Bedtime routine = happy marriage
“You need to get your own bedroom.”
“What? No—no—no! Why?”
“You are interrupting my systems.”
An exceedingly long time ago, a newly divorced acquaintance told me the secret to a healthy marriage is to adopt the same bedtime and morning routines as your spouse. She had learned that lesson the hard way, divorce. I’ve never forgotten that advice. Yet I’ve not heeded it either. For here I sit hours after my husband is asleep typing away at my computer. Now that I no longer have an 8 am check-in nor a child dependent upon my waking to get to school, I find my sleep patterns are crazy erratic. I no longer have healthy bedtime “systems”, my husband’s word for “routines” (More on “systems’ in the past post The ONE THING.)
Robert, my husband, is very much a creature of habit—to bed at 10:30 pm and up at 5:30 am for his morning workout—each day is performed like clockwork. He requires less sleep, only 6-7 hours per night. I require at least 8 hours per night and longer on weekends. In our early years of marriage, I was in a full-blown career with small children and was exhausted at each day’s end, falling into bed only seconds before my eyelids closed. Demands that required a morning routine that started promptly at 6 am. Long gone are those days.
So, how do I get them back?
Donna Partow’s 90-Day Guide to Living the Proverbs 31 Life: Becoming the Woman God Wants Me to Be is my starting point. Day 11 instructs us to “Establish a nighttime routine” by finding a way to unwind, such as drinking hot lemon water, getting into bed at exactly the same time every night—even weekends and holidays, and not eating late or the wrong foods just prior to sleep. She also adds some lagniappe:
Make it a point to have a polite conversation or think positive thoughts before falling asleep. (This means, friends, do not wait until 10pm to have the credit card discussion.)
Do not read a great novel or surf the I-pad looking for interesting things in bed. Remove them, along with the television, from the room.
Keep a pen and paper by the bed to unload thoughts keeping you awake.
These are all things I know yet don’t practice. The objective is to commit to a specific bedtime and affirm it night after night until it becomes a habit. My challenge is the habit. Many neurological studies have been documented on the creation of habits. No matter how insignificant all habits have three components: the cue or trigger, the routine, and the reward. A habit cannot be created without the three. (More on forming habits in a past post Your Thoughts Become Your Destiny.)
By understanding the process of forming a habit, I”ve been able to pinpoint where my problem lies. My cue? I have started using the handy bedtime alarm on my phone app to notify me it’s time to get into bed…and its working. The routine: I must find the discipline to get into bed. This is where I’m challenged. When I conquer the discipline, I know that a divine 8 hours of rest awaits. Once the nighttime routine is established it will be much easier to work on the morning routine (Donna Partow has some great ideas about that in Day 12 of her book). I haven’t yet gained my husband’s bedtime “systems”, but in finding marital JOY I’m working on it.
I’d love to hear from you. Any advice on the subject? To send me a message, use the message box on the About Traci page.
Lagniappe
The photo of a beautiful sunset on Bayou Desiard (pronounced by-you da-zeer’d) in Monroe Louisiana.
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