BY NAOMI BARR
“Snorer moves. No question.”
“When I’m the guilty party, I’m happy to relocate. I’d rather have a rested partner than wake up next to someone who’s miserable because of me.”
“The nonsnorer moves because the snorer is busy snoring. Should the snorer move? Yes, but the person who wakes ends up moving.”
“The one who doesn’t have to lug a CPAP machine with them!”
“I move but make a lot of noise as I stumble down the hall. Passive aggressive? Yes! He goes back to snoring in minutes!”
“I’m currently on the couch as my husband snores away.”
When push comes to snore, the offending party should move. First things first, though: If you sleep with a chronic snorer or, gasp, it’s you who saws logs (about 45% of men and 25% of women do!), see a doctor or sleep specialist to determine the cause. It may be due to sleep apnea (a serious medical condition) or to alcohol consumption, weight gain, or sleeping position, says Wendy Troxel, PhD, a sleep scientist (remember her from page 68?) and the author of Sharing the Covers: Every Couple’s Guide to Better Sleep. You can’t find a fix without understanding the problem. “And not landing on a solution means one of you will be kept up, either from the noise next to you or from being relegated to the couch,” Troxel says.
Which is exactly how resentment creeps in. Staring at the ceiling while your bedmate gets shut-eye can be maddening, says couples therapist Daphne de Marneffe, PhD, author of The Rough Patch: Marriage and the Art of Living Together. On the flip side, she adds, “the snorer can feel rejected when they’re basically told, ‘I need my sleep more than I need to be next to you.’”
Tackle the problem together— maybe one person agrees to behavioral changes, like cutting back on alcohol, while the other agrees to wear earplugs. Or maybe you sleep apart (over a third of U.S. adults surveyed opt for a “sleep divorce,” says the American Academy of Sleep Medicine). Otherwise, Troxel says, the noisemaker moves: “If they don’t see it as a problem that needs solving, they should move to the couch. Why should you both suffer?”
Illustration by Joel Holland