Kaley Cuoco has no regrets about her and her fiancé Tom Pelphrey’s decision to stop sharing a bed, given their very different sleep schedules.
The 40-year-old actor spoke about the non-conventional sleeping arrangements during Monday’s episode of Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast.
Cuoco said they made the change because their rescue dogs sleep in their bedroom, and Pelphrey couldn’t handle the barking while they were trying to sleep.
“He was like, ‘I can’t do this anymore.’ And I’m like, ‘I understand,’” she explained. “So he started sleeping in the guest room. Which, by the way, game changer.”
She said separate beds work for her because Task star Pelphrey is a “night owl,” who “goes to bed very late,” and she is not.
“He writes at night. He reads, it’s his quiet time,” she said. “So he’s up late and wakes up late on a non-working day. We established this from day one. I go to bed early, and I wake up early. We’re totally on different sleeping schedules.”
The Big Bang Theory alum said that before changing the sleeping arrangements, she’d be “tiptoeing” around her bedroom with her and Pelphrey’s two-year-old daughter, Matilda, to avoid waking him up.
“He’s like, ‘I can’t sleep.’ He wakes up. He can’t go back to sleep,” she recalled. “So he’s like, ‘How do you feel if I sleep in that other room?’ We do couples therapy, and we love it.”
However, Cuoco said that when Pelphrey first brought up the idea of sleeping apart, she was concerned.
“At first, I’m like, ‘What will people think?’ And he’s like, ‘I never see you at night.’ I don’t see him. It’s not our sexy time. We don’t cuddle. We don’t see each other at night,” she added. “He goes, ‘Why do you care?’ And I sat there, and I went, ‘God, I don’t care.’ And he goes, ‘Let’s try it.’”
She explained that “nothing happens but sleep” in the guest room bed, so the arrangement works great for her and her partner, and they’re “such happier people” because of it.
“I’m up with Matilda at 7 a.m. She comes into bed with me. I can turn things on,” Cuoco added. “Best decision we ever made.”
Cuoco and Pelphrey started dating in 2022, making their relationship Instagram official in May of that year. They welcomed their daughter, Matilda, in 2023, and got engaged a year later.
Sleeping in separate bedrooms, or “sleep divorce” — as it’s now known — has become an increasingly popular trend.
A study for Hilton’s 2025 Trends report found that 63 percent of people say they sleep better when they have the bed to themselves. Meanwhile, the hospitality group noted that 37 percent of travelers prefer sleeping in separate beds while on vacation — particularly when traveling with children.
A 2023 American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) online survey also found that more than one-third of Americans practice “sleep divorce.”
