What kind of sleeper are you? Do you drop off like a stone and awaken refreshed, or do you need pitch black and silence to drift off to dream?
I am the complete opposite of my husband. I really don’t know what I do in the night, and I rarely wake up to observe myself. I have a ritual which is reading by flashlight until I fall asleep. That’s my fiction time, and it usually lasts 15-20 minutes, until the words get blurry. Then I lay flat on my back and stretch my body a few times to get out the kinks, deep breathe, the roll over on my right side and fall asleep in a semi-fetal position. When my husband brings me coffee in the morning about 7:00 am, I wake up. Simple as that.
I’m also not a cuddler. I don’t mind sharing my husband’s body heat, it’s very useful in the winter, but I do like my space.
He’s a mover, a roller, a snorer (supposedly I am too), and the bed is a mess in the morning from all his gyrations. He has a recurring running dream, and darned if his legs don’t go in a running motion while he’s dreaming. That can wake me up pretty fast! He’s a cover stealer, but only because he rolls around so much winding bed clothes as he goes. He also says he wakes up a number of times — but I wouldn’t know for sure.
It’s taken years for him to accept my pre-sleep reading, and I feel I have accommodated him by using a flashlight. If I read too long, though, he notices even in his semi-sleep. This is one of the issues on which I really can’t compromise — or I don’t think I can. Many, many years ago, when I was more of an insomniac, I adopted this method of clearing my mind of the debris that floats around in there, and it works. Now it’s a ritual — and I like it.
I always love to get into bed. It feels so good to stretch out — it is like a nest, a haven, a peaceful place. Aaahh!