Polyphasic Sleep – A Wife’s Perspective – Part 2

Part 2(Part 3 of: How Not to Convert to the Polyphasic Sleep Schedule)

I LOVE HIM TO BITS, BUT IF HE KEEPS UP WITH THIS I’M OUT OF HERE……continued.

He wants to do a PhD in something or other. Whatever it is this week. He buys heaps of physics books on eBay that he doesn’t read, with titles like “The Elegant Universe” and “The Life of the Cosmos”. The last book to arrive was “The Story of Zero”. But to tell you the truth he doesn’t seem to get anywhere. He is a zero of getting things done. What about my website? Says he needs more hatting. But it hasn’t changed in over a year. Everybody loves it, but he says it isn’t finished and its just a temporary thing. I know these things take time but he seems to be taking all of it.

When he started staying up all night it was OK at first. It was new and he was excited and I was excited for him and I went along with it. I try to support whatever he wants to do. You can’t love somebody and stand in their way — you can just never do that no matter what silliness he wants to do as that might spell the end of everything. So I try to be as supportive as possible because he’s actually very talented and he’s the only reason my business is going the way it is at all. But I didn’t think then that anyone can forego daily sleep and stay up all night and only have naps and I still don’t. Having said that, I’ve always been supportive of whatever he wants to do.

Well, the first couple of weeks went OK. Our bedroom is also his office. We set up a screen and I sleep with ear plugs so it wasn’t a problem. He would lay down beside me to nap. He would never get under the covers. He said that he wasn’t sleeping, it was napping, and that if he got under the covers it would be too much like sleeping. So OK.

I never really knew when he’d get up or if he’d just keep on sleeping. I’d let him sleep. At first I didn’t mind. He had to move through this idea in his own way, and hopefully get it out of him. He would sleep for 4, 6, 8 or 9 hours sometimes. And boy would he snore. He refused to admit that he snored during his naps. He called the long “naps” oversleeping. It was weird. He went an entire month, except maybe a day or two when he was core sleeping, sleeping in his clothes.

I could never keep up with his schedule. It seemed to change a lot. He wasn’t getting anything done. Sometimes I’d wake up and he’d be out of the house. He’d be at the gym or having a coffee somewhere. Sometimes he was out walking listening to his “podcasts”.I started to get jealous. Why couldn’t I have coffee in the mornings?

But then he wasn’t coming home until midday or sometimes 1 or 2 pm. He was sleeping in his car. No I correct myself, he was oversleeping in his car. He was staying up all night on his computer then going to the gym at 6 am. Then he’d “nap” somewhere in his car and I wouldn’t see him until the afternoon. This was no way to have a marriage.

He looked terrible. I’ve never seen eyes so red. I thought his eyes were actually bleeding. He was leaving things behind when he went to work. He melted his favourite jumper on the bar heater he used while he was sleeping; this this from the man who has 3 fire extinguishers in the house and gives my daughter a hard time for having her heater too close under her desk. He was eating at night and getting fat. And in general he just looked like shit. And he was uncommunicative and sullen and not really there at all. He basically left me for a month, which is what it felt like.

In the last week he finally got moving on taking the photographs he needed to produce my brochure. I was perhaps starting to see the promised increase in his production. He said they had to be top quality and he was having trouble with the lighting. So the only place our “light tent” could fit was on our bed! Its a massive thing and it stayed there for a week. Our bedroom was turned into a photographic studio. I didn’t mind because I could sleep in my bindery on the floor, and my back felt good for it. But after about a week of Timmy sleeping in a ball behind the tent or in some parking lot in his car, one night he didn’t even come home from work. (He works at night and I usually expect him any time after midnight.) He showed up around midday the next day. He’d been asleep in his car. I’d had enough and I told him so. If he didn’t want to sleep with me in my own bed that was fine. If he didn’t want to be married that was fine. As far as I was concerned he was doing this so he could break up with me. That was how it felt.

Oh no, no he said. He wasn’t trying to do any of that, he was just having a hard time adjusting. All he had to do was stop oversleeping. But I’d had enough. Apparently he had too. He said he would start sleeping normally again. So that night he came to bed and snored his head off.

So that’s my story of a polyphasic husband. I wouldn’t wish it on anybody. I don’t really think he intentionally tried to make my life hell. He says he had to adapt to it to have the time to achieve his goals. But the during the last month he got less done than the last two months combined. Production, that is, work on projects, practically stopped as far as I could see. I hope not too many other people get sucked into this program. I wonder how many marriages get destroyed because of it. A person needs to sleep. If anyone is thinking of trying this I wouldn’t recommend it.