I need sleep!!

[acfellin]

I need to start getting sleep, since schools started I've managed to get between 2-4 hours of sleep a night and then catching up on the weekends and with naps after school. There's an almost 12 hour time difference between me and my SO and if we want to really actually talk for a couple hours with my school and his college one of us needs to lose sleep. Im always the one to stay up though, he rarely stays up til I get home from school and never wakes up early before his classes. So while I'm barely functioning on three hours of sleep a night he's getting about nine. The worst part is he gets mad at me when I fall asleep while talking to him. It's not that I don't want to talk, it's just late and I'm exhausted!

I've tried asking him to change his sleep schedule for me and he does for a few days before being "too tired to stay up late" and he "needs sleep for classes". I don't get why he doesn't understand I get less sleep than he did when he tried and do it every night if I'm tired or not. How can I make him see I'm not mad or losing interest in him when I fall asleep I'm just tired, and how do I ask him to really commit to changing his sleeping habits?

[snow_girl]

Stop bending over backwards for him when he doesn't think he needs to do the same for you. Start only skyping on the weekends. Thats what my ex and I used to do because of our schedules. If he doesn't like that, then he can be the one to accommodate the the skpying. Seriously though, stop staying up for him. Class is important and no sleep is unhealthy.

[snow]

Exactly what snow_girl said. Going to school with less than 4 hours of sleep is very unhealthy for you and school is important, don't sacrifice your sleep! Write emails, text and respond when you actually can and have skype dates on the weekends or whenever it is the most comfortable for you BOTH.

[piratemama]

Both parties have to be willing to give for an LDR to work. Tell him that you are exhausted and have to change your sleep schedule, then do it. You need rest.

[TexastoFinland]

My grandmother taught me this.. and I have always seen it to be true no matter how good the relationship is. This seems totally against what everyone else is saying but "the woman ALWAYS sacrifices more than the man in a relationship."
LOL I am laughing in my head now at all of the groans this is going to get. I am almost 40 now and I am beginning to see what she is talking about which I refused to admit earlier in life. This is why I have never been married.

I need to start getting sleep, since schools started I've managed to get between 2-4 hours of sleep a night and then catching up on the weekends and with naps after school. There's an almost 12 hour time difference between me and my SO and if we want to really actually talk for a couple hours with my school and his college one of us needs to lose sleep. Im always the one to stay up though, he rarely stays up til I get home from school and never wakes up early before his classes. So while I'm barely functioning on three hours of sleep a night he's getting about nine. The worst part is he gets mad at me when I fall asleep while talking to him. It's not that I don't want to talk, it's just late and I'm exhausted!

I've tried asking him to change his sleep schedule for me and he does for a few days before being "too tired to stay up late" and he "needs sleep for classes". I don't get why he doesn't understand I get less sleep than he did when he tried and do it every night if I'm tired or not. How can I make him see I'm not mad or losing interest in him when I fall asleep I'm just tired, and how do I ask him to really commit to changing his sleeping habits?

[TexastoFinland]

I forget to post that my SO and I hardly talk on Skype or Gmail. We message via What's app throughout the day. I call him on Viber and he answers if he is awake and then if we are both at a place when I call where we can skype than we do. If we aren't then we send VMessages on What's app. He records the highlights of his day and sends them to me on Whats app. We are 8 hours apart so that's like when I go to work he is at work and when I get home, he is asleep. This is the only way it works. Try it to see if this doesnt work better. I actually feel closer to him this way than skyping for a few minutes everyday. It makes me feel like I can make him a part of what is happening instead of hearing about it if he happens to remember later. I hope this helped!!

[differentcountries]

You don't have as have to Skype a lot each day. You can keep in contact during the day, send emails. You need sleep. Just say good night early, there is no use talking it over.

[AussieAmericanGirl66]

My grandmother taught me this.. and I have always seen it to be true no matter how good the relationship is. This seems totally against what everyone else is saying but "the woman ALWAYS sacrifices more than the man in a relationship."
LOL I am laughing in my head now at all of the groans this is going to get. I am almost 40 now and I am beginning to see what she is talking about which I refused to admit earlier in life. This is why I have never been married.

That has been my experience. With us, it just seemed logical that I would sacrifice sleep, since I'm retired, and he's still working full-time with a demanding work schedule. So, I naively turned my whole life upside down and down under, and blended our time zones, leaning much more toward his time zone. Consequently, I ended up burning the candle at both ends, and I didn't stop to think of how complicated my own life would become, and how unhappy my family would become when they couldn't just pop in when they were in town running errands, because I would be sleeping. My poor daughter once said to me she never knew her mother was a vampire. LOL I have tried to go back into my own time zone, but it's very hard to break the habit of staying up late so I can talk to him. I try to get more sleep, by going to bed a few times a week a bit earlier, but then miss out on our late night goodnight chat. My sleep patterns have been messed up, and my circadian rhythm is out of whack. So there are consequences either way.

[rufuz]

I think my SO is exactly the opposite of this. I mean, I am also the one who sleeps less while he is sleeping like sometimes even 10 hours. I often felt sad about it because I thought he's not as interested in me as I am in him. But I also know that sleep is an important thing. My SO just acts completely the other way than to make me guilty for falling asleep. He is always the one telling me "It's late, go to bed, you have to sleep" ... But I am more the one who thinks it's okay to stay up late. At the moment I just have a job where I work like 3 days a week and also just 3 to 5 hours. So in my opinion there's a lot of time for sleeping throughout the day but my SO is not really okay with me changing my sleeping habits for him. We have 7 hours time difference. He wakes up when it's afternoon here and we mostly talk through whats app until 1 a.m. ... Then I go to sleep and sleep my 7-9 hours. When I was still working in a fulltime job I sometimes only got 5 to 6 hours of sleep. So it got a lot better in the last weeks. But he still always tells me to go to sleep. He even doesn't text me while I am sleeping because he is scared that the sound of my phone could wake me up.

I don't really have any good advice because my situation is so much different. But I also think you should talk and tell him that you need your sleep as much as he needs his. I am sure he's going to understand that.

[squeeker]

I also have a bit of a different story.. because my SO is the guy and when we first met, he was the one staying up late all the time to talk to me, because he already was in the habit of staying up past midnight, and he also was unemployed at the time.. so he didn't lose sleep, he just ended up sleeping at weird times!! It was good for our relationship at that time though because we got to know each other very well despite an 8 hour time difference, so it worked out well for us. Though I felt bad for him going to sleep at basically the same time I went to sleep. But I had a job, plus if I'm tired I get kinda grouchy and more easily emotional whereas he often times stayed up late talking to me because he was anxious about going to sleep, and that doesn't happen to me as much as him.. or I will fall asleep sooner.. plus he doesn't like to set an alarm unless he HAS to get up for something. Though the past year and a half he has had to stay into a more normal routine because he went back to university.. so we talk less. And because he was the one to get into the weird sleep routine before, sometimes I try to stay up late to talk to him or stretch myself a bit thin, but he understands I need sleep so if I told him I was only getting 2-4 hours of sleep a night, he would insist I slept earlier/more/took a nap at least.. because it's dangerous to sleep that little!!

I hope your SO can understand.. if you have to you should be firm and say you need to get more sleep.. but you will message him throughout the day when you can and skype on weekends (or choose a day that works out better during the week..) .. you have to have a way to communicate that works good for both of you!!! Good luck!