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3 thoughts on “A picture paints a thousand words….”

  1. I have always been a light sleeper, my entire life, as far back as I can remember. My husband snored so bad I kicked him out of the bedroom. After the diagnosis of sleep apnea and the oxygen mask, he sleeps quietly now. So we began sharing a bed again. I am unable to fall asleep unless I have a glass of wine with dinner. I then wake up about three hours later to use the bathroom and also get a drink of water, usually wandering downstairs to change the thermostat and drink some water. I crawl back into my bed, sometimes thinking of a lot of things but I am also a woman in my 50’s. Laying comfortably, not moving around, after about an hour, I eventually begin to nod off, only to have my husband, at that exact moment, without fail, start jolting around like an animal. If I ignore, it gets more frequent and harder, waking me with every single jolt as I am beginning to feel sweet slumber. After about thirty minutes of this, I slap the covers around him and say “Steve! stop jerking around I was just falling back to sleep” and with that, he usually stops. He does go back to sleep, but he actually stops. Sometimes I feel its purposeful and get very aggravated. When I get to that point, I get up and go downstairs to read. That is what I am doing right now. I had a full time stressful job with an hour commute each way and I just couldn’t take it anymore. Sitting at a desk all day, getting no exercise, I have been experiencing all of the symptoms on this chart!!! My husband is the main bread winner and has a quite stressful job so I decided, for both of our sanity, to quit my job and find a part time job, preferably afternoons since I go back to sleep most of the time after he leaves for work, around 6am, and sleep until around 9am. I was worried about my health and I had no tolerance for anything with all of the stresses in my life (emotionally unstable boss and the problems that causes for the business that I have to fix, traffic, upset husband over politics at work, cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping the whole time on my weekends, etc) Not getting a good nights sleep added in the mix was causing me to crave the wrong foods, depression, anxiety, my blood pressure started elevating. Back to the problem, I want to fix this problem and now I have to face the fact that we have to go back to sleeping separately so I am going shopping for another bed. Even though I quite my job, I still have my seasonal job of teaching ESL at a nearby University and I need to get another part time job to supplement our income, and I need and want to be healthy! I want to get up refreshed and go on hikes everyday, etc. I have more time to plan out healthy meals and clean my house so my weekends are free to enjoy now. Therefore, he gets to enjoy his weekends now as well. He doesn’t need to help me around the house anymore either. I like it this way, always preferred it this way. But I still need my sleep even though I don’t have to leave at 6am to commute to work anymore. For years I have thought this marriage is a joke because of the problem with sleeping together. I’m glad I found this site.

    1. Jennifer Adams

      Hi Annette

      A brilliantly captured summary of the complex act of two people sleeping together. For some couples, it ain’t no walk in the park and that so often layers more tension on tired people. As you would have picked up, I strongly advocate making WHERE you sleep at night a practical decision. No-one’s health is worth sacrificing to meet social expectations of what couples ‘should do’. Your marriage is far from a joke. It sounds like a mightily sensible relationship.

      Sleep well. Jenny

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