Sleeping Styles Tell All About Relationships
This subject has been so popular that Couples Company has received requests for interviews from numerous international news agencies ranging from Australia and England to Germany and Brazil! It seems the whole world is tuned in to sleeping styles!
CLEVELAND, Updated 11:22 a.m. EDT May 23, 2000 -- The way you cuddle with your mate at night says a lot about your relationship.
NewsChannel5 reports that sleep experts and psychiatrists say that sleeping front-to-back or hugging your mate's legs with yours indicates a healthy, loving relationship.
"When you sleep it kind of reveals how much you like and trust the other person, and how safe you feel," Dr. Mark Goulston, a psychiatrist, says.
The spoon relationship, a front-to-back position, can be a sign of a healthy relationship.
"If you can turn your back on someone without worrying the person's going to grope you or take advantage of you, what you're really doing is bathing yourself in safety," Goulston says.
He says that the leg hug shows love among equals.
"They're both fairly independent people," he says. "They like to have a relationship, but they don't live for each other or through each other. They each also have independent lives, but they do like to have some sort of connection and contact with the other person."
The Zen position, where the buttocks are touching, is more intimate. Goulston considers the position a healthy variation of the leg hug.
If you and your partner sleep in the cliffhanger position, where both partners retreat to opposite sides of the bed, it could be a sign of a troubled relationship.
"They're avoiding a lot of issues, they don't trust each other, they don't like each other, and they haven't found a way to actually communicate their differences," he says.
Another sign of a troubled relationship is when a mate wants to sleep with the family pet.
To sum it all up, Goulston says that happy couples often sleep in the spoon, sweetheart cradle, leg hug or Zen. Troubled couples may need to sleep with the dog or family pet or sleep in the cliffhanging position.
Sleeping styles are not 100 percent accurate relationship indicators, but they can be red flags.
"Use this as an invitation to talk about your closeness," Goulston says. "How you like each other, how you trust each other, how you feel safe about each other. See if you put it in this context as opposed to saying we're in trouble, then that's the best way to use it."
Copyright 2001 by Channel 2000.
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