Dear Prudence: Sleep Sorrows

[minoanmiss]

Q. Sleep deprived and it’s ruining everything: I listened to your “Insomnia” podcast recently and nearly wept when you said the letter writer with the sleep-disrupting boyfriend should kill him. I am part of a service corps and must share a room with “Sasha.” Sasha snores. Incredibly loudly. She also has the worst sleep habits I’ve ever encountered. She survives on three hours of sleep a night and looks at her phone under her covers. I’ve tried talking to Sasha about her issues so many ways: jokingly, at a party, telling her she needs to go to a sleep clinic; writing her emails explaining her problems; setting sleep schedules for her based on what I’ve observed reduces the snoring. She shuts down every time I confront her. I’ve made her cry, and worse, because some of my emails were written under duress—I am falling apart I’m so tired and angry—she’s shared them with our roommates and now I’m the bad guy. I don’t know what to do short of quitting the program. Sasha says she has a medical condition and is making appointments to see doctors, but I know what she needs to do: get proper sleep and not look at bright screens before bed. I have no energy and am suffering at work and socially because of Sasha. For some reason, everyone in our house adores her and takes her side. I have no idea how to explain that I’m this angry because a lack of sleep is ruining my life. What can I do?


A: If you haven’t already tried minimizing distractions from your side of the room, please do so immediately. If you have other roommates in the house, ask to switch with one of them. If your service program has a housing department, make a transfer request. In the meantime, get the heaviest-duty earplugs you can find, buy a blackout sleep mask, find a white-noise machine or (if you can’t afford to drop a ton of money on sleep hygiene) get one on your phone.

For future reference, some of your strategies for talking about serious issues with a roommate are fine (nothing wrong with a clear email) and some of them are counterproductive, like making jokes at her expense in public, or trying to set a sleep schedule for a grown woman. Don’t joke about something that’s really bothering you, because those jokes tend to land with serious barbs and don’t go half as far as a genuine, honest request. And don’t try to manage your roommate’s sleep schedule. You can tell her that her snoring is making it hard for you to sleep, you can ask for a roommate transfer, you can encourage her to get checked out for underlying medical conditions that might contribute to intense snoring, but you cannot tell her when to go to bed or when to wake up. If she’s looking at her phone under her covers, that suggests she is at least trying to minimize the distractions to you, and means you two might be able to work together to find a livable compromise.