To think that where DP has to get up earlier than me, he should make an effort to get ready quietly without waking me up?

[WrongSideOfBed]

He isn't. His radio alarm goes off - and he leaves it on. He opens the curtains, and the bedroom door and turns the bright hall light on. His electric toothbrush goes on (open-plan bedroom and bathroom).

This morning, I am mightily pissed off, because all this has woken me up an hour earlier than I would have otherwise. When his kids stay with us (a few nights a week), our sleep is disturbed because they're all early risers (4am-6am), and the toddler wakes and cries throughout the night. So especially when our respective kids aren't here, I'd hope he'd potter about quietly and let me rest.

I grumped about this this morning, and he said simply that without the radio alarm, he won't wake up in time for work (but why does it have to stay on?!), and he can't see without lights on. No apology. No sense of giving a rat's arse about me getting enough rest. And he said, "You go to bed later than me and disturb my sleep getting into bed, but I'm not grumpy." I apologised, but added that I at least try to get ready quietly in the other bathroom, and I don't turn any lights on.

Oh, writing this makes it seem petty, and maybe it is. And I'm premenstrual this week, so maybe I'm overreacting. I'm just bloody grumpy, and don't feel particularly cared about or respected.

AIBU?

I agree it isnt hard to be quiet but I did find it miserable. Getting up in the dark, keeping quiet so as not to disturb anyone. Coming home in the dark, having to be quiet so as not to disturb the children. I felt like a bloody pit pony.

What sort of hours were you working that you left in the dark and came home in the dark all year round?!!

YANBU.
DP's alarm goes off at 6am, and he always lets it 'sleep' then go off again three times before getting up.
However, all is forgiven as the last thing he does as he leaves is bring me a cup of tea and wishes me a good day.

Why don't you go to bed at the same time as him? Then you won't disturb him in the evening, and you'll be ready to get up when he does so he won't disturb you in the morning either. Everybody wins.

Or is that too easy?

Dh goes to bed at 1am - no-one would win with that arrangement. I need more sleep, he needs less. I get up earlier for work, he gets up later. We just consider each other - which is the easy bit.

I was the one who had to get up and go to work before the rest of the house woke up.

I didn't expect anyone to wake up with me or breakfast with me (I don't eat breakfast), and out of consideration for everyone else I laid out my stuff before bed and went to the living room and go ready.

So I had to get up earlier and earn a crust. That's fucking life, not an excuse to take your anger at the world out on your family.

Totally YANBU!

My DH puts his clothes downstairs and dresses there. The only thing that wakes me sometimes are after shave fumes wafting up.

DS also knows not to wake the sleeping beast.

Did I mention that I'm not a morning person

Sungirltan:
Your husband sleeps on the sofa when he goes back to work (once every 6 weeks)...while he's home you lie in bed until 9-10 every day while he looks after your daughter, and then makes you breakfast....EVERYDAY

He also sleeps on the sofa most nights so as to give you a good nights sleep.

Please mention these things as well....it might upset him else.

gnomedplume stop being such a martyr and so bloody selfish, you sound like a nightmare. If my dh made me get up "because wanting to stay in bed is not a good enough excuse" I'd be fuming.

As another poster has said, if you had to get up to earn your crust then that's just life I'm afraid, not an excuse for martyr "woe is me" like behaviour. For the first 6 years of my career i did earlies, lates and nights, long days etc.etc. got up at 5am, finished work after 10pm, worked 14 hour days, did 1 week on/week off of nights....it was what I and most other nurses do and just get on with, not expect the rest of the rets of the household to be awake at ungodly hours out of sympathy .

I'm a bit at those of you saying that because you're the one to get up early and go out to work, you shouldn't have to creep around and not wake people up. Even more at people saying anything after 6 am is fair game!

I guess I'm also a sleepaholic. I treasure every moment of sleep and don't want to be awake unless I need to be.

YANBU. My DH always gets up earlier, he grabs his clothes and leaves, that's it. I return the favour when I work late, I have everything outside the bedroom so I just need to creep in and go to sleep. It's just being considerate.

Agree minx, how on earth is wanting to stay in bed 'not a good enough excuse'? Jaysus.

Mine gets up at half past four on the days he goes to work. Obviously I wake up when the alarm goes off but he never snoozes it more than once. He has his work clothes in the spare room wardrobe and before he goes to bed, he gets out clean pants and socks so he can get dressed for work in the other room so as to avoid turning the bedroom light on when I am still half asleep. Obviously I can hear the shower and the toothbrush etc but that is not avoidable and is the same if I am working on a day he wants a lie in and I need to use the hairdryer.
It isn't hard to be a little bit considerate of each other.

"Why dont partners get up? I can understand why not if they have only just got to bed or are getting up in the night but otherwise? I hate having to get up early day in day out anyway. It is so much worse when you have to do it alone."

Why on earth should they? Anyway, if I have to get up early (and for years I was the one up first for work) I am pretty grumpy and nonverbal, and would rather be alone.

My DH is always pretty considerate when he gets up in the morning. When we were in the UK he had to get up at stupid o'clock (from my POV) most mornings, and would creep out in the dark, dress in the other room, bathroom is at the other end of the house so no disturbance there. He learnt VERY quickly that waking the sleeping beast was a VERY bad idea indeed! I am So Not A Morning Person.

Gnome - if I got up with DH at 6am - his whole day would be ruined. As would mine. Might work if both partners are larks, but if one's an owl, just Don't.

Blimey. What a lot of posts!

Thank you all for responding. Really grateful to be (mostly!) vindicated.

Sorry not to have replied sooner - I got in late from work yesterday, and then I had a bit of a feisty rant at talked this through with DP in the evening.

Turns out he thought I'd sleep through anything. I don't.

We worked out that the new radio alarm and darker mornings (hence light going on) weren't helping. We talked about expectations. Last night, he put clothes out for today, and apart from asking me (quietly) where something was, this morning was better.

Neither of us gets up horrendously early, but he's a lark and I'm a night owl - we each always have been. We both work, and he needs to be at work an hour and a half before me. We have hatched a plan for "school nights" for me to enable him to go to bed earlier than me and sleep undisturbed, and for him to leave me well alone in the morning.

I'm with the many posters who said something along the lines of why on earth should a person who doesn't have to be up as early as someone else in the household, "pay" for this privilege by having disturbed sleep at the tail end of the night? It doesn't matter why the wake-up times are different, or how much different; everyone's need for decent sleep should be respected.

And if I can get an extra hour's sleep, there's no way I'm getting up with DP for breakfast! I'm no lark. We can do all that nice together stuff on weekends. In the week, it's about being rested for work.

Thank you all again.

This is such a familiar issue for me and took a while to resolve, early in our relationship but essentially, someone who doesn't recognise that other people need sleep to function and that not everyone is exactly the same, is unperceptive and self-centred.

Is your husband really trying to make a point, that he believes you ought to be up at the same time as him? Does he usually just impose his wishes? Does he have difficulty seeing things from others' points of view and being considerate to others generally?

We are natural opposites sleep-wise, he a lark, me an owl, he wakes instantly and completely, I take a while, he's fine on 6-7 hours, I need 7 and welcome 8. (I'm pregnant with our first, I know this will sound like luxury to many here). We both worked FT til recently, me 9-5ish, he often out by 7.00 or earlier.

For some reason I find the last hour of sleep really significant, so being woken at 6.00 when I wouldn't otherwise wake til 7.00 fills my head with cotton wool for the day, in a way that going to bed an hour late does not. Also, if woken early on Mon or Tues, I'll often wake at that time all week.

Early on, I found being woken early really disruptive and detrimental to my ability to work and function. I even suggested sleeping the spare room, though didn't. It's got better, partly through me gradually getting used to it, so not waking completely when he gets up but crucially, because he recognises that I need sleep, so sets his phone alarm and switches straight off (but usually wakes naturally), keeps clothes outside the bedroom and creeps out quietly.

Without recognition of the other's need for sleep, consideration generally and an attitude of trying to make things as good as possible for each other, I don't think I could contemplate care of a baby, or would have considered getting pregnant with him!

Just saw your post. That chimes with my partner's view that if you are in bed, with your eyes shut, you are asleep. Just because he wakes fully alert and can't stay in bed for a second. It took a long time to convince him that I could be partially awake and might welcome a cup of tea!

He is partly being unreasonable. I agree he should turn off the alarm once he gets up. We get round that by having the alarm on my side he's allowed one snooze interval then when it goes off again the alarm goes off and he gets up.
I think it's unreasonable of you to expect him to get ready for work without having the lights on and using his toothbrush. Many of your problems seem caused by having an ensuite. My husband gets ready and dressed in the bathroom which is along the landing. You could ask him to do that.
We go to bed at the same time though, and on weekends I'm usually the one one up earliest. and I wonder why you don't just go to bed and get up with your husband, that way you may both sleep better and avoid all this fuss.

We are basically both up around 5.20am but sometimes my husband gets up earlier to do some work. He is nice and quiet though. If I need to get up earlier than him then alarm goes off, I get out of bed, grab gym clothes (usually I am going to an early gym class) and then get changed in bathroom. I don't turn lights on etc but I am not dead quiet.

I sort of agree that if he is getting up after 6am and he is going to work and you are not, then you can't really argue that he is making some noise. It sounds like though, he is not making any effort to be quiet.

sungirltan

did you your husband really see fit to hunt out your pretty inocuous post on MN, and make a snidey comment about it here ?

I am very sorry

anyphantonfucker - theres os much more! he started his own thread which has been pulled so i cant read it :-(

Sungirltan: Did you not get a chance to read any of it? If you want to read it perhaps MNHQ might email it to you if you explain who you are?

@ suntangirl and Dave59r

I have to get up at 05:45, DH has to get up at 08:15, when my alarm goes off I wake him up and he goes and makes me a cup of tea before going back to sleep.
Just one of the many reasons why I love him.