Looking for advice r/e parasomnia (sleepwalking/ talking)

[pudding21]

A new one to me although I did occasionally sleep walk and talk as a child.

Been seeing someone a while, he stays over twice a week maybe. Everything is going really well, we are very keen on each other. The first few times we stayed overnight, we woke in the night to have sex. Mainly instigated by him, a couple of times by me. I have now realised that his advances at night are not conscious because he doesn't remember the initiation and always says it was me that started it. The last few times he has stayed over he has said "don't wake me up" so when he has started to get amorous I have just said "XXXX, go back to sleep" gently and he rolls over and goes back into his sleep.

Nearly everytime he has stayed, up to an hour after trying to go to sleep he seems to wakes up with a jolt, gets out of bed, starts talking, sometimes he sounds a bit freaked out. Sometimes the jolt wakes him up, he gets back into bed and goes into the deepest sleep I have ever witnessed. Recently, I have been gently telling him to get back into bed and generally he does. At the weekend I got up, had a shower, managed to drop and smash a cup in the bedroom and he stayed fast asleep.

We had a talk about it last night, he was so bad as a child his mum had to lock the doors and remove any objects from his bedroom as he injured himself. As an adult he broke a tooth and had other injuries because of some sleep walking. Sometimes he remembers, sometimes he has no idea what happened.

It doesn't bother me that it sometimes disturbs my sleep, but I wonder how is the best way to deal with it. Should you try and wake them up? He said his mum used to take him back to bed, wake him up so he knew what had happened and then he'd go to sleep with no further incidents.

Thanks in advance!

This is actually quite a dangerous condition since the risks are so high - I had a friend at university who fell out of a window while asleep. Hers was always locked but she managed to get into a flat mates room and opened her window instead.

Has he been to a sleep clinic? I know she did and was given some medication which made a massive difference.

I'd be a little concerned about the sleep sex too, since this can lead to real problems if you're not able to wake him up, or people can panic when woken.

My DH has been through phases of really vivid awful nightmares - the first few times I woke him up which made him scream the house down. Now when I can tell he's having a nightmare I try to rouse him more gently by shuffling around, rolling over forcefully, coughing etc - it usually wakes him enough to get him out of it but not fully. I know in some cases this could make things worse though, so since his issues are much more severe I'd seek medical help and advice on this.

I don't think he has ever been to a clinic, we don't live in the UK and I imagine here its not something that is taken too seriously. He just accepts its part of him.

The sex thing since I realized he isn't aware, and I move him away he stops straight away. I asked him if he had ever injured anyone else and he said no, its always to himself, and when he is alone he has more incidents as I imagine whenever he has slept with someone else, they ease him out of it.

I think he probably has a degree of ADHD again, undiagnosed. Its like his brain is winding down, and during that first part of sleep something happens. I am going to do some more research.

Sorry to hear about your DP's nightmares, he said that he doesn't necessarily have bad dreams, they are just very vivid and imaginative! Thanks.