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Average British couple spend just 4 hours a day in same room, research reveals

The study looked at the lives in 2,000 UK couples. (Getty Images)
The study looked at the lives in 2,000 UK couples. (Getty Images)

Busy schedules, work times, different interests and staggered bed times.

It’s easy to see how the average British couple only spend four hours in the same room as each other.

A study looking into the patterns of 2,000 UK-based couples found that Britons are starved of time together because of our busy lives.

The research, commissioned by heating expert Drayton, found that even when couples are in the same room they’re not always getting on.

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These figures are hardly surprising given that the average Briton spends just seven and a half hours at home during a weekday.

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With work, children and our hobbies to consider the time can easily slip away.

You might think that spending more time at home at the weekends might build up the hours spent together but according to the research, that’s not true.

Yes, people do spend more time at home during the weekends but they only spend 60% of that time communicating with each other.

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Staggered bedtimes are partially to blame for this lack of interaction.

It’s natural for people to have different body clocks and sleep patterns. Plus, with young children, it might make sense to stagger it in order to get a decent night sleep.

One third of British people don’t go to bed at the same time and one in six people don’t sleep in the same rooms.

Many of the people surveyed didn’t see it as an issue that they were “passing ships in the night”. After all, isn’t it healthy to have your own hobbies and patterns?

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There are plenty of ways to spend a bit more time together including watching the TV, cooking together and even tidying up together.

That said, when couples do spend excess amounts of time together, they might end up squabbling.

The research discovered that it’s the little things couples argue over the most from the temperature of the heating to the brightness of the lights.

Sound familiar? A third of people regularly have these little disagreements at home.

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Natalie Wathan, spokeswoman for Drayton, said: “It’s interesting to see just how much - or how little - time is spent with a partner at home together.

“The study shows that most couples have conflicting schedules to each other and as such use the rooms in their home in different ways and times.”

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