It can be hard living with a partner, who snores at night and keeps you from enjoying deep sleep. Aside from this and other sleep disorders, mismatched nighttime habits too can drive a couple apart over time. One of the best ways to combat this is to make sure the two of you are sleep compatible. Signs that you are not include one of you preferring to turn in much later than the other, and then tossing and turning on the bed until morning.

Sleep Incompatibility

The National Sleep Foundation has found that three in every four adults wake up multiple times in the night, or cause their partner to by snoring loudly and relentlessly. A survey showed that over half of the women in the country between the ages of 18 and 64 slept poorly over three nights a week. Most restless sleepers felt the effects of on the next day, with close to half of them blaming it for their inadequate performance while awake. The one thing commonly observed was that one of the partners had a snoring habit.

Sleep experts agree on snoring being a serious health problem, in no small part due to its tendency to bring in sleep apnea, as well as disrupt the sleep of couples across the country. However, simply resolving the sleep disorder with a snoring mouth guard would not make the problem of bedtime hurdles disappear. Even after you stop snoring at night, there are many other factors in play, such as disparities in body temperature, personal preferences, etc. The latter includes everything from who switches off the light, to how much of the blanket each person uses. Lack of a system that works for both parties can lead to many problems, including marital and sexual.

Age

Sleep incompatibility gets worse the older you get. Older couples are generally less concerned with sexual intercourse, and more bothered by snoring and bathroom visits after they hit the sack. Sometimes, partners cannot pick up each other’s slack, and eventually grow to wish they did not have to share a bed. Moreover, women have hot flashes when they are older, and that does not help matters at all.

Insomnia

Even when not troubled by sleep disorders, many couples fail to find the kind of sleep that everyone wishes for. Most people take sleep for granted, and many end up suffering from insomnia. In such cases, the answer to what is keeping you awake may lie no further than the other side of the bed. It becomes vital to ask yourself what came first: marital problems or sleep problems. To find out which, ask your partner what they are willing to do to overcome your sleep incompatibility.

Sleeping Apart

A lion’s share of couples around the globe part ways at night as a means to get past sleep incompatibility. This has become so common a part of the typical modern lifestyle that architects often accommodate two master bedrooms when designing houses. Over half of the custom-made houses in the country have contained master bedrooms.

Cuddling

This is option is more mutually endearing, and while it does not bring the couple the best sleep they can have individually, it fosters intimacy and lets partners grow better used to one another. Many times, people overlook all annoyances just to be in proximity with their spouses.

Sleep Apnea

Snoring may seem superficial to the casual observer, but it is important to remember that it commonly leads to sleep apnea, where the person actually stops breathing for as long as several minutes. This can happen multiple times during the night, and always raises the risk of suffering from stroke, high blood pressure, and heart attack. Overcoming this issue is a long process, which usually involves wearing a medically prescribed CPAP device before going to sleep.

This in itself can be highly tiresome, because a typical CPAP machine includes tubes, masks, and a fan. The fans bring air pressure that causes the person’s tongue to move forward, removing the block formed in front of the throat. This allows more air to pass and for the person to breathe more easily.

Support from a spouse can be integral in getting a person to wear their CPAP device through the entirety of their sleep. Studies have found that men undergoing CPAP therapy follow through better when they have their wives in bed with them. If the condition is severe, spousal support may be called for outside the bedroom as well.

Some goals such as weight loss, diet change, and long walks can be achieved more easily if the patient sees they have their partner there with them through the whole thing. Emotional support is easy to underestimate in such cases, but people working alone to dispel a sleeping disorder generally do not fare as good as those that have their spouses actively supporting them.