entirely incompatible when it comes to sharing a sleeping space. He likes to lie in bed with a book or a sudoku puzzle for a bit before going to sleep. He likes to listen to the radio, and maybe to talk some, too, processing the day’s news and events. He needs to unwind.

Me, I’m the opposite. When I go to bed I want to go to sleep, and the sooner the better. I don’t like to read in bed–I can never find a comfortable position and all the tossing and turning and hand and neck cramps just distract from my book. Neither do I like to listen to the radio and in the main I’m not big on pillow talk. In case you missed it, what I like is to sleep.

Things aren’t any better in the morning. In fact, they’re probably worse. He takes a long time to wake up, and when we can have a late morning, he likes to lie in bed for hours, reading the paper and relaxing. Left to his own devices I think he could quite happily while away a whole Sunday lazing around in bed.

I wake up quickly and easily, and if I can’t go back to sleep I want to get out of bed right away. Most days I get up somewhat reluctantly, but staying in bed awake is just wrong. My pillow taunts me with its siren song … zzzzzzzzzzz … and I have to get quickly away to keep myself from succumbing. And staying in bed awake on the weekends is the absolute worst–what a waste of good sleeping time!

After living together for more than five years, I’ve realized that we’re probably never going to find any common ground when it comes to our bedtime habits. Too bad having separate bedrooms is out of the question. Or not, maybe. We do mesh rather well in other ways. And that’s all I’m going to say about that.