Along with discovering the efficacy of inexpensive boxed wine, the ubiquity of Ikea furniture, and the inherently obnoxious nature of acapella groups, it is in the unsupervised college milieu when we stumble upon the most important realization of all: sleeping more than one to a bed—especially if that bed is a cheap, standard-issue dorm room single—is an unexpectedly difficult affair. Going into college, we’re warned about the dangers of unsafe sex and the anguish of breakups, but no one ever mentions the trauma of sleep deprivation deriving from a second body in one’s bed. No one warned me about this. These days, I am very, very tired.

Some informal polling of friends and cursory internet research revealed that I’m not the only one who struggles with bed sharing. People complain about the myriad issues that contribute to bad sleep arising from slumber + 1. Skin-to-skin contact poses a problem; it presents too much temptation to engage in other, conscious activities. Your partner wriggles, jerks, flails, snores, or spread-eagles (in the un-fun sense), making it impossible to nod off. Regardless of how docile you and your partner are as sleepers, all bedfellows must contend with the worst dilemma of all: unless you’re drunk or under the glorious influence of Ambien, cuddling and sleeping are mutually exclusive activities. You cannot do one if you’re already engaged in the other. If one wants to cuddle and pursue the mythical position that allows both of you to remain entwined while simultaneously reaching an unconscious state, you have yourself a problem.

Don’t believe me? Would science convince you? In 2006 at the University of Vienna, Professor Gerhard Kloesch and his colleagues ran a study that concluded human beings do indeed sleep better alone. Sleeping together generates disrupted sleep patterns and leads to higher stress levels in conscious states the next morning. The problem arises partially due to the paradox of human nature: we crave company, but we also want our space.

However, the ultimate root of the problem lies in the semantics of the matter. With the passage of time, sleep and sexual intimacy have grown increasingly interrelated. In fact, the two ideas have become so inextricably linked that they’re now considered synonymous. (But the meaning only works one way. Sleeping with someone means having sex, but having sex does not necessarily indicate that you’re sleeping in the same place. Something to ponder before bedtime tonight.) The conflation of the two activities has become so absolute that when you tell a friend that you’re sleeping with someone, that friend is going to assume you’re doing it. Maybe you do intend to communicate that you’re having sex, but unless you have a history of sleep fornication (which, according to my research, is rare indeed), f*cking has almost nothing to do with that other common bedroom activity that yields K-complexes and delta waves.

As the verb phrase “sleep with” has become tantamount with having sex, sleeping separately from a sexual partner—especially a long-term, socially acknowledged sexual partner—has become an increasingly stigmatized practice. Not sleeping in the same bed now indicates that something is wrong between you and your partner.

However, sleeping and sex are not the same things at all. You have an option with sex— you can have it alone or with someone else. Sleep, on the other hand, has always been a solo activity. This is an important distinction to keep mind.

So if, like me, you’re suddenly patronizing Blue State with much more frequency than you used to, I say fight the stigma; sleep in separate beds. It’s really okay.