Monday, March 8, 2010

The Other Side of the Bed

It is very strange for me to get used to sleeping with someone in bed together more than the occasional sleepover that I once feared and longed for simultaneously. The adjustment to being in an actual relationship is a whole other story and we're not here to talk about that for now.

Now I have someone in my bed 1-3 nights a week depending on the week and, while it's been loads of fun, it's been an interesting adjustment. Here are some of the things one deals with when sleeping with a partner that you don't have to think about when you sleep alone:

* Space. I'm a diagonal sleeper. I have a Queen sized bed and when I first turn out the light, my head goes to the left and my feet to the right with my ass right dab in the middle. Now I have to sleep straight and stay relatively to my side so I'm not pushing him off the bed (while I'm sure that would be funny, loud thumps in the middle of the night startle me).

* Covers. Alone I have them all. With a partner, they always seem to slide to his side. I don't mind pulling them back to my side when I get cold or kicking them back over to him to roll around in when I get hot, but I find myself having to let go of what once was the near perfection of my bed. I used to wake up and gently pull the covers up and TA-DA the bed was made. Now it's a full on exercise b/c the sheet is pulled out from the bottom, I have no idea where one of the down comforters went and my abundance of pillows are every which way.

* Sweat. Now, night sweats are pretty rare for both my boyfriend and me, but it happens. When I'm alone, I'm like "ugh" but I just roll ever for dryer sheets and pillows and don't think anything of it. With a partner, you feel bad b/c they have to lay in their own wet stuff and while you want to give them some of your dry stuff, you don't want their sweaty selves all over you, either. Work out sweat is sexy. But for some reason, sleep sweat is not. Weird, right?

* Snoring. Alone I snore away and don't hear it. With a boyfriend, I wear earplugs but always worry I'm going to miss something he may say to me in the middle of the night.

* Every breath you take. We both wake up whenever the other person rolls over (prompting the other to, in turn, adjust their position). I get up to pee approximately 500 times when my boyfriend is over instead of my normal 100 times when I am alone and it always wakes him up. And the sweetheart always holds the covers back and snuggles with me when I come back (awww). Sometimes he doesn't fall asleep right away and for some reason, I don't tend to fall asleep fully until he does or well after. Other times, the man will get up at dawn and go for an hour walk and then come back to bed for more snuggles and napping, during which I usually sleep like a dead person.


The thing is... I have been alone and slept alone (and preferred to) for a long time. And even though it's an adjustment to sleep in the same bed with someone on a regular basis and I generally get a lot less sleep thus far than I normally would... I love every minute of it. This guy rocks my world in the best possible way and I love falling asleep next to him and having his face be the first I see in the morning. It is SO worth it.

3 comments:

  1. It's reassuring to hear someone else has the same "problems" if you want to call them that...maybe more like, adjustments. I have been married now for over a year and a half and although we still are as head-over-heels in love (maybe more) as before the actual sleeping part is still kind of an issue. 1) our schedules are moderately conflicting-I get up way earlier or work nights, he comes home late, goes to bed later.. 2)the covers, same as you mentioned 3)snoring snoring snoring!! One of us has ended up on the couch for the first 8 months of our marriage. I decided to put a stop to this by wearing earplugs but it doesn't always help-he snores through the earplugs lol and I am a restless and VERY light sleeper AND lastly 4)a small white 10 year-old jack russell terrier that has been with me longer than he and refuses to sleep anywhere else. We are constantly moving her and sometimes locking her out of the room. It's strange how the romantic idea of sharing a bed can be such the opposite.

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  2. so true! Other fun things happen in bed but sometimes the sleeping part of it is like "oh. really?" LOL

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  3. I have the same sleeping issues as you, except Ryan is the diagonal sleeper. It is all worth it though. :-)

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