Have you noticed how the same conversation can go very differently with your partner, depending on the time of the conversation and your moods - what seems like a rather banal run-of-the-mill conversation could blow up into a massive fight, or what seems like a rather difficult conversation could end up unfolding with great ease.
That’s because there are days and times of the day when we feel especially critical or collaborative, and this differs from person to person. So depending on when you catch your partner, you’ll find them either listening or lashing out.
Within a day, we go through a cycle of waking up, feeling creative, being communicative, being able to do deep work, being exhausted and winding down. That’s essentially our circadian rhythm, and it’s different for each person.
In fact, some functions may be entirely impaired or exaggerated on some days and that’s influenced by so many factors - physical and mental. It has to do with your diet, metabolism, exercise, health, sleep patterns, hormone secretion, etc.
And now, imagine having to coordinate with a partner whose circadian rhythm is completely out of sync with yours in order to build a relationship with them - it’s not easy. But if you didn’t try at all, you’d be at the risk of losing physical and emotional intimacy with them.
When I wrote about physical intimacy, a few people reached out to me and said that one of the biggest blockers for intimacy in their lives has been a difference in sleep schedules with their partners.
The husband and wife sleep at different times, and wake up at different times because of which there is never a common window when both are feeling equally relaxed and interested in spending quality time together.
Couples don’t always start out this way, but this shift in sleep cycles can be attributed to sex, or rather the lack of it. Sleep and sex are highly co-related.
Sleep makes you have better sex, and sex makes you sleep better.
But as couples grow older, they have less and less sex, and hence, there’s a lower incentive to go to bed at the same time. Actually, it could also be the other way around - you’re probably having lesser sex because you’re no longer going to bed at the same time.
I don’t know.
Either way, they feed off each other, and the result is a loss of intimacy, both physical and emotional. This happens a lot with couples once they’ve had children. Children disrupt sleep cycles, deplete your physical energy and more than satisfy your need for intimacy.
So, all you want to do at the end of your day (or the beginning) is to get some time alone - away from your child, partner and the whole bloody world. That’s when your body starts to play with its circadian rhythm to make room.
In fact, the baby thing is just one example. But it could anytime there is a life-changing event in your lives which nudges you to seek more “me time”.
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I grew up seeing my grandparents have their independent rooms since the day I was born. I had no clue why they slept apart, I never questioned it. But when I saw my parents inherit these rooms, I saw them make the transition from sleeping together (no pun intended) to sleeping separately.
Their sleep cycles and sensitivities are very different, and so they found that having independent rooms was a logical solution to their independent issues, especially after they retired and were anyway spending the whole day together.
In fact a lot of older couples have made peace with sleeping separately, especially because it helps them prioritise their independent physical and mental health, which otherwise gets further disrupted from this difference in sleep cycles.
Does it result in a loss of intimacy?
Maybe.
Do they care?
I don’t know.
But intimacy really starts to leak from very early on relationships when your different circadian rhythms start to diverge and you don’t make efforts to come together (again, no pun intended).
Should you care?
I definitely think so.
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Our lives are extremely busy, our jobs are highly demanding. Despite being at home together, the pandemic took a huge toll on intimacy for many couples. We struggled to draw boundaries around our days, and most of us were in a heightened state of anxiety most of the time, that many of us are still recovering from, to be honest.
We are still trying to come to grips with how our professional lives intertwine with our personal lives, both independently and with our families. So, if you are nowhere close to finding time together with your partner, it’s okay. It might take you just a little bit longer to find yourself, and then find the energy to pick up your relationships.
But you’ll get there.
When you are finally ready to start finding some middle ground with your partner to get back some of that lost intimacy, there are three things for you to know:
Finding your Communication Peaks
The notion that all intimacy must happen in bed, and right before you sleep is limiting. Instead, understanding your unique and independent circadian rhythm could be a better starting point to finding time for intimacy.
We’re most receptive to communication and collaboration when our cortisol levels have begun to drop. This communication peak usually happens right after a creative or a deep work phase of the day, when you feel that silent sense of accomplishment (could be from little to nothing) and your body starts to relax.
Let’s say you start your day early by 6am, your cortisol levels might start to drop off post lunch by 1 or 2pm. But if you’ve started your day later around 9am, you may get there only by 4 or 5pm.
So when one partner (the early bird) pings the other (the sloth bear) at 3pm, they may be surprised to find the bear growling back at them. But that’s because the sloth bear is probably in their “deep work” state feeling extremely annoyed by interruption. And by the time the sloth bear tries to tap the bird, it may be dead for the day.
So, if there’s no natural alignment between your communication peaks, you can explore adjusting your schedules to find coherence. This tiny window could be a hook for a longer conversation later in the evening, if there’s time and energy.
But if you are going days without communicating effectively with your partner or really being heard by them, you need to start fixing it, and now you know how.
It takes two to tango
If you’re an early riser, you may not want to sleep in to match your spouse’s circadian rhythm because you may value the quiet time in the morning to get started or do some deep work.
Having your partner rise with you may not work either because you worry risking your quiet start, so you may prefer letting your spouse sleep in at the cost of not aligning your communication peaks, and eventually losing intimacy.
Your partner may or may not tell you about how they feel until much later, because they’ve got their own busy life too and it may not even occur to them that you two are slowly drifting apart.
But unwarranted escalation or even a quiet rant about not spending enough time together is a cue for you to start coming together as a couple. No one person can single-handedly make or break a relationship. It takes two to tango.
While it doesn’t have to happen at the same time all the time, it’s not sustainable for only one person to consistently do all the heavy lifting of accommodating the differences in sleep schedules. The relationship will snap.
Marriage is an equal partnership. You may choose to allocate roles and responsibilities differently, but in order to build and sustain a relationship, no one is exempted from making efforts to the marriage afloat.
So at some point, you may have to choose between your quiet start or late night binge and spending quality time with your partner.
Sleeping separately isn’t a one-way door
You’ve probably gone to bed early because your partner is too busy to hang with you. When they come into bed later and wake you up to talk to you, you may not be up for a conversation or you may even feel annoyed for having your sleep disrupted.
You may feel physically drained the next morning from disturbed sleep and that feeds into a vicious cycle, and sometimes it takes a toll on your health. In such cases, it’s okay to sleep separately to accommodate each others’ circadian rhythms.
As I said earlier, these rhythms aren’t set in stone, they change due to a lot of factors, both internal and external. This doesn’t mean the end of a marriage, or a permanent loss of intimacy.
You can always find a way back into the same room, when you’re both ready. All that matters for intimacy is intent, communication and effort.
The rest is merely logistics.
More from Shapely Gal:
As I’d announced in my 100th edition, I want to write a book on Marriages in India. So, I am finally starting to work on it. As a part of research for the book, I am looking to interview married couples in India, and looking for volunteers who are willing to discuss their experiences being married.
The insights I develop from these conversations will go into the book. All interviews will be anonymous, unless people explicitly give me permission (in writing) to quote them in the book (if necessary).
If you’re interested to contribute to this book with your experience or you think I should speak to a couple you know, do write to me at the earliest.
What I’m reading/ writing/ watching/ listening to:
Love Shouldn’t Feel Bad: This piece by Heather Havrilesky articulates narcissism in relationships so beautifully without having to label it.
White Flag: Kayti Christian discussing her IVF journey with so much courage - it’s scary how relatable this story has become these days.
How the Best Marriages work w/ Eli Finkel: Quite a few people have been discussing Eli Finkel’s work with me, so wanted to understand his take on the topic. I don’t disagree with him - we are more ambitious about marriage today than ever before.
Jaunting in Jordan: I documented my adventures in Jordan this summer on my new substack (in case you aren’t subscribed?).
The Nine lives of Pakistan by Declan Walsh: This is my first book about Pakistan. I feel strange knowing so little about a neighbour.
A History of Thailand by Chris Baker: Started reading this book as I was writing my travel piece on Thailand - it’s been so interesting and insightful. It’s a super detailed account of how Thailand become the nation it is today over the last few centuries.