Edwina Bartholomew reveals the secret to her relationship

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Eddy pranks the Sunrise team0:29

Sunrise co-host Edwina Bartholemew had Kochie fooled when she announced she was engaged to her long time partner Neil Varcoe today using Natalie Barr's ring. Courtesy Sunrise.

• April 1st 2016
• a year ago
• /video/video.news.com.au/Entertainment/

Edwina Bartholomew has revealed the secret to her happy relationship.

EDWINA Bartholomew gets up at 3.30am every weekday, hours before her partner of six years.

The early wakeup call would put a strain on most relationships, but that’s not the case for the Sunrise entertainment reporter and her boyfriend, Neil Varcoe.

“Probably the secret to our relationship is we sleep apart,” Bartholomew revealed to Mamamia.

“During the week he sleeps in one room and I sleep in the other.”

For the first two years of their relationship the couple slept in the same room but it led to problems.

“I would wake him up every morning at 3am ... he could just never go back to sleep and then we were both tired and it was a total disaster,” Bartholomew said.

“We just started to resent each other.”

The couple that dresses up together, stays together.Source:Supplied

Edwina Bartholomew and Neil Varcoe.Source:Instagram

The duo have set up some rules to try and keep the romance alive despite their separate sleeping quarters.

“We set up a noticeboard in our kitchen so that when I leave for work I leave him a note and then when I wake up there’s something there,” Bartholomew said.

“It can’t be a chore, it has to be something nice. One time I remember we had a big fight at night time and the next morning he wrote, ‘I love you even when I hate you’.”

As one of Australia’s most loved presenters, Bartholomew’s schedule can only be described as hectic and she has to remind herself to save some energy for home.

“He [Neil] did say something to me a few years ago that really stuck with me,” she said.

“This was at a particularly low point where I’d be away all the time and I’d come home on a Friday, fall asleep on the couch, rinse and repeat on the Saturday, and he said, ‘it’d be nice if you saved some smiles for home.’

“My little heart just broke,” Bartholomew said.

“I went, ‘oh my gosh, you’re so right.’ You expend all this energy at work and you forget sometimes that the people around you have stood by you and been with you all this time, they’re the most important thing.”

Sunrise crew: Mark Beretta, Natalie Barr, Sam Armytage, David Koch and Edwina Bartholomew.Source:News Corp Australia

Bartholomew isn’t the only media identity who has credited separate bedrooms as the key to a successful relationship.

Nova FM’s Wippa revealed in January that he sleeps separately from his wife, Lisa Robertson.

“You get your best sleep, so when I’m with the family and we’re together she gets the best of me,” Wippa said on air.