agonyaunt | Dear Abby: My wife sleeps. A lot.

Entry tags:

Dear Abby: My wife sleeps. A lot.

DEAR ABBY: I have been married to my soul mate for 25 years. We get along great -- she's my best friend and a good mother to our three kids. (She takes care of my mom who lives with us, too.) The only problem is, she loves to sleep.

She will do anything for us except wake up a few hours early without being mad at the world. She gets our kids off to school with no problem, but then returns to bed. I run a small construction company and need someone to answer the phones and do secretary stuff. Our books are a mess, the house is decent, but she won't let me hire a part-time secretary.

She gets up at noon and spends the rest of the day "catching up." It's driving a wedge in our marriage. My friends and their wives do things together on weekends, but not mine. She sleeps until 2 or 3 p.m. on the weekends.

I work a lot of Saturdays, and when I go to customers' homes and see the wife outside gardening, it breaks my heart. I have threatened to leave, and she works on it for a couple days and then falls back into the same old habits. Help! -- HURTING HUSBAND IN CALIFORNIA

DEAR HUSBAND: Not everyone requires the same amount of sleep in order to function. Some folks may be fine with five hours, but others need eight, nine or even 10. If your wife needs more than that, there may be an underlying problem of some kind that she should discuss with her doctor.

In marriage there needs to be compromise. If you are experiencing stress because you don't have enough help in your business, then you need to hire someone because your wife is already doing all she can taking care of three kids and your mother. And you shouldn't need her permission.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Answer the first: sleep study, sleep study, for God's sake sleep study. I can't tell you how many people I know, myself included, have disordered sleep of one kind or another. If she's had one and you didn't mention it, LW, shame on you. I realize that as small business owners, you may not have great insurance, but if your wife is taking care of the kids AND your mother, then figuring this out needs to be a priority. If it's truly not feasible, then at least acknowledge that it may be beyond her control.

Second...there are so many red flags here that I can't pin down how I feel. I'm naturally inclined to be sympathetic to a mother* who is getting her kids "off to school with no problem," keeps the house at least "decent" (come to mine on a bad week, friend), and is taking care of his mother in the bargain. And the, "I have threatened to leave" sets my hackles up - well, dude, would you be taking mom with you? Paying child support on top? But I acknowledge that this is a bias of mine, and may be coloring my lenses a lot, here.

What I can't parse is, "she won't let me hire a secretary." So many questions. First, what does she say? What reasons does she give? Can you not afford it? Or does she just perceive that? Does she feel guilty about not doing the job you clearly expect her to do? Is she not giving a reason? What is going on in that little independent clause? I suspect the answer to what I can't pin down is right there.

*As I sit here typing this at 4:30AM because my kid had a nightmare, and I having snuggled her back to sleep, I can't get back to sleep myself, did I mention sleep disorders?

All of this. He didn't mention whether she goes to bed late and gets up early (DSPS?) or if she's going to bed early as well (excessive daytime sleepiness? sleep apnoea, narcolepsy, an illness with fatigue as one of the symptoms?) or how old the children are and if they get up in the night, or if his mother has Alzheimers and gets distressed in the evenings, or how much (any?) work he does at home, for the family/household.

And the example he gave of "the wife outside gardening" clearly had a lot embedded in there, and I can't tell from here what. Like, is his problem that his wife isn't like the others and he wants a wife who's the same as other wives? Or appearances -- that those wives are out there visibly Wifing? Does he want a garden but not have time to do it himself? Does he want her to be a particular sort of wife, one who gardens? Is gardening a thing he wants to "do together", except that he's working Saturdays and watching his clients garden, but he's blaming her sleep patterns rather than his work schedule?

Whatever the case, I'm getting the feeling that this is very much about her performance in the role of his wife, and that he's more concerned with that, and his pain that she isn't, than with how she's coping with all this work and if she's healthy and happy.

I also noticed that the business is his when they're talking about who runs it, but it's "our" books that are a mess and "she" who "won't let" him hire a bookkeeper and administrator. I wonder whose business it is, legally. And what the books say about their ability to afford that person. And how much she's getting paid, and how their personal as well as business finances are organised and differentiated. I'm thinking of that article I read somewhere about farming and how most farming families, if you ask the wife, she'll it's "our farm", husband and wife and children, but if you ask the husbands, they'll say it's "my farm" or "mine and my son's", even when the labour is shared equally.

Yeah, the gardening comment hit all the same flags for me as well.

I'm not usually onboard with Abby advice, but this is exactly what I would say (barring the excellent suggestion of a sleep study; mine was revolutionary for me). He needs to hire a secretary, not expect his wife to do it; he also needs to respect her physiological need for sleep (which is not "love").

And for fuck's sake, if the woman is raising three kids and caring for an aged mom who needs someone to "take care of" her, maybe she's sleeping because she's exhausted. People who think housework isn't work can eff right off.

Also n excellent point about the business, Vass. Why does he let her decide about hiring secretary? Is it her money? Is he using the family funds to prop up the business?

I totally missed the gardening comment. In another context, I'd say he's sad that she doesn't have a hobby, but in the context of this letter, yes, I agree: it seems more like he wants some Hallmark picture of a wife than concern for her.

In re gardening: all the things you note are possible, but it's also possible he's just having "this means she's up and around and Doing Things" and it's become the symbol, because that's when he sees them. (Whereas if the wife works, she's just not at home, and if she's inside the house she may have Just Woken Up or whatever - gardening represents "awake, alert, doing things". Which is not a good assumption, but hell, lots of people have not-good assumptions.)

What a coincidence. I also suffered insomnia last night after getting up to tend to my 4-year-old after he had a nightmare. I wonder if the LW's wife has to regularly get up at night as part of her care-giving responsibilities.

Beyond that, my reaction to the letter is basically the same as everyone else's. Excess sleep is most likely a symptom of a medical issue, and it's weird—potentially alarming—that the LW considers it a character flaw.

Does she have some sort of medical issue?

It sounds like this guy thinks his wife is sleeping as a hobby, which is just ridiculous. Have some empathy, dude!

If there was ever a case when my very first response would be, "she needs to see a doctor," it would be this. I really hope insurance wouldn't be a barrier to that, because I would be truly stunned if there weren't something going on.

I am just . . . made of "needs moar info."

Because like I can see other people's werp red flag! reactions, but on the other hand I can also see where it's just the guy not being great at expressing himself. I seem to have slightly more experiences than a lot of comm members with it being women who are the pathological agents in a situation, so when I see "won't let me hire a part-time secretary" the possibility that this is her genuinely refusing to go with that option even if it is a possibility seems equally plausible to them not having the money etc. (Potential reasons running from embarrassment and hurt pride thru "but he will fall in love with her and leave me" thru it really IS that they're not making enough money, but she's panicked that this will become apparent for whatever reason [including totally harmless ones like "but he'll get so stressed!", mind! I'm not actually suggesting wrongdoing] and so keeps the books obscure to hide that.)

Likewise I can see where people are getting the "performative Wifing" thing, but on the other hand I hone in more on "my friends and their wives do things together on weekends" - if he's working thru the week and IS the only source of income and then hits the weekend and it seems to him that his wife would rather sleep than spend any time with him . . . well, frankly, I'd be messed up by that, too. (Actually I'd be totally destroyed by that, lbr).

I do totally immediately jump to "there is something medical wrong", though. Depression, anemia, hypothyroid, the list goes on and on. On the other hand our culture is so fucked up about this shit it's entirely possible that neither of them has any idea that hypersomnia is an indicator of potential medical trouble: the narrative is SO "it's just laziness" that hell, it took me years to come to terms with it not mattering HOW MUCH I wanted to do something or wanted to "discipline" myself into it, if I didn't have the right physiological treatment for the depression's Massive Screaming Fatigue, it wouldn't happen, and I have so many factors that other people just don't when it comes to knowing any of this stuff.

(My inclination is honestly hypothyroid or depression, just because those are the two that to me so clearly fit the pattern of "can get kids off to school, then goes back to bed.")

I am also 100% behind "she has enough to do taking care of three kids and his mom". 100%. But on the other hand if it really is her being the block to hiring the secretary, just doing it over her head may make EVERYTHING. EXPLODE. in ways that are just too epic to describe. And whether that's the issue is something that's totally based on, what are her other behaviours? What ELSE is going on that either he's oblivious to, or they both just have no way of knowing are signals of illness vs "just personality clash" or whatever?

So it's all . . . NEEDS MOAR DATA? What's there just makes me go " . . .this could be going either way."

The thing about the secretary struck me as well. I suspect we're seeing the middle of a longer argument. Where he's ultimatum'd and she's tried hard to please him. There might be a bit of 'if he needs me, then maybe he won't...' coming from her. There's also the chance that she's picked up on his issues (considering the i'll leave yous, I'd say it's not really subtle) and is attempting to Not Be A Failure.

Considering that this household has a pretty classic family structure, I think they BOTH might be playing into the performative issues.

Then again, as you said, Needs Moar Info.

My mother for years told me about how lazy I was. I self-identify as lazy constantly.

A few years ago I got diagnosed with sleep apnea and got a CPAP, a few months ago I started CBT for insomnia, and it's amazing how with proper treatment I can be alert and productive during the day. Yet the pathologizing of sleepiness, which led me to self identifying as laziness, has actually changed my behaviour patterns for the lazier. I have been told I'm lazy for so long it's become an identity.

Which is a way of agreeing with you and with everyone else. I see how the wife's behavior could be pathological here, but if the husband is calling her lazy for something that reads like an indicator of poor physical or mental health, that's not going to help at all.

Oh no: there is definitely SOMETHING that is actual illness, mental physical or both, going on. The pattern as described is not one healthy people, even Very Tired Out healthy people, live in and the very first thing needed is to figure out what that problem is, be it DPSD, or apnea, or depression, or thyroid, or whatever. (And there are so MANY things it could be, seriously - I recently went thru tests for all of them just to make sure we weren't ignoring something Else by assuming my total non-functional energy levels were primarily MDD, with a side order of "can't do all the 'normal' energy boosting things due to said".)

On the other hand, you don't need anything more than standard lack of knowledge to not realize that. MOST people I encounter on a daily basis have no idea that this kind of thing is indicative of an illness, or that there are ways of fixing it, as your story indicates. So the part where LW doesn't realize that just indicates he's with the vast majority of the population, not that He's Doing Something Wrong (given principle of charity).

And it's still a problem that needs to be fixed, and indeed a lifetime of dealing with the crap that comes with treating an illness like a character flaw can breed some of the pathological behaviours described? (Especially the refusal to let him hire someone to do the work: of he hires someone, it becomes Proof that she's Bad and Incapable, so she nixes the idea because she still means to Pull Up Her Socks and Fix This Pattern!...and then this doesn't happen because the underlying problem is still there, and the whole thing goes around.)

(had a similar thing happen in-family with childcare: getting a mother's helper was The Sign Of Failure to a relative, except she honestly couldn't handle the baby alone, for any number of reasons, but convincing her to let someone help with hiring a helper....you'd've thought we were trying to put her in an Iron Maiden.)

and what I swear is my last eta: it's not how my family runs shit and isn't how I would ever CHOOSE to run shit, but it's also absolutely not uncommon in my experience of people I've met for partners in that kind of situation to take an emotional ownership of part-time secretary stuff for their spouse's business, nor is it unusual for that business to be literally the only source of income for the family, meaning either both spouses have some level of joint psychological ownership . . . .or it's basically a case of the non-working spouse getting an allowance from the working one. The latter really isn't how most people I've known prefer to do things, veering instead into totally joint finances, which means that yeah, even if legally he could do whatever he wanted with "his" business, going over her head with something like that would basically be emotionally backhanding her and very possibly end their marriage by carrying the context "actually you are NOT an intimate and inextricable part of my life".

Which is basically what I assumed with the "won't let me" - that yeah, sure, he could legally just hire someone, but the sheer level of domestic conflict that this would lead to is even worse than whatever he's struggling with now, and might be relationship-killing.

Which comes around to: Abby's advice is worse than useless to my mind, I just also...find the seemingly underlying assumption that somehow it's all the LW'S fault, or that his concerns and frustration are guaranteed groundless/exaggerated/unfair kind of...off/odd. The problem may be, almost certainly is, some kind of illness and won't be solved by treating it as a character flaw - but that doesn't meant it's not a real, serious problem or that it doesn't NEED to be solved.

(And it's worth noting that in the letter, he DOESN'T call her lazy: he just identifies the sleeping patterns as a problem, details them, details the specific ways in which they are a problem - the first being the stuff related to his business, the second being that due to the pattern they basically don't HAVE a relationship because there's no time for it, and then notes that the patterns persist even after apparent attempts to change them. The closest he gets is phrasing it as "she likes to sleep", which - while almost certainly inaccurate - is how most of the world, probably including her, would frame it. palms up shrug

Which brings me around to "Abby is useless here" - my inclination would be to tell LW the long list of things that could be wrong to cause the pattern, advise them as a couple to get her medically checked if at all possible, and possibly to see a couple's counsellor just to work out specifically the "won't let me hire secretary" issue, since it's clear one is needed and also that for whatever reason, they're not communicating well on that one.)

Edited 2016-09-08 18:06 (UTC)

if he's working thru the week and IS the only source of income and then hits the weekend and it seems to him that his wife would rather sleep than spend any time with him . . . well, frankly, I'd be messed up by that, too.

I'm currently lying in bed with sciatica, having cancelled seeing a friend and told my boyfriend that I may have to cancel our standing date tomorrow.

Would I rather enjoy time with my sciatica than my friend and my boyfriend? No. Is this what I have to do to take care of myself, not least so I can be functional enough to go to work on Monday? Yes.

I have to admit, I was pretty sympathetic to the LW right up until he mentioned threatening to leave his wife, who has four people to care for, because she sleeps too much and isn't Seen To Be Wifely. That doesn't indicate a willingness to address this situation as anything but a character flaw; I hope, but wouldn't bet, that he takes seriously the advice for her to see her doctor. (OTOH, part of my sympathy for him came from my eye rolling that she won't let him hire a secretary -- if she really won't, when they obviously need help, I think she needs to change her mind on that.)

I don't think that it's that the other commenters here are less aware than you are that women can behave in pathological ways in relationships (get me drunk and ask me about my mother!) but that .... well, I certainly know that one piece of information I bring to any Battle Of The Sexes tale, such as this one, is an awareness that women and the work we do are systematically devalued by the society we live in, economically and otherwise. I can't forget that when evaluating any conflict between a mixed-gender pair, and it does influence where my sympathies lie.

*makes gestures of grabbing for words*

The thing that I'm bemused about is that to me it seems in this case (and a couple others) less influence and more overwrite.

Datapoint one is, I do seem to be the only one who had a HORROR reaction of "oh god no he can't just hire a secretary over her head are you NUTS that would be the WORST THING." On the other hand when I ran it by other people outside the comm (the lurkers support me in email!) many of them had the same reaction, which is to whit: that would be paramount to telling her he thinks she's useless, and that her feelings are irrelevant, and that he doesn't CARE about her input, and that her only place in his life is to mind the kids and clean up after his mom.

Like everything that the comm would hate him for doing is . . . what he'd be telling her, by going over her head to hire a secretary. Even if it's not even REMOTELY what he means: even if what he actually means is "hey, you have enough to do with all the rest of this stuff, let's get some part-time help to take this thing about my business off your hands", if she's saying "no secretary", him getting one in spite of that would be spitting in her face.

Similarly, she may have been doing the secretarial things to start with because NOT letting her do them would be patronizing and saying "you're not my partner, you're not part of my business life", which is a shitty thing for a husband to say to a wife.

Are the reasons for all those dynamics patriarchy? Yep. But they're not patriarchy as in "the husband has her trapped", they're patriarchy as in "for her, internally, to be his partner and equal is to have at least a partial stake in his business if she's not otherwise working outside the house." Where I grew up (rural Northern Canada) this would be very, very common and I will honestly say: threatening to leave is LESS of an emotional smack than unilaterally cutting her out of the business while they're still married. When she has indicated that this is important to her (by going "no secretary"), to unilaterally cut her out would show a devastating lack of respect and value for her.

So there's that. Obviously I have no idea where LW is from and whether that's part of the dynamic at play, but it's one I'd find plausible-thru-likely in this situation. I seem to be in a minority in that, tho.

But it also feels weird to me that the leap was to it being somehow His Fault that she's doing the books at all, given what I know of the above. Like he has clearly offered to secure part-time labour so that she doesn't have to do this, and she nixed it. Is it from patriarchy crap that she feels Impelled to be the bookkeeper? Very Possibly. But what is he supposed to have done about it? Say "no you can't", take it away from her, ignore what she's said on the matter? Intuit that she's having internalized patriarchy issues and educate her on them? Because neither of those is hideously patronizing or invasive?

The second datapoint is, it's honestly very, very common for people to literally not know that this kind of thing is a strong sign of a health problem, including the person suffering from it. So while my absolute gut reaction to someone sleeping 15+ plus every day (and 18hrs on the weekends) for months on end is "oh god see a doctor something is not right", it is entirely possible that she only frames it as Being Sleepy, or Being Tired - and that neither of them have a clue that it could mean an illness.

The immediate jump to assuming that he does and is deliberately treating it like a character flaw feels weird to me, as a result. And not really reasonable. My experience is that realizing what looks like "laziness" (as culturally defined) is actually or even possibly could be illness is the unusual thing to have happen, not the one to assume.

This is an area where it feels like "influence" has given way to "assume that somehow the husband is actually The Problem".

And datapoint three is, I have chronic severe depression, anxiety, ASD (with SERIOUS tendency to sensory overload) and PTSD. Almost everyone important in my life has some kind of mental or physical illness or both. We definitely have to cancel on each other frequently; I'm not saying that having to do that is INHERENTLY horrible.

What I'm saying is when it's every single weekend, or every single day (which is what he describes), it starts to hurt. It starts to hurt even if there is a perfectly reasonable reason for it, never mind if you don't know that there might be one (see above). So honestly it's still a reasonable thing to be upset about. It may be that she does have an illness and they have to work out some kind of solution that involves a whole lot of compromise, not him getting to suddenly start doing weekend hiking trips or whatever it is his married friends are doing that he envies! That's totally legit.

But it's also legit for him to be sad and unhappy that this is what he has for a relationship with someone he loves and who says she loves him, especially if it hasn't occurred to him that it's an illness and not her actually saying "I would rather do this than spend time with you."

It's not unreasonable to be sad or hurt that your spouse literally never spends time with you.

And so finally, a lot of the other responses to me seem to lean to "we need more information to figure out exactly what it is the husband is doing wrong/how he's the problem". That he might not be - that, say, the bit about gardening really is just "oh, look, a spouse who is out doing things instead of being in bed" (in the one place he's likely to see if he's the kind of contractor who works outdoors or whatever) and not code for "damn my Wife does not Perform Right for the Neighbours", of which there's . . . no other indication I can see? as he never mentions anyone else at any other point? - doesn't seem to be even on the table. And that's where I'm really, really bemused.

I get head-tilt-y because I honestly am pretty sure if the genders were swapped - if LW were writing about her husband - the sleepy-spouse would be getting almost no sympathy, and mentions of a medical issue might well be being met with stern reminders that it's his own job to take care of his illnesses and he should get on that. And I don't think that simply flipping the unfairness is a way to usefully deal with and integrate awareness of the unreasonable demands made of women in other spaces. *hands*

I mean my honest position is " . . . needs moar data". I think it's actually more or less impossible to tell what's really going on, BEYOND "oh god she needs a doctor", from what he's saying here, especially keeping in mind all of the unspoken stuff we assume women should do, but also keeping in mind that individual women can really suck. I think to get a real picture one would really need him to unpack the gardening comment, to find out what "taking care of his mother" implies, when she actually goes to bed and if kids are sleeping through the night . . . .all of that stuff? And even what specifically led to "threatening to leave" and what that threat entailed (maybe he was going to take the kids and his mom with him - we don't know).

Tho yeah the one point of " . . . dude, no" is that. But on the other hand the thing that will forever colour and influence MY take on these things is dealing with specifically women (multiple) who actively took their illnesses as a clear pass to abandon any effort they didn't want to make bar what they'd established as their bare minimum, and then get mad at people when that had consequences and accuse them of being horrible ablist monsters. (I'm skipping the detailed stories: there's a couple reasons I had so many in my life, but that's not really as germane, so much as what it leaves me with.) And a priori LW's wife sounds EXACTLY like one of them. *hands* So.

... wow.

But it also feels weird to me that the leap was to it being somehow His Fault that she's doing the books at all, given what I know of the above.

I just reread the comments here, mine and others, and I don't see that statement. FWIW, I agree with you on the secretary, and disagree with Abby on that part -- I said I think LW's wife needs to change her mind about that, which includes that LW absolutely shouldn't go over her to hire one.

I could ... I could spend all night trying to write a reply to this that would get across the nuances of my position, and I should not. I actually am close to a situation which is a lot like this with genders reversed (wife works for pay, husband does not) and the response from those who know about it has not been the one you predict here. I have had a relationship fall apart because my then-SO had ADHD and could not keep track of our dates, and that definitely hurt. And I'm not even going to get into my own history with my own and others' mental and other chronic illnesses, and I just deleted several lines of text about same and about my emotional reaction to feeling I need to prove I have such history. Because, not actually the topic at hand.

But I will say this. You've said that in your experience the LW's wife's behavior looks like "women (multiple) who actively took their illnesses as a clear pass to abandon any effort they didn't want to make bar what they'd established as their bare minimum, and then get mad at people when that had consequences and accuse them of being horrible ablist monsters. " I've certainly known both men and women who have done this. But the pattern that the LW's wife brought to *my* particular mind was that of women I've known who were overwhelmed by childrearing and caring for other family members, who felt guilty and sad towards and/or unsupported by partners who were unsympathetic to and dismissive of their workload. Globally, it could be an interesting discussion about the different patterns different people have seen and how these contribute to how we judge the situations in these letters and elsewhere.

I don't think I can do that right now, though, between aforementioned emotional reaction and the fact that my damn back really hurts.

For what it's worth, I only brought those up because your citing of your cancellation for health reasons made ME feel like I needed to prove that I had that history and was not talking out of my ass; it was not meant to imply I have MORE experience, but rather was because that example made it seem to me as if that idea (that there can be valid reasons for having to not keep plans with a significant other) was something you thought I had somehow not encountered or dealt with.

So. I was and have been assuming that you and others have your experiences with this stuff? I felt because of that specific bit that it was being assumed I DIDN'T and couldn't possibly understand (and this explained why my take is different). Since that assumption is not accurate, I wanted to point that out.

In terms of the reaction to the gender reversal, I meant specifically here or in similar places I have been online (specifically Captain Awkward), not Everywhere.

I just wanted to clarify those two points, as apparently my wording misrepresented what I wanted to convey before, to a huge extent.

Edited 2016-09-11 03:56 (UTC)

Okay, three kids, care of his mother, apparently takes care of the books for his business and does the housework. And he's surprised she needs to sleep in on weekends.

What a prince.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Dear Abby: My wife sleeps. A lot.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject