WHY WE SHOULD NOT SLEEP IN THE SAME BED AT OUR PARENTS HOUSE.....

People in new relationships and some in old relationships are gearing up to visit at least one set of parents for Thanksgiving. Out of all the holidays, Thanksgiving is arguably the most communal, providing the perfect opportunity for many new couples to break bread (literately and figuratively) with the new person in our lives. Some of us will be making this more than just a day trip, spending nights at the parents home for a couple of days.

The sleeping arrangements behind this situation are either a judgement call or an established rule. Some of our parents establish a strict two bed, separate room policy if we’re not married. That’s the rule in my household.

Over the years, I have brought home several women to meet my mom. Since she lives in California and all these relationships began on the East Coast, all the visits involved a few nights stay at Casa De Ms. Rita’s. Under her roof, it is her rules. When it came to sharing a bed, hell, when it came to being in a room with the door closed, Ms. Rita has zero tolerance. I was 27-years-old the last time I brought a woman to my mom’s home, the rule was still in effect.


I can’t say I have a problem with this rule. As a matter of fact, I find the rule to be so respectable and decent, I have taken to applying it to myself when I have been on the visitor end of a meet-the-parents trip. I have been in a couple of relationships with women who have the cool parents, saying I was more than welcome to sleep in the same bed as their daughter. I have always politely declined.

On a basic level, this is just me carrying on the values my mother instilled in me about this sort of thing. Like all people, I still follow some of my parents rules even if I’m not under their roof. I don’t eat any meals shirtless (the whooping my mom gave me the time I tried to sit at the dinner table without a shirt on still makes my skin crawl, and it was delivered 20 years ago), I don’t sleep in the same bed as my woman at her parents’ home even if they say I can.

But the other reason is, I honestly find such an arrangement kind of awkward. My woman and I sleeping in the same bed isn’t going to be the same in the parents house as it is when we’re back to living our regular lives as a regular couple. When we get back to our own apartments, in our own beds, we can and will do our own thing. But in the childhood bed, I promise you this, nothing is going down. It’s not so much that it’s rude (though I would say it is), it just feels slightly unsavory. To put it more bluntly, We don’t want the parent’s having sex on the couch while we’re visiting for the holidays, do we?

As uncomfortable as it is for me write that and for you to read that, that’s probably what the parents have been doing since the day we’ve moved out of their home. They’ve been doing it on the couch, maybe the kitchen, in the bathroom that you used to call “my bathroom”. Hell, maybe even in your old room. Matter of fact, definitely in your old room if your old room has now been changed into a “guest bedroom”.

From the day you moved out, your old house has become their new sex palace, at least 360 days out of the year. This not only goes for parents who are still together, this goes for many single parents too. Please believe, when the kids are gone at college or living their adult lives in some separate city, mama or daddy are acting like the good looking single people they are doing God knows what with Lord knows who.

But when you come home for the holidays, what do they do? They take a break from the couch sessions for you, the children. And if anything goes down in their master bedroom, they’re keeping it quiet for you, the children. It’s called respect, people. I don’t know what my mom and stepdad do now that they have the whole house to themselves, nor do I want to know (nor do I want you to call and “clear up some facts” with me, mom), but I would like them to keep whatever it is they do out of the common areas just as I promise the next time I bring home a woman to whom I’m not yet married, I promise to leave the doors open and sleep on the couch.