All You Need Is Love (and a good night’s sleep)
A blog for Valentine’s Day
Picture the scene…These Arms of Mine playing in the background, a table set for two with a red or pink rose in a tall vase. Candlelight shimmers off cutlery and champagne glasses. A bottle of something sparkly waits in the fridge. This is going to be the most romantic night of the year for you both…you turn around to “You’re Still the One” and there’s to your partner…
Snoring like a chainsaw on the sofa.
It’s not so much My Funny Valentine as The Lion Sleeps Tonight. They came in from work muttering about being shattered. But you know it wasn’t the Bad Day, it was the night before. The result of a poor night’s sleep is always the same. Irritation, lack of empathy, Under Pressure.
Sleep, like the mattress some of us toss and turn on, is the underpinning of human relationships. Did you know that 42% of first marriages in Britain end in divorce?. That’s a statistic that seems almost unbelievable, yet it comes from the Office for National Statistics (cumulative figure for marriages in 1995). Marriage breakdown has many causes, but disrupted sleep is one factor. Poor sleep lowers libido in men and women. It causes irritation, loss of empathy, defensiveness and sense of humour deficit. As for sexual intimacy . . . well, That Don’t Impress Me Much.
And it’s hurtful and crushing to be pushed away.
We at Zeez have all experienced the distress of losing night after night of good sleep, and our fair share of emotional Train Wrecks. It was a trigger to create a product to deal with sleeplessness
For some people, conditions such as sleep apnoea or motor neurone disease disturb breathing and alter our sleep architecture. But for many people, poor sleeping results from a combination of external factors (money, workplace stress, general anxiety, inadequate nutrition. Perhaps too much time playing online games, or using an i-phone for too many hours before bedtime). Poor sleep might be down to shift-working, or getting out of the habit of good sleep after having a baby. We can change our lifestyles to some extent (or wait till the baby has started sleeping through) but then we may find that we’ve lost the knack of switching off. Our brain feels constantly wired, on high alert. Or we’ve trained it to override circadian rhythms and now it can’t switch back.
Lying alongside a partner who drifts off easily can heighten our sense of isolation and hopelessness. A case of Help Me Make It Through The Night? Or even worse, I’m Not In Love?
And what if your partner snores. A British Snoring & Sleep Apnoea Association survey concluded that an incredible 20 million Brits are sleep-deprived because a partner’s snores. Almost half of Americans report snoring, concludes the American Sleep Association. And according to a Sleep Cycle study, 52 percent of American women report waking up from their partner pushing out unharmonious zeds.
Haven’t we all prodded a partner in the night in the hope they’ll roll over and stop the racket? Headed to a spare bed, or the sofa downstairs? Snoring. and other sleep issues, really do break up marriages, not from a lack of tolerance, but because disrupted sleep over many years dulls our empathetic responses. We just aren’t our best selves when we’re sleep deprived. “With sleep deprivation…the body goes into survival mode,” says Christopher Winter, a neurologist based in Charlottesville, VA, and the author of The Sleep Solution. When you’re not sleeping well, “Your brain’s ability to do things gets whittled down to: find food, urinate, get through the day.”
Well, ok, most of us also have to do the school-run, shop, walk the dog and hold down a job, but we get his point.
It’s why sleep is much more vital to a healthy, loving relationships than we might suppose. We tend to see the outward symptoms; Don’t You Want Me? Or sadly, You Don’t Bring Me Flowers. According to Winter, “All of the things it takes to make a relationship work are probably completely decimated by lack of sleep.”
On Valentine’s Day, the world out there makes sure we know it’s a day set aside to prove You’ve Got The Love. Special meals for two, roses at £15 a stem . . . these are the shorthand to showing your special other that s/he is The Love Of My Life. And, All The Single Ladies (and gents)? showing yourself A Little Love is valid, too. Light the candles, put on the music and when you’ve done that, make a sleep audit.
How many hours per night? Do you ‘go off’ quickly, or lie awake counting sheep? Do you wake abruptly two hours before the alarm goes off? Do you apparently sleep well, yet wake in the morning muzzy and tired?
If you answer yes to any of these, you’re probably not getting a full night of quality sleep and making time to Love The One You’re With might seem an impossible ask. Talk to us, before you start singing that really sad one from Abba.
Here are testimonials from two of the people we’ve helped with their sleep, beating those crappy marriage statistics and sharing some Endless Love.
“Before using the Zeez Sleep Pebble, I would find myself listening to my partner fall asleep, staring into the darkness for a couple more hours. Since using the Zeez, those hours have reduced drastically; so that our sleep is quite synchronised. I don’t have to look over enviously and going to bed doesn’t feel like a chore any more. It is so nice sharing the same sleeping pattern.” Beth, 25
Michael Richards, Tai chi teacher, talking about his wife of 30 years.
“After Gabrielle had used the Zeez there was a shift in the way she was. She was more relaxed, more at ease. it made a big difference to our relationship. It was really fantastic to see. What could be better than being relaxed together.”
Happy Valentine’s Day from Zeez. And remember, We Will Always Love You.
Anna
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