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 jumpy and touchy and can't sleep with new husband the gist of two emails We have only been married for 3 months, seems like everything is new and hard to deal with. One of our biggest problems is sleeping. I have never had a problem sleeping and neither had he, but, I cannot sleep if we cuddle or if he is putting his legs on me or anything restraining. I get anxious and need to have my space. He gets very angry and says that I need to get over this and its no way to sleep, separate all the time. Last night we tried to compromise and I put my legs on top of his, so not to be restrained and he liked it just because we were touching. I think I just freak out about every little thing because I fear for our marriage since I hear so many horror stories about bad ones. Can you help? What do I do? We have a good relationship besides this and its really disrupting our life. Any advice you may have will be much appreciated. Thank You. the gist of my answer For newlyweds this is often an issue of simply getting used to each other in bed. That may take some doing but sleeping separately is not likely to be helpful. You may need a psychologist and/or MD who specializes in sleep problems to straighten this out but you might just see if you can fix it yourself with a little patience and persistence. You might try your general practice MD to see if he can give you something to help you relax more at night. It might also help if you made sure to exercise in the afternoon to get rid of any muscle tensions from day to day stresses. It might also help if you took a long hot shower or bath before bed -- which is very relaxing to muscles. It might help to try one of my hypnosis tapes -- healing tree 2, performance 2 or two voices to imagine. Though none are specifically for this issue, they all have aspects and attributes that might help. Each is guaranteed to help within the first one or two listenings or send it back within a month for a full refund. Though there is a tiny chance that there may be complicated psychological and brain chemistry aspects to all this, it is probably more likely that you just have to get used to having him sleep with you. I say this on the basis of 1) you are only recently married and on the general observation that 2) a lot of people are very nervous about the bonding and connecting and compromisings that marriage demands and implies -- and they would be silly not to be and 3) the way our brains work makes it very possible ("normal") for such things to happen. So, here is some info and here are some hunches: I would wager you have managed to get used to the feeling of the bed beneath you and you have managed to get used to covers. I imagine you also were used to wearing clothes against your skin long before you figured out how to talk. Our brains have a little component called the reticular activating system (RAS) which makes decisions about what to pay conscious attention to. It is not conscious. It decides if things are important to pay attention to and decides what isn't. It has probably already decided that the feeling of the bed is no big deal to pay attention to, and the feel of the sheet over you also. It has probably decided that many of the sounds of your home are nothing to attend to. On really tired days it might even decide you shouldn't pay attention to the alarm clock. We don't spend the day thinking about our toes in our shoes or our tongues in our mouths because our RAS says not to bother. You have to train your RAS that the touches of your husband are okay. Or, if they are not okay, you need to ask yourself why you stay married to him. If you haven't heard or noticed, life is one hassle after another. Being in love is wonderful but it is a lot of work. Hang in there and keep trying. You will get used to his being there in bed with you. You will find that little by little you come to rely on feeling him touch you as you sleep at night. These touches will reassure you and make you feel safe and loved. Then one night he will be out of town or you will -- or one of you will be ill and trying not to give the other any germs so you sleep apart -- and then you'll realize that you aren't at all comfortable sleeping without him there by you and that if he isn't there and you do sleep, it's unrestful sleep because you miss his little touches in the night. But it is wonderful to be in love. Dr. J. |
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