HELP! How do you sleep when DH snores?

[buttermymuffins]

My DH snores. Nothing new there. I wear earplugs but I still hear it through my Facial bones. It’s awful & has got worse. I get woken up between 5-10 times a night. I never get more than an hour’s sleep straight. I am broken (both my DM & DSF have died in the last 6 months so I am mentally & physically exhausted). We don’t have a spare room so I want to ask what do you do when you have a snoring partner, have no spare room & don’t want to spend your nights on the sofa which would basically turn us into house mates! And what about holidays? Thank you!

Same here

We have separate bedrooms. It's bliss!

Different bedroom.

Send the selfish bugger to the couch until he becomes uncomfortable enough to seek a solution to his problem.

Get a lock for your bedroom door.

Do not let him sleep in the bedroom until he has sorted out his snoring. It is going to destroy your health and interfere with your mental stability if it is not cured.

What I'm saying is that there are worse things than becoming housemates.

DH got better after he lost weight, the other thing to do is to shove him over so he’s sleeping on his side.

Sleep study for him.
Get him to lose weight.
No alcohol for him.
Decongestant spray for his nose.

Sleep separately until he’s done something about his snoring. Better to be housemates instead of physically exhausted and hating him.

Thanks everyone. It’s definitely a ‘me’ problem - DH has some throat spray which he occasionally uses but as it doesn’t directly affect him he’s not overly bothered - he just gets a bit wound up when he’s had a disturbed night due to me rolling him over/nudging him! I need to make it more his problem. Wine (same -just one glass) makes a huge negative difference & as does milk at bed time - we’re a family of milk drinkers! I am a very light sleeper sadly. I have tried many earplugs & work in an industrial environment so get industrial strength earplugs at work which are ok to a point but once I am awake & tune into it I want to kill him need to give him a ‘gentle nudge’ or roll him onto his side, when he will continue to snore but not the guttural throat snoring that drives me NUTS that emanates when he’s on his back! 😠I have ordered some Loop earplugs but not confident that they will be any better than the industrial strength ones I already have. I might get a snoozeband and & try that - with earplugs is a good idea. I have also ordered one of those pull down beds that we will put in our box room/study which one of us can use if nothing above improves it but this isn’t a permanent solution as DS2 has to go through this room to get to his attic bedroom & his GF often stay (I’ll need to earplugs for that!). I have tried Nytol & nighttime painkillers but really don’t want to rely on those. It does make me sad as it makes any kind of spontaneous intimacy pretty unlikely! Are those mouth strips any good for the snorer?

You sound very lovely OP, but arent you slightly furious that you've gone to all this effort already and he hasnt really bothered? Im actually a bit upset for you that he is disturbing your sleep and doesnt care enough to try and fix it himself, while watching you try all these solutions. If someone you loved... or even vaguely liked, told you that you were disturbing their sleep, surely most decent people would be horrified and try to fix it themselves, and im getting the impression he doesnt give a shit - how do you actually feel about that? Wouldnt make me feel very loved. Sorry if im coming across a bit blunt but I feel like this is a relationship basic here.

Only thing that helped was DH losing weight. (MJ) can’t tell you how my life has improved with more sleep! I realised that I hadn’t slept properly in about 5 years and always woke angry. For him, losing weight was the key and during the worst of it, reading my kindle until I was so tired I’d fall asleep despite the snores.

@buttermymuffins It’s not a “you” problem: it’s a “him” problem. He’s being an inconsiderate arse. He should be avoiding all alcohol and dairy from the mid afternoon onwards. None at all. He can have soy or coconut or almond alternatives to dairy if he must have it at night and see if it affects his snoring or not. Throat spray should be every single night. It wasn’t a gentle nudge from me to my DH when his snoring woke me. It was a good hard shove in the ribs or kick to the legs. Waking me up 4-5 times a night. I was furious at him.

Despite that he didn’t truly get it until I recorded his snoring. Record it on your phone, especially the awful throat snoring, and play it back to him at a random time. He’ll likely ask what the awful noise is. Tell him and play it again. If that doesn’t shock him then wait until bedtime and he’s starting to drop off to sleep and play it again. It’ll wake him up. My DH was appalled by his snoring. My DH and I both have sleep apnoea and snore. We both had sleep studies done and both use CPAPs. So much better. CPAPs are almost silent. Quieter than a pedestal or desk fan. Certainly quieter than a snoring swamp pig.

Make his snoring his problem. He can piss off to the fold down bed near DS and the GF. He’ll sleep through any noise or “activity” from them. You claim the bedroom. He can come back once he’s sought medical help.

He sleeps in the spare room a lot of the time. I’ve suggested him losing weight but it’s safe to say he hasn’t done that and has probably gained. If we are in bed and he’s snoring on his back then l elbow him onto his side, he complains bitterly but doesn’t seem to want to do anything about the snoring so here we are

He’s done nothing. I already know that because he’s a man and his wife’s discomfort is not important to him.

I snore and I am not overweight and don't sleep on my back. The throat spray didn't work and I got one of those anti-snoring mouth guards but I couldn't use it because it was incredibly painful. So I concluded that it's probably the shape of my jaw causing the snoring in my case. Anyway, a couple of things that have worked for us (i.e. my DP):

• I tend to do it the most when I'm not deeply asleep, so I let her go to bed first and then go up when she's asleep as it's more likely to stop her going to sleep than wake her up if she is already asleep.
• We got a superking bed and having loads of extra space makes us both sleep better, which means I don't snore as much.

It is NOT a you problem. 😡
If he’s not going to do anything about then you sleep somewhere else. Or he does.

I got a snooze band. Some nights I can't hear my audiobook as DH's snoring is louder.

DH and I sleep in separate rooms. We haven't found a solution yet. He has been to the GP several times - was told stop drinking and lose weight... 2 stone down and sober for a year and his snoring was worse than ever. Referral to sleep clinic, tested for sleep apnea and said nope not that. And that was it!
Honestly I would pay so much money for something that actually worked. It's really fucking awful.

Don’t know if this has been mentioned yet but my husband is a horrific snorer and wears a special mouth guard which helps a lot. I sleep with earplugs and also I have a fan app that is turned up high.

White noise machine solved it in our house.

But before that, my partner was mortified, apologetic, went to the GP, tried all sorts to try and fix the issue. This isn't a you problem, your DP sounds like he should be making more of an effort to fix this.

I try to treat it as white noise and am usually successful.

Snoring swamp pig! 😛Very accurate. I will make it more his problem. He is a a great DH mostly! We have king size bed & yes I think the snoring is when he is NOT in a deep sleep as it starts the second he falls asleep on his side then as soon as he rolls onto his back (I put pillows in between us to try to prevent this) it becomes swamp pig decibels. It’s winding me up just writing about it! 😂The loop earplugs have arrived this morning so I will give them a go. DS1 works shifts & is on nights tonight so I will sleep in his bed tonight - although I can still hear the snoring despite being about 10 metres away!
He snores so loudly that the Google home on his bedside table lights up & repeatedly asks him ‘what time would you like the alarm set for’ & ‘sorry I didn’t quite understand that’ -3 times in a row before shutting up. That can happen 3 times a night! This doesn’t cause him to even stir yet I’m left wide awake. 😩

@JohnWickAteMyHamster Has he been checked by an ENT? Has he ever had a broken nose? Some people need their sinuses checked or their nose fixed to help with snoring.

@buttermymuffins Record the Google home device being set off by his snoring. He needs objective proof of his snoring. That way he’ll know it truly is a problem with him and not that you’re just nagging him.

He should get a mouth guard from the dentist. Expensive but completely cures snoring

Not always. Depends on the reason for snoring. My DH had one. Kind of helped for a few months then straight back to horrendous snoring. A mouthguard can’t stop his airway collapsing.

I had one too, and I found it extremely painful to wear.