
How sharing a bed changed my sleep (2017) - sdurx
http://www.thedurkweb.com/how-sharing-a-bed-with-my-girlfriend-changed-my-sleep/
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jrsdav
I've found this problem to shift later on in a relationship, where sleep
quality actually _goes down_ when sleeping apart. Doesn't matter if it's a
hotel room while traveling for work, or having my own bed to myself while my
partner is out of town: my mind just can't stop obsessing that I _should_ be
getting better rest because I have the bed all to myself, and as a result get
hardly any rest at all! Thanks, brain!

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monkeynotes
I found when my wife was in India for ~2 months I would stay up late watching
YouTube videos / Netflix. In the evenings I found myself less sleepy in
general. I also ate really bad food since cooking for one is miserable for me.

When I first started dating my now wife I slept better than I've ever slept
before. All of my anxiety washed away and I felt incredibly content. Since
then with buying a house, moving, job changes, owning cats, and a litany of
other stressors, my sleep quality has substantially diminished. I don't
attribute this to sharing a bed though. My wife rarely causes me to wake,
neither of us really fidget in our sleep.

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magduf
>When I first started dating my now wife I slept better than I've ever slept
before. ... Since then with buying a house, moving, job changes, owning cats,
and a litany of other stressors, my sleep quality has substantially
diminished.

How could owning cats hurt your sleep quality? I have 3 of them and they're
fine; they never bother me at night.

Buying a house, however, is really horrible for your stress level. Now that
I'm no longer married and no longer own a house, I do find that I have far,
far less stress in my life than back then. Being single, too, has been great
for reducing stress. (The takeaway here is: don't marry the wrong person.)

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dasil003
I once owned adolescent cats that would chase each other around the house at
night. One time as my wife and I slept, the pursuit led them over top of the
bed; one of them used the side of my head and neck as a bank turn for a rapid
change of direction at full speed. Thankfully the angle was such that I did
not receive any claw marks to the face, but it definitely impacted my sleep
quality.

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pzumk
I’ve always been a pretty good sleeper. I’ve been going to bed at 22:00, fell
asleep at 22:05, and woke up at 5:45 after sleeping like a rock.

When my gf and I moved together, this changed.

I still tried to go to bed at 22:00 but sometimes it was an hour later or so.
My gf goes to bed between 23:00 and 00:00, which always woke me up. She also
needed to go to the toilet once at night, which woke me up again.

But to be fair, when I got up in the morning she was waking up too because she
could hear me showering.

When she was working a few hundred kilometres away for a month I noticed how
much better my sleep was. That’s when I bought a second bed and moved to our
guest room on work-days. Well, sometimes we want to cuddle and fall asleep
together, but I’d say 9/10 work-days we’re sleeping in separate beds and it’s
g r e a t.

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tinyhouse
An alternative would be using ear plugs and eye shade.

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MikeTheGreat
Those help with light and noise issues, but if someone gets into/out of the
bed it'll jostle the bed enough that it might still wake one up.

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dang
Discussed at the time:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14432177](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14432177)

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lotophage
Shows the quantity of sleep, but to make statements about quality, wouldn't
you have to show the proportion of time spent in each stage of sleep at least?

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tinyhouse
Can someone recommend a good sleep tracker?

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parliament32
I'd avoid a sleep-specific tracker: you'll get more use out of a general
activity tracker. I've owned both Fitbit and Garmin devices, they're both
solid, although Fitbit is cheaper and more general-wellness-oriented, while
Garmin devices tend to be better built, have more features, and are a bit more
on the "serious" athletics side. Both will happily track your sleep and sleep
phases.

