Sleep Differentials Between Spouses

A recent New York Times article: The Lark-Owl Scale: When Couples’ Sleep Patterns Diverge, talks about each person’s innate sleep pattern, called a “sleep chronotype, an internal timing profile” and that trying to alter it to spend more time with your partner may cause difficulties in daily living. The article goes on to say that differing sleep patterns may be helpful to couples in that they may have time to go out with girlfriends or get alone time to exercise, or do other favored activities. What are the sleep differentials between spouses you know?

If you’ve been reading Couple’s Net, you know I advocate going to bed together at least three nights a week in order to have couple time for intimacy, talking, cuddling, and/or sex. Whether you stay in bed after your partner goes to sleep is a different issue.

The reports I have gotten back from those who are going to bed together more often are two-fold: they feel closer to their spouse, and they are getting more sleep, which is reducing stress, and they feel better overall.

Many people are on devices in the evening, which is akin to telling our brains that is daylight and time to be awake. A couple of suggestions are:

– Turn off devices by 8PM

– While more research needs to be done, there are indicators that wearing orange-tinted glasses (cutting out the blue spectrum of light which leads to decreased melatonin), will help one get sleepy, even if on devices.

– F.lux, Twilight, Bluelight or other apps can be used on your device rather than wearing orange glasses.

As I generally recommend, experiment and see what works for you and your beloved.

  Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Woodside, Portola Valley, Los Altos, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Belmont, San Mateo, San Carlos, San Jose, Santa Clara, Campbell, San Ramon, Danville, Pleasanton, Alamo, Livermore, Castro Valley, Sunol, Dublin , Walnut Creek, Pleasant Hill, Orinda, Hayward, Oakland, San Leandro, Milpitas, Alameda, Newark, Berkeley, Los Gatos, Cupertino, Milpitas