Two Times Snoring Drove a Family Apart

Summary: Snoring can cause couples to sleep apart or even divorce each other because lack of sleep and resentments night after night is more than most people can stand. If your partner’s snoring is making you consider doing something drastic, see a specialist – because something can be done about it.

Are you worried that your marriage can’t survive another night of that high decibel, grunting, snuffling snore of the loved one sleeping next to you? Sure, you give them a kick some times — of course, you meant that to be a loving kick, didn’t you? — and they roll over, but sometimes, that is not enough. You have to wonder, how often has snoring torn families apart?

Can you imagine getting a divorce just because your partner snores? It has happened more than once. A woman in Ningbo, China, divorced her husband because of his snoring, and she claimed she had not been able to get a good night sleep since they married. She became ill and lost a lot of weight, and they divorced. The judge ordered the man to pay his wife $800 in compensation for her sleepless nights!

In Iran, a man filed for divorce from his wife because of her snoring. He hadn’t noticed it at first, due to the fact that he slept very well because of the sleeping pills she secretly gave him so that he wouldn’t notice how loud her snoring was! Well, it worked for a little while, anyway!

Humour aside, the facts are that no matter how much you care for each other, by 2 AM, especially after being woken up several times by a partner who may seem to be getting a good night’s sleep, a divorce starts to sound like a pretty good idea. Snoring can be awful for a bed partner, but if the issue is not handled, it can certainly break up a marriage. The one who snores doesn’t always understand why their partner is so tired, cranky and resentful with them the next morning. And then, they themselves become resentful after putting up with their spouses constant insistence that they stop a behaviour that they can’t control. This is obviously an issue that needs to be handled with some delicacy.

Lack of sleep makes people angry and resentful, especially when one moves out of the bedroom, or just gets up in the middle of the night to sleep somewhere else. But don’t forget about intimacy. Sleeping together at night is about more than sleep or even sex, it’s about closeness and togetherness, and so it is important to remember to make time to keep that connection strong, even if you can’t sleep together. After all, you are not sleeping apart because you don’t want to be together, you sleep apart so that you can stay together.

Finally, it’s not always true that there is nothing to be done about snoring. If it is a problem, visit a sleep clinic and see if wearing a sleep mask will help. Snoring may have greater health consequences, so it’s a good idea to determine the cause. Not all people who snore have sleep apnea, a condition where the sleeper stops breathing hundreds of times in the night before waking themselves with a snort, but all those who have sleep apnea snore. Before snoring destroys the relationship, visit CPAP Solutions Inc. to find out what’s going on.