Married couples don’t like to sit together on flights — here’s the bizarre reason why

It’s a divisive issue.

Sitting next to your soulmate aboard a flight might seem like a no-brainer, but a few oddball couples prefer to be apart — and not just when they’re having a marital spat.

Travel advisor Nadia Henry, who goes by Sparkle professionally, said she likes sitting away from her husband purely out of seat preference.

“He likes the window, I like the aisle, and we pray that no one sits in the middle of us,” she told USA Today travel columnist Zach Wichter. “Usually, when the person in the middle finds out that we’re a couple, they ask if we want to switch. Usually, the answer is no.” 

When the couple does sit apart, Sparkle tries to make the in-flight third wheel feel less uncomfortable by keeping conversation with her hubby to a minimum and passing things back and forth as little as possible.

For Brian Murphy, 56, a vice president at a company that manages pharmacy benefits in Vermont, Canada, sitting apart from his wife is a necessity on long-haul flights due to space constraints.

“I’m 6’4 so I like to have an aisle so I can stretch my legs out,” the Canuck said, adding that they generally sit in two aisle seats across from each other when traveling long distances.

That being said, Murphy said they prefer sitting next to each other on shorter jaunts because “we don’t like having some random person in between us.” Not to mention that it’s easier to chat or get things out of the overhead, he admitted.

Sitting side-by-side definitely appears to be the norm in the friendly skies, with columnist Zach Wichter acknowledging that he doesn’t “know many couples who stay split up on planes.”

“We generally like to be next to each other,” said Kate Mikkelson, 45, a data analyst from St. Paul, Minnesota, while discussing her and her husband’s preferred arrangement. “With these long flights with planes that have four seats in the center, we tend to go for two of those four, so we only have to bother each other.”

Mikkelson said that, among other things, this proximity makes it easy to nudge her other half if he “starts snoring.”

Wichter pointed out that even pairs who initially book a middle and an aisle seat will, unlike Sparkle and her husband, “usually opt to move if someone sits between them.”

In other words, loving couples won’t let anyone come between them, even at 30,000 feet.

“To me, this makes sense,” he wrote. “I find that sitting next to someone I know gives me a little more leeway to shift around in my seat, because I’m slightly less conscious about crossing the armrest divide.

Murphy said that giving one’s partner mental distance is important regardless of physical proximity.

“A lot of it is just simply giving each other assistance and space,” he said. “It’s not a time to start agitating the other person. It’s a time to be very chill and relaxed with each other.”

Couples can increase their odds of landing their desired seats — either together or apart — by either booking first or premium seats and checking in at least 48 hours ahead of time, according to Simple Flying.