Sleep is sacred. It is the one place where we are supposed to be safe from the world, and from, you know, our partners. But for one woman on Reddit, her bedroom has become a battleground, and her husband’s new weapon of choice is a vacuum cleaner.
Our narrator has a sleep schedule that is, in her own words, “horrible.” She’s a night owl, getting to bed around 5 or 6 AM and sleeping until noon. Her husband, meanwhile, is on a much more “normal” schedule, in bed by 1 AM and up at 7 AM. This is a classic relationship problem, but it’s one that can be solved with a little thing called respect.
Spoiler alert: there is no respect here. Because the husband doesn’t just get up at 7 AM and go about his day. He gets up at 7 AM and makes it his personal mission to ensure his wife is as miserable and sleep-deprived as possible.
He will “routinely” come back into the bedroom to talk to her while she’s trying to sleep. Not about important things. Not about time-sensitive, “the-house-is-on-fire” things. He comes in every 20 or 30 minutes to make a “random comment” or ask a “random question.” And then there’s the truly creepy part: “Sometimes he’ll walk in and just stand in the doorway staring at me.”
I am sorry, what? That is not “annoying.” That is “the opening scene of a horror movie.” She, like any sane person, has told him this feels like a passive-aggressive attempt to annoy her into getting up. His response? “That’s not how he means it, so ‘it’s fine.’” Oh, the classic gaslighter’s prayer.
One morning, he escalated his campaign of terror. This man, this sleep terrorist, sent the Roomba into the bedroom while she was sleeping. She says the thing “roared and banged around in there for an hour.” This was not an accident. This was a premeditated act of robotic warfare.
So now, our hero is done. She’s had enough. She is asking if she would be the ahole for simply locking the bedroom door after he gets up so she can get a few hours of uninterrupted, non-Roomba-attacked sleep.
And just to be clear, she’s not locking him out of anything essential. He has a second bathroom, which she says is the one he “primarily uses anyway.” This isn’t about punishment. This is about self-preservation.
So, is she the ahole? Let me scream it from the rooftops: N-T-A. You are not the ahole. You are a sleep-deprived woman who is married to a man who has zero respect for you, your sleep, or your sanity. He has shown, repeatedly, that he will not respect a verbal boundary. You asking him to stop has done nothing.
His behavior is not “a habit.” It is a choice. The staring is weird. The constant interruptions are disrespectful. And the Roomba? The Roomba was a declaration of war. You don’t have to be irritated before you even get up for the day. Lock the door. Put in earplugs. Buy a sound machine. And get your sleep, girl. He can have his random thoughts in the living room.
I think he will bang on the bedroom door and or knock on it. I’d let him know how it feels. Wake him up every 20 to 30 minutes. Send roomba in to wake him.