Sleep Expert: “Sleeping while cuddling your partner is the worst thing you can do if you want to get a good night’s rest”

Sleeping while cuddling your partner is often seen as a sign of love, intimacy, and emotional connection. Culturally, the image of two people sleeping intertwined has been idealized, as if constant physical contact were a sign of a healthy relationship. However, when the main goal is getting quality rest, staying cuddled up all night can become one of the biggest obstacles to restorative sleep.

That is the view of Juan Nattex, a sleep specialist for the mattress brand Nattex: “Sleeping while cuddling your partner is the worst thing you can do if you want to get a good night’s rest. Everyone says it helps you relax and sleep better, but that is only part of the story. The reality is that we change positions and move throughout the night. That movement affects the other person’s rest, and by morning, even if you do not remember it, it has an impact on your deep sleep.”

“Sleeping with a partner is a good idea. Sleeping cuddled together all night is not. And there are two ways to sleep as a couple. The first is in separate beds. The second, which is what I recommend, is sleeping in larger beds with independent sleep surfaces. That means you can move without disturbing the other person, because the mattress is designed to absorb motion. Your partner can move freely without waking you up,” he adds.

The downsides of sleeping while cuddling

As the specialist explains, the human body is not designed to stay still for hours at a time. While we sleep, we naturally shift positions to relieve pressure on muscles and joints and to support healthy circulation.

When sleeping while cuddling, those movements are reduced because one partner may avoid moving in order not to wake or bother the other. That restriction often leads to muscle stiffness, back or neck discomfort, and brief awakenings that disrupt sleep, even when we are not fully aware of them.

There is also the issue of body heat. Continuous physical contact raises body temperature, which may feel pleasant at first, but it interferes with one of the body’s key sleep processes: the drop in core temperature needed to enter deeper stages of sleep. When the body gets too warm, sleep becomes lighter, less restorative, and less refreshing overall, often leading to fatigue the next day.

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