Bringing your girlfriend home to meet the parents can be awkward.

Almost as awkward as bringing home your wife.

      Like many couples of our generation, my future wife and I went to considerable lengths to allow our parents to believe that we did not have sex before we married. We grudgingly played along with the charade and stayed in separate quarters whenever visiting either set of parents - despite the fact that we had shared a one-bedroom apartment for years, and that when they stayed there with us, we slept on the pull-out couch. Together. 
      With my parents, it was my mom’s half-kidding “not under my roof,” uttered upon our arrival a few years ago, that alerted us to drop our bags for the weekend in separate rooms. With Martha’s parents, arrangements were never discussed; it was just a given, except for the one night when so many of her relatives were staying over that we were mysteriously presented with a big air mattress to share in the computer room. We barely slept, trying to stay motionless on the mattress, terrified that any rubbery squeak might arouse the suspicions of nearby relatives. 
      Old-fashioned as it sounds in 2005, we are not the only ones among our friends in their 30s to have feigned carnal ignorance in front of our folks. When friends of ours who had been dating for years finally moved in together, they paid extra for a two-bedroom apartment so whenever her parents visited they could pretend that the extra bedroom was where he slept. Another couple, this pair engaged, went so far as to conceal the fact that the guy lived in their apartment at all, sending him to stay with friends when her parents were in town and picking him up outside “his” apartment for dinner. 
      Martha and I dated for almost seven years before we married, so we became accustomed to the abstinent weekends. And although we were at first put off by having to pretend for our parents, we eventually began to enjoy the novelty of sleeping in separate quarters while away. 
      There was an innocence in honoring their traditions, and we would each indulge in the luxuries that were compromises at home. Martha would go to bed a little earlier, and I would watch late-night television in my room. We had the benefit of alone time, which was nonexistent in our tiny apartment, but without the withdrawal symptoms of a weekend apart. Martha got a vacation from my snoring, and I got a break from her tossing and turning. It was independence, even if it was imposed. 
      On the drive down to visit my parents for the first time since our wedding, Martha and I realized how strange it would be to finally share a bedroom at their house. All of a sudden it was not only okay with them that we slept together, it was demanded. 
      We arrived at their house to see that my mom and dad had pushed together the two single beds in what had been my room. 
      “Your room is ready,” said my mom, presenting the makeshift honeymoon suite. 
      The awkwardness was palpable as we put our bags down for the first time in the same room under their roof. Did they expect us to start working on a grandchild right then and there? 
      At dinner I broke the news to them. “We actually don’t want to sleep in the same room here,” I said, as our conversation on new movie releases had naturally run its course. 
      Martha chewed quietly and watched the dismay register on my mother’s face. 
      “But we have it all planned,” my mother said, cocking her head and smiling a little nervously. 
      “We’re too used to not sleeping together while here,” I said. 
      “But we have it all planned,” my mother repeated. 
      “We just like our space here,” Martha chimed in. 
      “But I don’t understand,” said my mom. “What’s the point of being married?” 
      Whatever the point of being married is, it certainly isn’t to prohibit me from dozing off to Conan in the comfort of my own bed. Our reasoning: marriage hadn’t really changed our relationship at home, so why should it change our relationship on the road? 
      “Well your father and I will not be helping you move those two beds apart,” my mother said, as the fork fell from her hand and clanked loudly on her plate. From their traditionalism we had developed our own tradition, and that could not be undone by marriage.

Patrick Gerard Healy is the Somerville correspondent for the Globe's City Weekly section