Spooners and spoonees

Are you a couple that spoons? Who spoons whom in your relationship or are there no spoon roles? Does the answer lie solely in biology? Is the outside spooner the taller or the larger of the two of you or are there other considerations to be made? Do real men get spooned? After almost 15 years together, it suddenly struck me the other night that Gabriella has become the spooner in our relationship and I the spoonee. I don’t believe we had ever established spoon roles until recently, and I’m trying to figure out how it came to be.

In the early days, we’d fall asleep in each other’s arms and pay little attention to position or placement. It didn’t take long for us to surrender to our individual sleep requirements. We claimed sides of the bed and untangled ourselves out of our late-night pretzel cuddles in order to sleep the way we were most comfortable instead of in a configuration that would have made for the perfect romance novel cover. I need to face outwards so that I could breath the freshest air- -non-recycled by my partner- -and tune out any sounds of breathing that were not my own. I can’t fall asleep to the beat of someone else’s heart and definitely not to the occasional shnorts of almost-snores. As much as I wish it were otherwise, we sleep like bookends, facing out and away from each other.

I guess I hadn’t noticed our spoon roles because we haven’t had much opportunity to spoon. Lately, it has been cold outside and indoors. The first few minutes in bed are torture as we try to warm up against the sheets that have been refrigerated by our house all day. Body heat is required. I’m not hankering to spoon as much as I am to defrost my feet against Gabriella’s toasty tootsies. She is less than pleased. But when finally my feet have reached a human temperature, we have taken to warming up and spooning. Did I skip the sex part? Oh yeah, every night, we get into bed after a long day with the children and after staying up way past our bedtime doing absolutely nothing of value just so that we can have some grown-up time. When we start to see double, we realize that it might be time for bed. So we get into bed, moan about how late it is and then make wild, passionate love for hours until we are pasted to each other’s bodies-panting and parched yet too spent to even think about getting a glass of water. And THEN we spoon. As if!

So I asked a few friends how spooning plays out in their relationships. I started with the boy-girl couples because my assumption was that boys spoon girls. Au contraire! The first married girl I asked told me that she was more often the spooner than spoonee. I figured they were the exception to the rule. Turns out, my sister is a proud spooner because, and I quote, she “likes to grope her husband’s ‘chest puppy’.” Thanks, Rachel, for that delightful image which is now seared into my brain with the additional detail that Ron is an occasional manscaper, as well. She’s groping a groomed puppy--from behind.

And what about that old adage “butch on the streets-femme in the sheets”? Does a butch girl or a gay boy top always do the spooning or are roles reversed in bed? Our post-menopausal lady-friends admitted that there was no spooning now that their shared body temperature combined with the comfortable but heat retaining Tempurpedic mattress was high enough to set off fire alarms. But when they did used to spoon, roles were determined by who snored in whose ear. In our relationship, my requirement for fresh air and quiet determines our positioning. I can’t say that my research has been very scientific, but I have determined that spooning roles may have less to do with the relationship of a couple and more to do with the practicalities of sleep. I’m going to continue my studies on the subject, and I’d like to suggest that you do some of your own research. You might be surprised what you learn about people you think you know.