(no subject)

[conuly]

Dear Prudence,

This is one of those “my husband is great but…” questions. The “but” is he falls asleep on the couch sometimes. Not all, or even most, of the time but it tends to happen in waves where he will often for a week or two then won’t for several weeks. He has no problems with our bed in general. I am a light sleeper, typically waking up at every tiny sound (and with two young kids there are lots of those) but mostly being able to fall back asleep quickly. I’ve never asked my husband to come to sleep early or change his nighttime routine to accommodate me. All I ask is he comes to bed instead of falling asleep on the couch whatever time that happens to be.

If I wake up and see that he isn’t in bed but should be (basically if it’s past midnight), then no matter how hard I try I cannot stop my brain from fully waking me up. I can’t stop wondering if he remembered to check the doors are locked, or if he started the dishwasher, or if he got a call from work and is in his office. I inevitably have to get out of bed to find him and then I can’t fall back asleep for over an hour. My husband claims he isn’t trying to fall asleep on the couch but that he “can’t control it.” I’ve never “just fallen asleep” on the couch without meaning to/knowing I am and I want to call BS on that excuse. I think he just doesn’t want to get up and ready for bed when he is comfortable and half asleep on the couch. So, do some people really fall asleep so fast and hard that they can’t reasonably be expected to change, or does my husband need to try a little harder? I also can’t help but think that sleeping a full night in bed has got to be healthier than sleeping a few hours, waking up and getting ready for bed, and going back to sleep. I should note he has tried setting an alarm but almost always turns it off without fully waking up.

—Just Come to Bed

Dear Come to Bed,

I don’t even think this rises to “My husband is great but” status. Your husband is great AND he sometimes gets sleepy and wants to close his eyes on the couch where he’s comfortable rather than dragging himself to bed and possibly waking himself up too much to get back to sleep in the process. You can and should let this one go. And he should agree to complete all essential nighttime tasks before he sits down and gets comfortable. Because at this point his falling asleep, whether or not he’s trying hard enough to prevent it, is not a surprise to either of you.

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Comments

[conuly]

So, yeah, LW's husband isn't doing anything wrong. Like, at all. However, I don't think that "just get over it, this is a you problem", no matter how nicely worded, is a constructive response. LW not only has not gotten over it in all this time but has wound themself up enough to send a letter to an advice column over what really ought to be a trivial non-issue. Because apparently once they wake up due to Husband Isn't In Bed their mind starts an in-depth anxiety spiral around all bedtime routines.

I have no idea if this is the only senseless bit of anxiety LW suffers from. I sure hope so! Nevertheless, I would have modified that response just slightly to point out that if LW cannot get over this then LW might want to (and I say this in the nicest way possible) seek help.

On a different note, I'm filing this in my head as 'yet another reason to normalize separate bedrooms for sleep'.

[mrissa]

Agreed, I can easily see "I woke up and you weren't there and it frightened me" if it was a one-time thing, but if this is happening frequently, this is not a genuine cause for worry. She knows where he is: he's on the couch, safe in their own home. Just as she would know where he was if he was traveling for business or whatever. So...this is a great time to get help for anxiety.

[rymenhild]

Now that's a useful answer. "That's an anxiety spiral, seek help." I appreciate it. Because I literally read this letter to my spouse when I saw it on Slate and said, "Look, I wrote in to Dear Prudence." For the record, I did not, but we have precisely this issue, with me being the person in bed spiraling and spouse stuck on the couch, and I found Prudie's answer entirely unhelpful.

[ambyr]

I feel very validated by this columnist response.

Signed, the person who is always falling asleep on the sofa.

[shirou]

I like my bed and sleep there most of the time, but when I occasionally get insomnia, it can help to just go somewhere else, either a couch or the guest bed. The change of position or posture somehow helps me fall asleep.

[petrea_mitchell]

Same here.

[tielan]

The issue isn't the hubs falling asleep, it's that LW worries about the bedtime routines not having been performed and goes into a brain spiral about it that ends up with her getting broken sleep.

It might be worth her talking to her husband about how he might be fine with the 'broken sleep' but she is not, and so falling asleep on the couch is something that disturbs her, and maybe he could make an effort not to?

[azurelunatic]

Yes! Yes, people can really and truly fall asleep without realizing that they are about to! Generally it does happen somewhere that they are already comfortable, and sometimes they have enough notice about it to think "I'm just going to close my eyes for a minute" and then an hour or more passes in a nap.

LW, you really really really need to get the anxiety checked out, and also your husband should adjust his evening routine such that it gets everything else done first before he sits down to relax.

It doesn't sound like he has any of the other signs that point to like sleep apnea or whatever, but if he does find himself falling asleep in places that he shouldn't (but the couch late in the evening is a normal condition, not a weird condition) then he should get himself checked out.

You do have some standing as a light sleeper to request that he get all tasks that could include banging and clanking done before your bedtime. Such as dishwashering.

It is absolutely reasonable to request that if he is called into the office at a weird time, that he send you a text message or some other such asynchronous signal where you would just have to look at your phone to know his general whereabouts and schedule rather than getting up to discover whether he's home or out. If both of you agree to it, there are apps that let you share your location with other parties. (I use the feature that's built into Google Maps to share my whereabouts with my partners, and the partner of mine who is most likely to encounter some weird circumstances shares theirs with me and the rest of the household. The partner of mine whose controlling ex monitored their DVR and demanded to know what they were doing instead of watching baseball does not share their location and no one expects them to start.) A location sharing service might help you know for sure whether he's gone to his office or is still at home (if he doesn't think he can remember to send you a location update text).

[joyeuce]

I think having two young children and LW waking at every sound they make may be a factor in this. Even if LW falls asleep again quickly, it sounds like she's rarely getting a full unbroken night, and exhaustion can send anxiety spiralling. And if husband not being there means LW is always the one who has to get up for the kids, I could see resentment spiralling too.

[mrissa]

I say this as a person with anxiety: it's pretty important to draw boundaries around a) what other people are doing for our anxiety rather than because it's the obvious reasonable thing that any reasonable human would do, obviously! obviously!!! and b) places where we let our anxiety make us rigid at all.

If Husband is not taking his turn dealing with any genuine nighttime issues with small kids, that's an issue to be addressed. I don't see her saying that here--and it would be a pretty strong argument in LW's favor, I think she would say it if it were true. In most houses, you could reasonably hear someone calling out from an upstairs bedroom if you were downstairs on the couch, though. She's not saying "I regularly wake up to find that the dishes aren't done and the doors are unlocked," she's saying she worries that that will be the case. If it's happening, deal with it happening! But deal with the anxiety spiral as an anxiety spiral.

[joyeuce]

I read resentment in the line about her always waking up at noises, having heard that from friends as a complaint against their husbands, but you're right, it wouldn't have to be.

[ioplokon]

I alternate between being able to fall asleep on a dime and having terrible insomnia (guess which one now). So I can understand how if you only experience one, you'd feel like the other person is exaggerating (what do you MEAN you can't get back to sleep/can people REALLY fall asleep without trying).

[lilysea]

It is reasonable for LW to say to her partner

"since you often unintentionally fall asleep on the couch, please check all the outside doors are locked before you first go to sit on the couch in the evening"

and

"if you fall asleep on the couch, don't later wake up and then come into bed after I have fallen asleep because it wakes me up and it is hard for me to get back to sleep".

But "never fall asleep on the couch" is not a reasonable or realistic thing to expect.

Humans often fall asleep unintentionally without any warning, due to:
severe sleep debt
acute illness like colds or influenza
medication side effects
chronic illness
sleep apnoea

I know someone who accidentally fell asleep during the day on the toilet at her workplace while peeing! She told me that she woke up on the toilet later, pee on her trousers, and told her psychiatrist that she needed a *different* antidepressant please, because this one made her fall asleep randomly.

[purlewe]

And perhaps, to help her anxiety spiral, she might decide that she checks the door before she goes to bed. I don't typically advocate for someone to take on more work, but if it's YOUR anxiety about the door being locked then perhaps you need to check the door yourself before you retire. I do feel bad for her levels of anxiety. But I don't think she should be upset with her husband's actions. And yes she should be seeking help bc anxiety only gets worse untreated.

[conuly]

Or they could call a locksmith and put in the sort of lock that latches automatically when the door is shut. No more checking.

[melannen]

That would help if the problem is that they aren't actually getting locked every night, but if the problem is anxiety, it'll just mean somebody now just needs to double-check that it latched correctly. (Possibly some sort of smart-home system that would let her control the locks from bed would actually help with the anxiety, but it would be so much less really secure that I don't want to suggest it.)