Bedtime Burdens
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[9 Comments]
Elizabeth's Side: His sleep schedule is irritating.
After 18 years of marriage, you'd think we would have conquered the whole sleep schedule by now. But it's worse than ever! I need to go to bed by 10:30 at the latest. That means being asleep at 10:30. As a working mom, I need a solid eight hours of sleep just to survive.
Every night when I tell James that I need to go to bed, he always gives the same response, "Do you want trouble?" ("Trouble" means that James will follow me to the bedroom for a short time until I fall asleep and then go back to the living room.) If I say no, then he simply stays out in the living room as I go to bed alone.
So here I am with the same two options night after night: Go to bed alone, or if I'm in the mood … then go to sleep alone. I'm just not a night owl, but most nights he goes back to the living room, watches TV, does work stuff or whatever it is that he does after I go to bed. I know he's not cleaning the house!
It irritates me that unless I'm up for one more "activity," James is out of the picture, or even sometimes afterwards he's back in the living room. I hate going to bed alone, but staying up and waiting for him to be tired just isn't an option.
James' Side: Her sleep schedule isn't realistic.
Every night at about 10 or 10:15, Elizabeth puts down whatever she's doing and gives me a look. She's ready to go to bed. But that's the time when I'm still wide awake and ready to keep going.
It's a broken routine. I hear her say, "I'm tired …" then fill in the blank with any number of sentences describing every detail of just how tired she is. As if, after 18 years of marriage, I don't know that she needs to be in bed at 10:30."
Depending on the "look," my typical response—and yes, I realize that it's a bad habit—is to ask, "Do you want trouble?" or "You don't want trouble do you?" or "Okay, I'm not tired yet, I'll be there in a while."
Some nights, if she's still awake enough, I'll follow her to the bedroom for some "quality" time together, then I return to the living room. I just can't fall asleep—so I don't want to lie there wide awake when I could be doing something.
But the other nights, when Elizabeth isn't in the "trouble" mood, I stay up. That's when Elizabeth gives me the "I hate going to bed without you" speech.
I feel bad. Sometimes on those "trouble free" nights, I'll still try to go in with her and lie there for 10-15 minutes of boredom, eventually leaving once I hear her first signs of sleep. Then I go back to what I was doing. It seems silly.
I want to spend time with Elizabeth. But lying in bed not sleeping seems like a waste of the most creative time of my day.
What They Did
The underlying element of James and Elizabeth's issue had very little to do with their sleep schedules. It was more about time that they needed to spend together. James would go to bed, if he got what he (they) wanted. But on the nights that James didn't get what he wanted, Elizabeth didn't get what she needed.
Related Topics:
Compromise, Conflict resolution, Schedules
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sarah
am looking forward to getting married very soon and i thank Elizabeth and James for being frank to share the problem instead of running away from it. kudos! av learnt how to manage my family to be. thank you Elizabeth and James God bless you.
rachel Adamson
It is nice to go to bed at the same time but when your husband works rotating shifts that is not possible. So you have to adjust or stay on your own sleep pattern as his shift changes. You learn to spend time with him when you can and learn to like it. With this economy you be thankful that at least he has a job. For there are many that don't.
believeinlove
I wish I had seen this 4 years ago. My now ex left me then, saying he was unhappy and kept saying it was because I was on the computer at night (mostly after he'd go to sleep). I was baffled and couldn't understand why he would (and still does) consider this "bad behavior" that I would get in bed with him at 10:30 but get up after he fell asleep if I couldn't. This is what they tell you is a good to do if you can't sleep actually. (It had gotten worse after I suffered neck injury after a car accident plus other stresses like deaths and illness in my family). Maybe it was really more than that, and he just trumped up this reason because of his own bad behavior, I may not know about, or to excuse his guilt over leaving, refusing counseling and not ever giving me an opportunity to try and change whatever he wanted different. Leaving was a way-over-reaction to what was a solvable problem, but at least this article helps me understand something in a way I hadn't before. Thanks.
Harriet
Wow what Elizabeth was going through is exactly what I am going through! I am going to print it out for my husband and we see a way forward! I've been blessed to know that am not alone!
Anon2
To Anon: I'm in the same situation as you. It does get easier. I ultimately left it in God's hands. There are several books out there might help you. Restoring the Pleasure by Clifford Penner or The Sex Starved Marriage by Michele Weiner Davis. According to Mr. Penner, it can be due to a childhood experience, past influences, overwork, feeling crowded, medical issues, sexual addiction, pornography, etc. If you can go for Christian counseling even on your own, I would recommend it. http://www2.focusonthefamily.com/focusmagazine/marriage/A000001293.c fm
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