When Your Partner Experiences Episodes of Insomnia

Over the last several months, I have noticed my partner experiencing more insomnia and signs of light sleeping. They are finding it harder to fall asleep than normal. Typically, he’s a heavy sleeper, but recently, he hasn’t been a heavy sleeper. Sometimes, he doesn’t even realize that he didn’t have a good night’s sleep and why his sleep pattern is being so thrown off. When your partner is also experiencing episodes of insomnia, a conversation may sometimes help.

A conversation with my partner

Communication may sometimes be difficult. Here is what we discovered after talking together about insomnia:

My partner is experiencing insomnia too

J: “A lot of it is when my cycle gets really messed up when I get calls from work in the middle of the night and/or get called into work. I might go through the stretch of a week where it’s hard for me to fall asleep, but I don’t feel like it’s been a consistent issue. Most of the time when I have a stretch when I’m going to bed at a strange time due to call-ins and coming home at 2 AM or 6 AM working overnight. For the most part, I’m okay.”

K: After my initial feeding tube surgery and others after, I wasn't able to sleep in a bed. It has had so much more of an effect on both of us and now know how much both of our nights and sleep were truly affected by it.

My partner also needs physical touch

J: “What helps me fall asleep is when the both of us can hang out together and have time to just chill out and decompress after work, like when you give me head rubs and I give you back rubs. We’re not always sleeping at the same time at all and don’t sleep together and you have a pretty erratic sleep schedule. For instance, there are nights I’ll go to bed with you already sleeping and by the time I’ve woken up you’ve been wide awake for hours already, and then other times, even when I wake up late, there are often times you’re just falling asleep when I’ve just woken up because of your insomnia.”

We took some time to talk about how it’s affected us both. He acknowledged the fact that I need physical touch before I fall asleep to feel secure and comfortable due to my PTSD, so I was really happy when he intentionally and independently brought up that physical touch before bed also calms him down too. He also acknowledged that it was hard to go to bed without me and wake up the same way.

Sharing possible causes

K: You’re also a smoker. Are you surprised to learn that nicotine and other chemicals from cigarettes can actually cause insomnia being a stimulant?

He was surprised to find some of this out as far as sleep disturbances and schedules, so I pulled up an article referencing facts about smoking and sleep.¹

Talking about insomnia helps heal

With this all being said, sitting down and talking about this definitely brought us closer together. We talked about things that have been stressing us both out, some of which we had no idea how the other person had also been feeling and experiencing. It actually felt like a healing moment in our relationship, as sometimes we don’t have the greatest communication.

• Have you and your partner ever experienced insomnia?
• How has your significant other handled bouts of insomnia and did they seek help?
• How did you get your loved ones to get checked out (without seemingly making a big deal about it,) and help them to actually get assessed?

Please share when your partner experiences episodes of insomnia.