To think needing 9 hours solid sleep to function is ridiculous

[NightFeeds]

That’s it really. Life feels like it is ruled by DH needing 9 hours sleep a night to function. No time for downtime after DC bedtime as it’s then his bedtime. Any disturbances and he’s ruined for days. I can’t compute but realise I’m probably being horrible and this is just a normal need I need to be more respectful of. I’d like to know what is considered normal by others

If he was a single parent with a baby/toddler he wouldn’t be able to insist on that much sleep. And he’d adjust.

I think there’s a difference between people who like to sleep and people who obsess over it. My DH is one of the former and a few nights a week he takes himself off to bed at 9.30 or 10 while I usually stay up til 11.30. And he doesn’t mind a nana nap on a weekend afternoon. But other nights he stays up with me and it doesn’t impact his social life at all. When the kids were little he shared the wakeups. I have friends who leave functions at 8.30 or decline going out at all because they are so focused on their sleep. They expect other people to go out for dinner at 6pm or meet up during the day instead of the evening. Their entire life revolves around it. It’s self centred and pretty boring tbh.

I need at least that but don't get it and I feel really tired and rubbish.

Mental note to any young women reading this: don't marry and have children with partners who 'have' to have a long night's sleep every night because otherwise they can't function. You'll be doing all the night wake-up calls and you'll never have the pleasure of a midnight walk on the beach, looking at the stars, or clubbing till dawn because hubby will be looking at his watch and getting anxious as 9pm approaches.

I can understand feeling the need to get 9 hours three or four times a week, say, but fit and healthy human beings should surely be able to function well enough on fewer hours when required?

You don't tell us what he does for a living. Is it a heavy manual job or a challenging office job? Does he have other responsibilities in the family? Nine hours is what he needs to recover and maintain his mental health.

Everyone is different, for some 9 hours is the norm, others may only need 4 or 5, it’s certainly not unreasonable

Yes this is exactly it. Of course people need different amounts of sleep and people also prefer different amounts of sleep. Without knowing whether nine hours is a genuine need or just a preference it's hard to know whether he's being reasonable or rigid.

Mental note to any young women reading this: don't marry and have children with partners who 'have' to have a long night's sleep every night because otherwise they can't function

Exactly @Pluvia and indeed applies to men as well who get with women that insist they can’t function on less (which doesn’t happen as much tbh) if you’re not someone who wants to carry the load disproportionally think twice because adult or family life will often mean 9 hours sleep isn’t possible.

We all would love to sleep that much but we can't. He is being ridiculous.

However, what’s all this bollocks about turning the tv off when he’s ready for bed? Are you not permitted to carry on watching, stay up without him?

My question too.

It's a luxury when you have kids and he can only do it because he leaves you to pick up the slack.
My DH does this. I hate it. Gives us hardly any time together in the evening, especially now my older DD guess to bed around 8.30/9pm.
I think he's doing it to avoid me 🤷🏽‍♀️

And what about if you love them deeply, want children with them, and they are good people?! How can you judge someone on the amount of sleep they need. They are not machines, they are human beings, We are told to be tolerant in the modern world, so tolerance begins at home with your partner.

9 hrs is my happy spot as well. However, I always thought women need more sleep than men, generally.

I need nine hours.

I need less. DH needs more. I just stay up later.

We are all different and 9 hours is quite common. If he feels refreshed afterwards then there is no problem. I worked in a sleep clinic and we saw “normal” from 6 hours to 10 x

We live in a dysfunctional world that is all about money, which means production and profit take priority which means a legacy of rubbish advice in relation to leisure and sleep.

YABU because there is no "normal" when it comes to something as personal as sleep patterns, whatever you might have read in newspapers and magazines owned by the kind of people that benefit most from the amount of time others spend with their noses to the grindstone.

Learn to better accommodate the needs of others or become increasingly intolerant and irrational.

I think 9pm bedtime is bizarre my 14 year old doesn’t go to bed till 10.30pm
my husband loves his sleep but hes in bed for 11 sleeps till 6am as wants to spend time with us.
anything longer than 4 hours to me is golden as that’s my average

Yes - avoid men like this.

My stepdad was like thjs and it dominated our lives. If someone woke him up going to the toilet in the night his mood was so bad the next day it was like there was a black cloud hanging over the house. My Mum nearly left him over it at one point.

He became addicted to sleeping pills and tried to make me take Night Nurse whenever I was ill which I really didn't like. I can't believe I'm even saying this but as a teen I ended up having a "toilet bucket" in my room because it was preferable to his moods. I actually blocked thjs out of my memory for most of my life because j was so humiliated by it.

I know it's not nice being woken up but he shouldn't have moved in with someone with kids when he knew he had this issue.

But DH doesn’t turn the TV off when he goes to bed. That’s quite controlling. I just stay up and watch something/have a bath/read a book

We're all different. So please don't suggest I'm not normal and need help because I like to sleep from 10pm to 7am

@Completelyjo

”teaching your body ti be very dependant on sleep”? That’s just fucking nuts, it’s literally like saying you’re teaching your body to need food and water. Sleep is a basic biological need and 9 hours is within the boundary of normal

The comparison with food and water is a completely false equivalence: I'm not saying anyone can function on no sleep. But claiming that its essential to hit an exact 9 hours every night is an indulgence when it comes at the expense of family's wellbeing and your marriage.

No one needs 9 hours a night. They may want it and it may be optimal for their body. And by all means they should do it when they can. But if they are throwing a grenade into their family life by insisting on the need to do this they need to grow up and get things in perspective.

I came here to say this. I don't cope well either, but I have no choice.

A grown healthy man needing a regular daytime nap would put me off immensely! Like being married to a pensioner.

You both need to compromise a bit. My DH and I have different natural sleeping patterns, different schedules and I do night wake ups so we both meet in the middle so both of us get a reasonable amount. I wear a mask to block out the light if he turns it on to read, he comes to bed a bit earlier etc. If one of you is being all-out selfish and the other one is suffering that’s crap.

I agree, I would find this a real turn off.