Thirty years is a long time to be married. That's why not many people make it thirty years. Marriage is a bumpy road, no doubt about that. In August, we'll celebrate our thirtieth anniversary. Our marriage has lasted through three sons (who are now young men), three moves and job changes, three miscarriages, and a whole bunch of other stuff. We've made it through dirty socks and broken lawnmowers, hair-raising credit card bills, weight fluctuations (lots of them), family vacations, mortgage payments, and approximately 1,500 church meetings. We've slept together roughly 10,585 nights. Which brings us to this blog.
Robert is a sleep guy. I am a writer. We've written about sleep together and have become interested in couples sleeping together. No, not sex. There are hundreds of volumes written on sex. We're talking about sleep. When you think about it, even the most amorous couples spend way more time sleeping than sizzling. We're writing a book on the topic, Sleeping Together: A Couple's Guide to Sharing a Bed.
Don't stop reading! There's a lot of interesting stuff that goes on in the night. Marriages don't stop when a couple goes to bed. Some perfectly happy daytime couples want to kill each other at night. Couples have actually divorced over sleep issues. It's fascinating to talk to people about their sleep. Robert does this for his job. He's a polysomnographic technologist and the manager of a sleep disorders clinic (he's also a psychotherapist, so it all works together). He knows a lot about what happens to us when we sleep, how our brains and bodies react after we shut our eyes.
How do you sleep with your partner? Do you happily slide into each other's arms and drift off to blissful slumber? Or do you plot how you will kill the person snoring loudly next to you? Do you seethe at 3:00 a.m. when you can't sleep but your mate snoozes soundly every single night? And what about when your bed partner is making weird noises in his sleep? Do you wake him up? And how do you feel about your mate who you're pretty sure has a serious sleep problem and s/he won't get it fixed? The list goes on and on ...
The issues are huge and we're going to explore them all, in the blog and in our book. We'll talk about all kinds of other topics on the blog. After all, being involved with another human being brings up all kinds of issues. In the meantime, we'd love to hear about your nighttime experiences. We'd love to interview you, talk to you, help you learn to love sleeping with your husband or wife. Let us know how you're managing all the minefields of marriage, especially the
bedtime minefields. Let's join together for some pillow talk.
