Anyone live with an insomniac - coping strategies needed

[BG2015]

I've been with my DP for just over a year and a half. He moved in around Christmas time.

Great guy, loving, caring, good cooks,helps around the house, funny and generous and my 2 teenage sons get on with him great.

He has chronic insomnia. I totally sympathise as I've had periods in my life where I couldn't sleep. But it makes life hard as a couple sometimes.

He has always slept quite poorly and his lack of sleep is the only thing we argue about. He's a very light sleeper and wakes up at the slightest sound. He tends to fall asleep really quickly but if he wakes up it can take him 1- 2 hours to get back to sleep. To make matters worse we live in a 3 storey house and my DS13 bedroom is directly above ours. We can hear him moving around, his phone buzzing and when he goes to the toilet. None of this is terrible noise but in the middle of the night it becomes magnified.

He isn't rational at this time when he wakes up and he gets very annoyed, can't get back asleep which becomes a viscous circle. I am a light sleeper too, so hear him wake up then we end up having a heated conversation at 3 am! He then goes on his phone which doesn't help.

He uses ear plugs, doesn't drink coffee after 6pm, we bought a new bed. He exercises loads (he works in the fitness industry) but his sleep situation makes him miserable and bad tempered.

It's a real issue in our relationship when he has a really bad night.

Anyone have any ideas?

I've just seen the 5 HTP on Amazon

There's also a Melatonin on there 5mg at £24

Melatonin is available for adults on NHS prescription in the UK. I have a prescription for it.

It's also available online shipped from the US where it's sold in health food stores off prescription.

£24 is expensive. You should be able to find it for around £10.

A cynic might say that his sleep problem benefits him because it allows him to control the whole household.
I'm not saying it is necessarily a deliberate and planned strategy.
Yes it has a cost, it makes him miserable but it may also have a payoff for him so that on balance it benefits him and it is not really in his interests to solve it

Conversely maybe his subconscious is telling him that he was more contented living alone?

I think you should try separate bedrooms, my DH and I have very different sleep patterns and we have separate bedrooms so at the least we don't disturb each other or have to put up with the other's bad mood.

Sleeping is such a personal thing, I can't bear having to share a room & perhaps your DP just finds sharing a bed incredibly difficult - did he live alone for a long time before you met?

there was one time where i insisted I had been awake and they insisted I was asleep. I was able to recall them talking about something specific outside the room I was in

it can't be very good quality sleep though, can it. I can recall long stories on the radio. Last night it was how coffee reduces cancer but tea doesn't, and the effect is nothing to do with caffeine. One guy basically said that everyone should drink as much coffee as possible (decaf for evenings). I probably changed the radio station about 35x (not exagerating) because I didn't like this or that story. There was an exciting bit of drama on R4X, but then it got dull.

If I can remember that much detail, my status should not be called "asleep".

I'd love to be monitored properly, except from what I see of the monitors you can only lie in a very restrictive sleep position. I toss & turn all the time when I can't sleep.

No he doesn't drink much at all unlike me, he may have a can of lager on a Friday night and that's about it. Often he only drinks that because I have a glass of wine.

google Kirkland sleep aid .
About £7 for 100 tablets.
Astonishingly effective . You only need half a tablet

He doesn't control the household. My boys have friends over to stay and have to swap rooms to enable this. My DS13 and his friend slept in the spare room the other night, surrounded by boxes and suitcases, they found it quite amusing.

He hates not sleeping, even when he was living on his own he would wake up. It's the falling back asleep he struggles with, his mind races and he starts thinking or he needs the toilet.

I think sorting the spare room out may be an option, especially for when he gets up at 5am.

This thread has pointed out though, how many people struggle with sleep.

he may have a can of lager on a Friday night and that's about it

Seriously, get him to try total abstinence for a period of at least six weeks. It's not the amount, it's just any alcohol.

At the same time have a total ban on caffeine in any form.

I agree on cutting out completely caffeine and alcohol for several weeks. I did that last summer after an operation and I have never slept better.

If he used to fall asleep with the TV on low, can he put something on his ipad and watch it with earphones in? I do that if I awake feeling anxious. David Attenborough shows on Netflix are very soothing :)