I follow the lightly accented British voice that guides my sleep meditation, plugged into my head to ensure that I don’t wake up my husband, Charles, in my effort to fall asleep. I’m on my back in a comfortable position in case I doze midstream.
As instructed, I begin the process by alighting on and putting each activity from my day to bed. The day tucked in, I start at my toes and slowly move up to my head, explaining to each body part that it’s time to surrender to sleep.
The disembodied voice then suggests that I count backward from 1,000 to further calm my mind.
When I reach 800, I take a sleeping pill.
This meditation is not my first effort to improve my sleep, a lifelong issue, evidenced by the bags under my eyes in childhood photos. But finding my way to slumberville has been even harder since I’ve moved in with Charles, my ideal “sleep chamber” compromised to accommodate another idiosyncratic sleeper.
The changes started with our bed. I love a soft, enveloping mattress; Charles needs an unyielding one for his bad back. Our solution: an unrelenting surface augmented by a huge fluffy pad on my side, creating a new mattress category: king-size duplex. Temperature-wise, I need icy cold, while Charles likes it balmy. Our room hovers midway. Charles sleeps in flannel, mummified in extra blankets, while I retire in minimal lingerie.
Charles likes consistent quiet, while I’m soothed by the sea. White noise plays on his side; orcas cry out on mine. We installed blackout shades, and we cover all light-emitting sources before bedtime.
The result was a bedroom more likely to be featured in Psychology Today than Architectural Digest. I didn’t sleep particularly well, and we needed a map to find each other.
Hoping for a solution beyond our environment, I met with my internist for ideas.
“Do you have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep?”
“Yes,” I said.
She smiled and replied, “OK, let’s talk about your bedroom.”
I described our nighttime sanctuary.
“Unusual, but pretty good. How about TV?” she continued.
I thought we were taking a break and I’d find out what she binge-watched. My money was on Breaking Bad. Instead, she wanted to know when I stop watching TV for the evening.
Turns out good sleepers don’t look at a TV, laptop, or phone within two hours of bedtime. They also don’t have caffeine after 11 a.m. if they’re caffeine-sensitive, which she suspected I was. They get natural morning light and late-afternoon exercise daily. To prepare for sleep, they take a warm shower or bath, read a book, do light stretches, and meditate.
I wanted to ask if “good sleepers” have full-time jobs, or if this was their full-time job.
Nonetheless, I made the changes.
One week later, eyes wide open, I wonder if the last one to have the perfect sleep environment was prehistoric man, secured in a dark, quiet cave, sleeping on a soft yet supportive woolly mammoth pelt, and getting plenty of exercise and daylight hunting and/or gathering.
I wanted to talk to Charles about this but couldn’t tell if he was awake — or even there, which brought up another issue. As we coexist in our fortress of solitude for two (three, with my British sleep guide), I wonder if in our search for REM, a new measurement should be applied: BTI, or Barriers to Intimacy, and how many a couple can survive. We had to be near the tipping point.
I hear acupuncture might help. And there’s hypnosis, though I worry that instead of sleeping, a key word will trigger my clucking like a chicken. There are even welder-like amber glasses to wear before bedtime to further block blue light, but these seem certain to throw us over the BTI threshold.
Until we move to our cozy cave, I guess this is the best I can do.
Jill Lipton is a writer in New York. Send comments to [email protected].
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