Sleep and time zones

[D_M]

How are any of you, who are dealing with time zone differences managiang sleep.
My SO and I have a 3 hour difference. It doesn't seem much but 3 hours at the end of the day is a big difference, working around work, dinner, sleep etc.
This last week my anxiety has been so erratic and off the charts, inbetween lovely conversations and vid chats with my SO.
So I've been wracking my brain trying to figure out where all this anxiety is coming from. And I think it's between bad diet (an easy fix) and sleep (not easy).
The thing is I love my time with my SO and when we're talking, we can go for hours and not notice the time pass. WHen we do this over 3 nights it takes a bit toll on me. But I don't want to give up that time with her because it keeps me going through teh separation of the LDR.
How are any of teh rest of you managing this? Do you limit teh time to ensure sleep? Do you just spend your week exhausted but at last you're getting quality time with your SO?

[OhioJim]

You are in NSW? That is New South Wales, correct?

And your SO is in WA, which is Washington State, in the USA?

Or did I interpret that wrong? If I was correct you should be about 13 or so hours ahead of your SO.

Anyway, my SO and I have a 12 hour difference. She is 12 hours ahead of me, so the only time we have to talk without disturbing our sleep is in the morning/evening. One of us is going to bed while the other is getting up. The only advice I can give is to set a schedule and try to stick with it. OR just tough it out and take lots of naps.

[D_M]

Hi OhioJim,
WA is Western Australia so it's 3 hr difference starting the end of next week (2hrs right now). We have long chats into the night which means I end up going to sleep at 3am and getting up for work at 7am so after a few days of this I am exhausted. I can deal with the tiredness at work and when I'm talking to her I just don't want it to end and don't feel tired. Where it affects me the worse is dealing with missing her and anxiety about if she will find it too hard. Everything she says tells me she wants to stay together so it is more a tiredness-induced paranoia... although I know we all deal with these dark thoughts or what-ifs etc.
I think more intentional scheduling might be the best way like you said, and maybe keeping the late nights to the weekends. I don't know.

[OhioJim]

Hi OhioJim,
WA is Western Australia so it's 3 hr difference starting the end of next week......

Sorry about that! That is one problem with being on an international forum. Different countries have different slang and different abbreviations.

At least you are both in the same day. My SO is 12 hours ahead, which will change to 13 hours in November. It gets confusing. Is it today, tomorrow, or yesterday for her?

[sadandconfused]

We have a 5 hour difference which wouldn't be so bad if I were the one ahead!
It sucks spending my nights alone because that's when I want to talk with my partner the most.
I've been considering adjusting my sleep schedule so we match slightly better but I'm a huge night owl unfourtunately

[vivid_idea]

I am in Qld, Australia and my SO is in Germany. I am 8 hours ahead of him and we have been together for 2 years. In the beginning I was basically functioning on adrenaline due to so many late nights talking to him. I would have to wait until my kids were asleep and then we would talk from 9pm my time to....whenever....! It is late at night for him when I wake up and so we never get a chance to talk during my day.]

All I can say is, from personal experience, the situation is not sustainable and your life/body will force you to make adjustments. When that initial phase wore off and we started missing that small window of opportunity to talk sometimes, there would be a little bit of anxiety that would creep in. Like, "Oh, did he go to bed already?" or, "Why didn't she say good night?" It's pretty normal to feel that way.

The second phase we moved into was that I would make sure I wrote him a long message during my day when he was asleep. That way he would have something nice to wake up to, and it was a way to keep feeling connected, even when timezomes would pull us apart.

Now, after 2 years, we both accept the differences and we still find time to talk nearly every day, even if briefly. It gets easier as you learn to deal with the separation and trust each other more.

I suggest trying to get more sleep and scheduling "dates" that work for both of you. Quality, over quantity.

[applescruff]

My husband and I were 6 hours difference. Not long after I would go to sleep, he would wake up for work. He would get home from work when I was at work, and when it was time for me to leave work, it was bedtime for him. During the week we could only really text message each other while I was at work. The last place that he worked for while in Germany (he worked at 3 different places while we were in long distance), they would put him on a later shift once in awhile. Then him and I would be working at exactly the same times, and he would stay up later so we could video chat, watch a movie, etc. when we both got home. So yeah, we just managed with texts most of the time, and then did our video chats and gaming on the weekend. It wasn't easy, but we did it.

[D_M]

We're now trying to limit calls duting the week, keep them to 30 mins or an hour with a bit of a jokey code word when we're going over time. And then do longer calls at teh weekend.
The problem is we're both chatterboxes and it's hard to limit the time :-D... But if lack of sleep compounds too much we have a way to get out of it...
The main thing is that when we come up against something like this, we're able to talk about it and work together to find a way through. We're pretty lucky like that.

[Jessica]

I have similar situation with time zones, but still we try to talk. It`s hard, but we continue to text during the day and try to talk when we`re both free.