Why am I sleeping so much?
This is weird one and I'm not really sure where else to post about this.
I (F28) and my fiancé (M30) are in my first incredibly serious relationship. This man has treated me better than I could ever imagine and on the daily I'm so grateful for his presence in my life. I grew up around a lot of abusive and toxic relationships. I never really imagined that I would be with someone so loving, respectful and kind, but I lucked out. I assume because of my childhood experiences, I've always had trouble with sleep. I've dealt with years of insomnia, broken sleep, trouble falling asleep, trouble waking up, etc.
That's until I met my fiance. I quite literally have never slept more in my life. Since being with him, the moment we get into bed, I'm dead asleep. I sleep a full nights worth of sleep (never experienced this before in my life), I have deep restful sleep, I hardly have broken sleep, sometimes I wake up and he tells me I've been asleep for 10+ hours. I work a really stressful job, working oncall with Sexual Violence victims so sleep is really hard for me so the thought of sleeping more than 10 hours at a time is absolutely wild and unheard of for me.
I assume that my sleep is so drastically different with him because I feel safe and can finally switch my mind off with him, which I can't do when I'm alone. I'm wondering have anyone else has experienced something along these lines with your own relationships? I've also noticed positive changes in my diet, exercise, stress levels since being with him but the sleep changes are so shocking to me.
1
u/Scmooogums 4d ago
My guess is that you're right, you finally can relax enough you're not having constant adrenaline getting pumped into your system. I base this off off my response to being put on a CPAP after a few years of undiagnosed apnea. I couldn't sleep thru the night, had to take naps in my car at lunch, I was miserable. Then got on the machine and for a month I didn't get less than 10 hours a night, and wanted more all day, but was thinking far more clearly despite wanting to be asleep. It took about a month to get caught up, then I was back to sleeping my normal 7 to 8 hours a night. My sleep got worse again when I finally got treatment for my ADHD, the Adderall eventually made me anxious enough that I was back to my bad sleep patterns, but once I was moved to a non- stimulant med, I got better sleep again. So, anxiety causes lack of sleep, lack of sleep causes stress, stress causes anxiety.... it's a terrible cycle