So I was talking to three different people this week and was surprised to learn that none of them ever goes to bed when their spouse goes to bed. They usually stay up way beyond them, sometimes for hours.
And this isn’t a once in awhile type of thing…it seems to be a most of the time type of thing.
Me, I grew up knowing so differently. My parents always went to bed with each other at the same time. Neither Dad or Mom ever stayed up later than the other.
And when I was in a relationship with one girl (and living with her), I can tell you right now that I’d be in the doghouse more often than not if, for some reason, I didn’t go to bed when she did.
So I grew up with the viewpoint that couples that live together usually (and should) go to bed together, or around the same time. It just seems weird to me that just one would go to bed early and the other would stay up hours after doing things…
…but for all I know, this may be the norm now (or always was).
Never, and as a result we don’t even sleep in the same bed. I’m in bed around 10 and up at 5. She’s asleep sometime in the wee hours of the morning and awake in the early to mid afternoon.
I’m retired but my husband is still working. When we were both working, we tended to go to bed at the same time, altho he’d sometimes stay up later. I was usually ready to crash about the same time every night.
Now, our sleep schedules are all over the place. If he’s got something on his mind from work, he may stay up later, hashing it out. If I had a particularly physical day of labor, I might head to bed really early. Sometimes he’s totally exhausted and I want to see the end of a TV show, so he’ll be asleep before me.
It seems to bug him more than it does me. I see bedtime as a matter of choice and/or necessity, not a commentary on the state of our marriage. We’re both adults, and if one adult gets sleepy before the other, the one who stays up turns down the volume on the TV and tries not to disturb the other one.
I’ve had it both ways. I’m single now, but my ex and I kind of always got in bed together, even if we weren’t both sleeping. The only exceptions to this were the obvious ones, like changing work hours or illness/insomnia type stuff that might keep the other person out on the couch.
With my son’s dad, we kept different hours and were almost never in bed together. He would stay up far later than I did. At the beginning of the relationship, I would wait up for him. Eventually I figured out I could wait until the cows came home, but no way was he getting in bed before he was ready.
I prefer the former, but I agree with FCM that it is more of a personal habit thing and doesn’t necessarily reflect on the state of the relationship.
I’ve always been more of a night owl than my wife. I also work a lot of irregular hours from home, and she usually gets the kids going for school in the am.
So her natural sleep schedule seems to be 11p to 7a. For me it can really vary but more often than not around 2 or 3a to 10 or 11a. But sometimes, we do sync up, like last night.
But, like Idle Thoughts, I grew up with my parents always going to bed at the same time together. I never even really considered otherwise.
I used to do the same when we first married, but over the years, we just naturally deviated into our own sleep rhythms, and it wasn’t a big deal.
We go to bed at the same time, often a couple of hours before we go to sleep. He watches TV (yes, yes, I know that’s a Bad Thing to have a TV in the bedroom, but he’s 59 years old and not about to change his ways now) and I’ll often bring my laptop in with me and surf while I sort of half watch TV. Sometime during the 10 news, or the late shows after, one or both of us will start nodding off, and we turn off the TV and the lights.
Because he’s got fairly regular insomnia, we don’t often spend the whole night together, but we start out there, and he’s usually back in bed an hour or two before I wake up, so I wake up next to him, too.
Never. My husband is a lark; I’m an owl. I get home from work about 11:00pm and have to wind down for a couple of hours, so he’s asleep long before me.
My gf falls asleep better if there is some cuddling. I’d probably stay up another hour except for this. So, nine nights outa ten we go to bed together.
My husband usually goes to bed around 8:00pm to 8:30 on weeknights and can stay up as late as 10:00 on the weekends. He gets up at an ungodly hour of the morning to go to work. I, on the other hand, rarely even get sleepy before 11:00, so we hardly ever go to bed at the same time.
We almost always go to bed together. Right around 9:30 we’ll move to the bedroom. Then for about an hour we’ll read comic books or I’ll doodle around on my iPad while he reads. Usually after lights out we chat a bit about what we just read. And then sleep.
I do tend to sleep later than he does, though. For example this morning he slept until 8am and I slept until 10am. However I did fall asleep about a half hour after he did, because I was engrossed in my game.
There was a time I used to have wicked insomnia and I stayed up way later than him, but he told me he preferred if we came to bed together since it maximizes our time with each other. And actually that has gone a long way toward helping my insomnia.
We are off by about three hours; she’s an early-to-bed-early-to-rise person and I’m a wee-hours-of-the-night person. It works out fine, though, as it gives me solo access to the entertainment system (with headphones) to watch my shows that she doesn’t like, and it gives her a nice quiet morning to enjoy without me underfoot.
Gotta add: I thought we were the exception, but apparently not!
I picked the second option, but generally he’s the one staying up later. His insomnia puts him out of synch three nights a week, on average, and I’ll crash while he stays up to read or watch TV. He also tends to sleep later then me in the mornings, even after nights we’ve gone to sleep together.
A year and a half into the relationship we go to bed with each other. But we don’t live together yet. She requires a lot more sleep than me. When we are not together she usually goes to bed around 930 and is up by 8. I go to bed midnight-1 and get up at 5 or so. When we are together we usually go to bed around 11.
I wish we went to bed together more often; however, he’s a video game addict and doesn’t get to indulge until after the kids are in bed. And he can play for hours. Because he stays up so late, I’m usually the one to manage the kids when they come to our room around 6 or 6:30 a.m. And because I get up so early, I can’t stay up beyond 12 or so (and shouldn’t stay up that late, but I need my own time to wind down without kids).
My husband sleeps so soundly he actually managed to sleep through a parade coming down our street, complete with a brass band. I’ve been encouraging him to get a sleep study because he has sleep apnea, but he hasn’t done so yet. Getting him out of bed in the morning is impossible. Which sucks because I’m currently unemployed; he’s not. Luckily he’s a consultant, so his hours are flexible. It still drives me bonkers, though.
Between January and April of this year when my husband was working regularly and we had the new king sized bed we went to sleep at the same time and place for the first time in our 10 year relationship. It was so nice.
Now the baby and I go to sleep at the same time in the big bed and he’s back to up late playing TF2 and sleeping on the couch. I almost feel sorry for him not getting to sleep on the awesome bed, but then when I wake up every two hours to nurse the little one and he’s sawing logs on the couch I feel like it’s fair enough.
I voted Rarely, but it’s really somewhere between Rarely and More Often Than Not. The wife usually rises about 5am and so goes to bed earlier than I do. I on the other hand usually don’t get up until at least mid-morning.