Please can someone tell me how bad this sounds? Am I making a big deal of nothing?

[JimCharke]

I have posted about my marriage under another name and NC for this as I just want to ask about this one thing, separately.

DH and I have various issues but a big one is sleep. Around 2022, he started snoring, big time. It would wake me up and then I couldn't get back to sleep, meaning I had to go to work often on 3h sleep.

I talked to him about this many times but he brushed it off. He didn't seem to think it was an issue.

Meantime, I got more and more desperate. I started to feel ill. One day at work, I realised I couldn't feel one side of my face. In fact, it turned out to be a tension headache but at the time, I thought it might be a stroke.

That evening I broke down in tears and said I couldn't live with so little sleep. He finally seemed to get it, and we borrowed an old camping mattress and I started sleeping on the living room floor. At first, it was a relief just not to have the snoring.

But soon, I felt resentful. The living room floor was not comfortable. I began to get pains in my hips from sleeping on the thin camp mattress. I started to say to DH I wanted to look at different solutions. He wouldn't engage.

Not only that, but he made me feel really shitty about it by huffing and eye rolling if I suggested I didn't like the camping mattress arrangement. He would do things that wound me up, probably out of proportion, like when I had set my bed up for the evening, sitting in his chair and propping his feet up on my pillow.

This went on for 15 months before I massively lost it with him and told him he HAD to swap sometimes so I could sleep in a normal bed or I'd leave.

Now, we are in a different house. I have my own room (which DH didn't like) with a normal bed. But I can't get this period of our relationship out of my head. I feel it has shown me that DH deep down does not care about my needs and I cannot rely on him.

How would you feel? Am I over-dramatic? I'm feeling really raw right so if you think I'm wrong, please be nice.

Why on Earth didn’t he go to the doctor and ask for help with his snoring?

Thanks Spiral. He went and they told him he could medication but he didn't want to.

He is a selfish man and in addition one who buries his head in the sand.

Why are you with him now given his horrible treatment of you?.

Have my first ever ltb. He gave you no consideration at all. In a healthy relationship, he should want to help you feel good and happy, and should have thought to swap with you every other night from the outset.

I wouldn't be able to get that out of my head either. It shows a huge disregard and lack of care for you. There were many options that could have been explored including him accepting medical help, investing in a high quality sofabed or murphy bed or rotating sleeping arrangements. The issue is his refusal to engage, lack of sympathy and treating you and your issues as secondary to him and his comfort and convenience.

What stands out to me is how long you put up with this. You went for months with no sleep and over a year on a mattress on the floor. I wonder if you have fallen into a pattern in your marriage where you also put yourself second and prioritise him and he has become used to that. It's great you are now questioning that and putting yourself first by insisting on your own room. Now its up to you what to do about it.

You allude to other issues without knowing everything it's hard to give advice. You don't need to justify leaving if that's what you want to do, you can leave for any reason. If you do want to stay then I agree it's fair you can't move past that time without some resolution. Saying that really hurt me, I feel we aren't communicating and you don't show care. I want to do couples counselling to help me move forward, resolve that and become stronger together.

Honestly its shocking. You should leave. The next health crisis will be even worse. Now you know he is utterly selfish and wuite hostile to you.

I'm not surprised you can't let this nasty and disrespectful behaviour go, since he hasn't acknowledged or apologised for it.
Well done for getting your own room now. If the past continues to fester you might ask him to go to couples counselling with you and have some help with exploring what the hell is going on, that he could be so unpleasant to you about something that really mattered.

I couldn't forget this either, the bottom line for me is that spouses care for, and about, each other. I think that almost everything else can be solved, with work and will obviously, if you have this foundation to build on.

He has shown you that doesn't care about your physical or mental welfare, I don't think this will change.

I don't know if its because he is unable to care about others generally for some reason, or if its just you he has no regard for.

If it was me I wouldn't waste time trying to solve other issues if my husband just doesn't care about me.

If he would not go to the gp he is most unlikely to go into joint counselling. He saw how his wife was at that time and he did not care.

I agree with PP that there must be other issues in your relationship. Where you are expected to come second to him, his wants and needs are prioritised over yours.

I would really think deeply about what this awful episode tells you about his attitude and care towards you.

You needed him to help and he didn't. In fact, he resented it and still does resent you putting your health first with separate beds.

If you ever need care when you are ill, how does he treat you? If you become incapacitated in the future or seriously ill as you age, what treatment do you think you can expect from him?

You could potentially end up becoming his carer given his overall reluctance to address his health issues.

The putting his feet on your pillow has given me rage on your behalf. That is so disrespectful

Echoing others, OP.

His wants and needs are more important than yours.

Once you've seen it, you can't unsee it.

I hear you OP. After months of increasingly disrupted sleep I booked an appointment for dh and gave him an ultimatum.

It's absolutely unforgivable that he was taking the piss so badly.

Deliberately disrespectful. Putting his feet on your pillow, that's gross. Instead of being reasonable and taking the medication that was recommended, he did nothing. No, you can't rely on him.

For all he knows, he could have sleep apnea. Not taking care of that can lead to major health issues.

No, you're not being overly dramatic. He sounds awful. It's a pity that you didn't leave him when you sold your previous house.

My H used to wake me all through the night, every night, because he was entitled to have the light on his own house, entitled to move his slippers, entitled to wake me because I woke him one night 6 months ago and so on and so forth. When we had separate rooms he used to come in 2am every night to put his slippers and dressing gown on a chair then walk without them into his own bedroom.

Reader, I divorced him. But after having 2 kids who didn't sleep through and then this, I could never re-establish a sleep pattern and so have been sleep deprived for 20+ years. As @LadyLemoncake says just a few posts upthread, your H and mine showed us in various ways that our needs are not important compared to their wants. I'm team LTB.

Oh OP, this sounds awful. Not over reacting at all. I think your gut reaction to this is understandably still trying to tell you something long after. Don't disregard that little voice. As a PP said, what happens if you need him? If he has so little regard for your sleep and general well-being now, can you honestly be sure that he'd suddenly change if you needed him to care for you through a big health crisis?

He does sound selfish. Sleep deprivation is awful and can impact your mental health. And sleep apnoea if he has it can be really detrimental in all areas of health as well as impact on your relationship.
has he recorded his snoring?

He maybe doesn’t realise how bad it is, cpap machines are life changing but it sounds like you have a bigger problem on your hands in terms of how he’s treated you and made you feel.

Same. This is the bit that stood out for me. Blithely resting his feet on the pillow of your makeshift bed whilst knowing he was going off to sleep in comfort in a proper bed. Utter cunt. I can’t believe you haven’t smashed his face in.

Hi, thanks so much to everyone who answered. @Catpiece and @WhereBoomBandsarePlaying yeah it felt like really grinding my face into it. He would go off to sleep in the kingsize "marital" bed and use our newly refurbed family bathroom whilst I was downstairs. He couldn't get why it made me so mad. He would say, but it's just natural to put your feet up when you sit down!

@Jellyheadbang and others - yeah he does have sleep apnoea, at least that is what the GP reckoned.

It took months for him to go, then when he did, the dr said he could use a steroid spray for a bit to see if that relieved the problem and if not, a cpap machine/ mask.

The thing is, he said he didn't want to be on meds for the rest of his life or sleep with a mask on. Which I actually respect. I wouldn't want to be on medication either. But then, that was like the end of the discussion - not "okay I'm not keen on meds so what else can we do..."

My DH is a snorer, but also works shifts. Because of both of these we have separate bedrooms when we don't have guests. When we have guests or are on holiday, I just wear silicone ear plugs and sleep fine. People can be very sensitive about snoring, but also don't realise how loud or disruptive the noise is. He is probably being defensive about it because he sees your grievance at the snoring as a personal attack.

Wanker

I really appreciate everyone who answered. @CanOfMangoTango yes that is my fear. I am in my 40s and quite fit, eat well, one of those annoying people who "never gets ill". But I'm mindful that won't last. My grandma died of breast cancer at 49. What if I get ill or have an accident? What if I need him to do something for me, like advocate with health professionals or put himself out to care for me? Would he?