The failure of love to deliver on its promises over time is a common theme in Larkin’s poetry. The couple the speaker of the poem has in mind in “Talking in Bed” have not just recently met; they are likely in the later stages of a relationship, not newlyweds. They are two people who have known each other for some time, perhaps a long time, and for whom the glow of early love has steadily worn off over time. They no longer enjoy the relaxed, intimate, honest conversation that lucky new lovers enjoy while in bed, each full of trust and confidence that whatever they say will be well received by the other.

Larkin has little to say about the more delightful aspects of love, except to chronicle the replacement of excitement with something else considerably less desirable. The later stages of a romantic relationship differ from the early stages that are driven by idealism and fantasy; it is likely that at some point in the couple’s relationship, one of them said something hurtful, and the resulting exchange may have been upsetting. The couple may have learned to feel reluctant to broach the subject again, knowing how upsetting it had been the first time. Each person may have taken a step back, changing their communication patterns into something less free and open than it had been before.

In many relationships, these exchanges often inspire individuals to erect emotional walls to protect themselves, avoiding delicate topics rather than risk a confrontation. As a result, intimacy suffers. It ought to be easy to talk, the first line of the poem says, especially when a couple is lying in bed together, but, as the poem demonstrates, it is not at all easy to talk in bed. Larkin’s couple seems to have decided that it is safer to be silent than to risk anger, conflict, and the emotional scars that likely come with an open conversation. The result is a growing distance between them, even when, paradoxically, they are physically close, in bed. They cannot speak truthfully about what they really think or feel, thus “more and more time passes silently” (Line 4). The theme of the unreliability of love reflects Larkin’s own grim view of love and pessimistic attitude towards the trajectory of intimate relationships.

The couple in the poem experience emotional and psychological isolation despite their nearness to one another. The presence of nature in the poem enhances this sense of isolation, suggesting that the couple’s proximity to one another may be painful as it allows them to understand their fundamental aloneness in the world.

In the poem, nature is a mirror to the couple’s internal emotional experiences while in bed together. In the third and fourth tercets of the poem, the images shift from the couple in bed to the wider, external natural environment. Nature appears restless; the wind blows and clouds scud across the sky. Unlike in a poem by Romantic poet William Wordsworth, in which humans are nourished by communion with nature, nature in this poem offers no comfort to the couple in bed. Neither do the “dark towns” (Line 7) that “heap up on the horizon” (Line 7), an image that suggests places without color and vibrancy.

The link that exists between the couple and the weather conditions outside their bedroom suggests that the couple’s predicament is one that is typical of the human experience. The broadness of the sky in which the clouds move, the infinite line of the horizon, and the fast-moving presence of the wind all combine to surround the couple in bed and to remind them of their isolation. The “dark towns” (Line 7) form nameless piles on the horizon, and these groups of people appear just as isolated in nature as the individuals in bed who are unable to communicate with one another.