Sleeping - Together or Alone?

This writer’s article seems to be making the rounds of blogs…and it must’ve been Neil Stanley I saw on the news the other day.

When I look at my in-laws, both pushing 70 and having slept together for nearly 50 years, I wonder how much healthier they could be?  Could this sleeping together business affect their life expectancies?  They’re both quite fit and very active, but they do tease each other about the fact that they both snore…so they might live longer and even healthier lives if they slept apart…

D and I both snore as well…so here I am, home alone on a Saturday night, the third night D is on a four-night series of night shifts, and, tired as I am, I probably won’t go to bed until close to midnight.  I don’t mind being alone, but I don’t sleep well when he’s not here.  I don’t sleep well when he is here either!  I think we would probably both sleep best if we were both in the house, but in separate rooms!  I THINK our problem is due to snoring only.  By that, I mean that if either of us gets up during the night for the bathroom, the other rarely awakens.  Neither of us wave our arms around in our sleep or have restless legs…on those nights when we’re not aware of each other snoring, we both sleep well.  But, we’ve decided that we probably both snore EVERY night… some nights, we both fall too soundly asleep quickly to be aware.

My biggest problem with sleeping, though, is menopause-related – either a hot flash or needing the toilet during the night – I’m lucky to get more than two hours of sleep at a stretch.  This rarely disturbs D, but there are, indeed, those nights where I wake up in the middle of the night and have a great deal of trouble falling back to sleep. There have only been a few times where I’ve awoken in this manner and the reason I can’t back to sleep is his snoring!

Eventually, the answer for us may be a bigger bed and ear plugs!  In the meantime, we’ll struggle along because the positives seems to outweigh the negatives.  There is a major positive for us when it comes to sharing a bed.  We generally go to bed at the same time, although I might get there first with a book.  He might read for a bit too, but then it’s lights out…once the lights go out and we’re lying comfortably, the conversation starts.  Seems like we have our best conversations while lying in the dark, until we just get too drowsy to keep talking…and then the snoring begins!