To go to bed when you want to?

[Skyehigh]

Me and DP are on completely different sleep schedules. I need to be up at 5.30 during the week so aim to be in bed for 9.30 and sleeping by 10. He stays up past midnight every night but doesn't need to be up until 8.30 for work. At the weekends I really try to stay up a bit later but it's a big struggle. I'll usually stay up til 10.30 unless I'm really tired on a Friday and on a Saturday it'll be 10.30 or as late as I can manage. I'd rather go to bed at 9.30 every night honestly. He doesn't understand that me trying to stay up til midnight feels just as hard to me as it would for me to wake him up at 5am.

Any weekend night where I say I'm not staying up late as want to be productive the next day it just turns into an argument. He's said he doesn't want to argue about it and that we shouldn't have to fight about this. He says it's pathetic that I go to bed that early and we never spend time together and will then be annoyed with me but I feel like I'm fighting my natural sleep cycle at the weekends then have to energy to do much. He will want me to have a coffee in the late afternoon so I can stay up later.

AIBU or is it him? What would you do in this situation?

Neither of you are in the wrong. Different schedules. But the result is you dont have any night life or time together in evenings.

9:30 every night is a bit extreme even on weekends.

I am up at 6am for work so not much later than you, and I'd been out at a concert last night and didnt get home until gone 23:30 or into bed until well gone midnight. Im a little tired but it's doable. Im not suggesting you do that every night but it's doable.

Edit to add my partner wanted to see this concert and he gets up later than me.

You're both way too precious about your sleep schedules and neither one of you are prepared to budge.

So quite how this is resolved I don't know.

Suggest he gets up at 05:30 on a weekend for a run as a couples activity and, when he refuses, accuse him of not adjusting his schedule to make time for the two of you 🙄 Tell him it’s pathetic that he gets up so late.

He sounds mean. You can go to bed whenever you want to and certainly should go if you’re feeling tired!

I wouldn't let him dictate when you can go to bed! He is being silly to argue about it.
Do you sleep in the same bed? Is he this rigid about anything else?

See, I could manage that getting up at five thirty.

I don't understand why grown adults behave like babies over sleep where they can't deviate from their routine at all.

They can't even stay up later in a weekend because it will mess up their schedules. Are they three months old.

I'm talking about both of them here, not just her or him.

It sounds like for the op life is just work and bed, and that can't be any fun.

Im with you. I get up at 5.30 and go to bed at 10 I should go earlier tbh. I go to bed at the same time on weekends too. I wouldn’t stay with someone who caused an argument over my bedtime every weekend.
FWIW I went on a night out on Saturday and stayed up til 3am and I am STILL absolutely exhausted days later. Not worth it

I do stay up a good bit later most weekends btw but I'm just sick of feeling exhausted the next day and wondering I'm if being unreasonable to not do it all the time! I understand if we are out at an event, I won't moan about that but just sitting watching TV with a glass of wine is different. Also we will have usually spent most of the day together on a Saturday too.

He's not dictating when she goes to bed ffs.

He's pointing out that they have no evenings ever.Not even on a weekend because of how early she goes to bed.

It must be very restrictive, never to be able to go out in the evening ever because your partners in bed at nine thirty, even on saturday.

Why does staying up late equate to fun? There’s plenty of hours in a weekend that aren’t late evening. I’m loads of fun and rarely stay up late

I'm with you OP. I don't have to be up so early but I wake up early anyway so I go to bed around 10 pm. DH after midnight but he starts wfh at 9 and sleeps until the alarm goes off.

Also I dont think I was clear but he's annoyed if I stay up til 10.30 on a Saturday - he wants me to stay up til midnight or later which is what's causing the arguments

Tell him you want him to go to bed at 10:30 with you every Saturday so you spend time together. And then wake up early as well. Bet he doesn't want that so he should not dictate to you when you go to bed. We are all different with different needs. My DH was grateful that I let him sleep in every week-end since I was up anyway.

Why stay up til midnight if it means you’re fighting sleep? I tend to go to bed earlier than my DH, we have dinner, walk the dogs, watch some TV. What activities does he want? What can he not do because you go to bed earlier?

This is a difficult one OP as you both seem to naturally have different body clocks. I also get up really early but I do stay up late at weekends. Do you go out together etc at weekends. He shouldn't be calling you names buy I do think you need find a way to spend time together in the evenings

You have my every sympathy.

There’s no easy solution to this as it’ll involve compromise by one of you or both

But I do feel for you. Really hard to adjust your body clock by three hours for a couple of days and then back again.

You're not bring unreasonable and he will just have to get over it.
Sleep routines are important and being knackered all day is awful.
I have a similar routine to yours, and we just get out early on a weekend and make the most of it, then wind down after tea for bed around 10.

I find this a real struggle. DH feels like I am being bossy and unreasonable when I want to turn off the lights in the bedroom at, say, 11pm, and get to sleep. Lots of huffy sighs. I can't see why he can't just fuck off somewhere else and be awake, then creep in when he wants to sleep. I'm not saying he needs to sleep then, just that he needs to let me, by removing noise and lights!!

And!!! I am in and out settling a child who sleeps badly. While I go in and out, for an hour, he will be stretched out comfortably on the bed, fully dressed, reading. Then as soon as I come in, all finished, and actually get into bed ready to sleep, he sort of notices it is bedtime and gets up "Oh, off to clean my teeth" Crash bang in the bathroom, lights going on and off, leisurely pottering around bedroom finding his pyjamas etc...

Why the sweet suffering hell do you not do that earlier !!!???! I swear I will kill again !!??!??!!!!11!1!1

I wake up at 5.45 or 6, and I don't insist on putting the light on, reading a book, opening the curtains, sorting out my washing, coughing, fetching a nice coffee to have in bed, getting in and out of bed multiple times and waking him up. I get up quietly and leave the room.

He says "Oh you're such a light sleeper, I can't go to bed without waking you, and in the morning I don't mind if you make a noise".

I am a lighter sleeper than him. But I still don't make a noise in the morning. I think sleep is really important and the household should run in a way that everyone can get enough sleep. I would of course be prepared to change my own schedule so we could both get, say, 7 hours of sleep, if I was currently getting 7 and he was only getting 5. But he isn't prepared to make the same change.

I am constantly amazed that he is so sulky and grumpy at me trying to enable myself to get the sleep my body needs. I am not super rigid but it feels like I am the only one with the eye on the clock and he treats me like his mum if I try and move the children or him along.

I'm not choosing to get up at 6 - it's when the day needs to start for us. And the non-sleeping child will be awake until 11pm, so I really do need to sleep between 11 and 6 ideally.

DH is fine having less sleep during the week and having a big lie in at the weekend but I also feel that's not really the rhythm of family life either- we aren't students.

Grrrrr! Just getting that off my chest really ;)

I wonder if this is a sex thing- is he hoping you stay up and go to bed at the same time then having a strop when you don’t for this reason?

Exactly this.

Use his logic for your argument

OP never said she strictly goes to bed at 9pm on a weekend so as not to deviate from her schedule - she says she stays up later but is fighting sleep by 10:30 and it becomes a struggle to be awake any longer. Someone going to bed because they feel tired, no matter what time that is at, is completely reasonable!

It isn’t work then bed - likely if she’s up so early, she finishes earlier than most too and has a good few hours of evening before 9:30pm!

It’s also absolutely not behaving like a baby to know how much sleep your body needs in order to function properly at work and allow yourself to get that amount….!

I can’t imagine having much of an opinion on when my husband goes to sleep.

This

I'm with you OP, I'm definitely more of a morning person than a night owl, always have been. Don't see the point sitting up just for the sake of it when you're tired.
If you're going to bed 10/10.30pm on a weekend I still think you have a decent chunk of evening together? Especially if you're together during the day too. I'm not really getting his issue. Agree with pp, suggest him getting up at 5.30am to go for a walk or something, see how he feels about that.

He's being a knob.

Suggest one Saturday he gets up at 5am with you for a walk or long day trip and the next you stay up late.

He won't be willing which demonstrates his My Way Only selfishness.

Are you tired the next day because you still naturally wake up early in spite of going to bed later?

And it would doubly piss me off that you need to be in a routine to get up early so it's expected that you'll be tired on that routine and can't really adjust it without throwing your whole week out of whack or getting tired by just losing the sleep, whereas he could set an alarm for 5:30 and have his evening time in the morning instead, but he won't because you need to change to accommodate him - for no reason other than it suits him.