Her Snoring Sends Me On Permanent Night Duty

Dear Agatha,

I am a specialist nurse in one of the leading hospitals in Victoria, Australia.

My wife and I have been married for six years and our marriage is blessed with two lovely kids. My main problem is my wife snoring habit. It has became a big trouble for me, I am a light sleeper and most nights I only have may be two to three hours of sleep because of her snoring.

Over the years, I have woken her up on several nights to change her breathing position to control the loud noise, but it will only work for few minutes before it starts again.

I have tried earplug but never feel comfortable with it and on few occasions that I have to relocate to the guest room, she didn’t like the idea. Now I have technically taken to night duty to allow me the opportunity to sleep during the day and only face my trouble again when I have my off day. She has been asking me when I am going to stop night duty, I know she senses that my night duty is deliberate because I am not obliged to if I don’t really want to being a senior clinician at the hospital.

What do I do?

Tade.

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Dear Tade,

Signing up for permanent night duty won’t help or make the problem vanish rather, it would only destroy your home and marriage. Very soon your wife may begin to think you are having an affair, a trend that would spell disaster to your home.

The best thing is for you to tell her why you have resigned yourself to permanent night at work. She may not have full appreciation of how her snoring habit affect you but telling her it is the reason you now spend the night at work would help her device an acceptable approach that would keep you at home every night.

Being in the medical field, you know there is nothing effective that can cure or stop snoring. Therefore you both must come up with an acceptable mid-solution aimed at preserving your marriage as well as sanity within it. This is the point you both have to make sacrifices for the sake of your children because any attempt by either of you to do a sole job of this or make a rigid position could spell doom on your marriage and consequently affect your children.

In resolving this matter, it is important you put the interest of the children above yourselves.

Because you have to be on alert, at all time in your profession, you need sleep, quality one for that matter. Therefore, if you have tried everything, none of which worked, it is best you give in to reality. The reality here is that she snores and you need sleep to function. Since you cannot put up with the noise, one of your options is to consider separate rooms.

Having separate rooms ensure you get to sleep as peacefully as you like while she has the satisfaction of having you in the house. The extra room is only to serve as your escape room, not your marital room in the night when the noise from her snoring becomes too much for you to put up with.

Your clothes and personal effects stay in your main room, meaning until you are ready to sleep and then on those nights she needs your company or you need hers, you get to pay the sacrifice of putting up with her snoring.

You may be sailing your marriage into troubled waters, unless you are both ready to make the necessary adjustment to suit the demands of a situation.

So, talk to her and let her see how much her snoring is affecting you. Once you make her understand precisely what you are going through by the noise she makes at night, she won’t complain too much about you sleeping in the guest room.

Good luck.