Throughout her childhood, Leina Hsu never thought it odd that her parents chose to sleep in separate bedrooms. It wasn’t until she started seeing how couples were portrayed on TV that she started to recognize the practice was unusual.
After that, Hsu, a Chinese American writer and student at Georgetown University, began to feel the stigma of her parents’ sleeping arrangements whenever she confided in her peers.
“Anytime a friend was visiting my house, I felt the need to explain and justify my parent’s bedroom situation before they saw the layout of our home,” she says. Though her friends tried to appear supportive, “some of them couldn’t hide their shock or surprise.”
Couples sleeping apart