The One Thing I Do To Connect With My Husband

For most of our 35 years of marriage, my husband and I have lived in entirely different time zones — at least when it comes to sleep. He is, and always has been, a morning person who wakes up before dawn, ready to start the day. For years in the Navy, he got up at 4:30 every morning, and even after leaving military life behind, his internal clock never really changed. Now he’s a teacher, and even in the summer, when no alarm clock is required, he’s still naturally awake between 5 a.m. and 6:30 a.m., puttering around the house while the rest of the world is unconscious.

I, on the other hand, come alive at night. I am typically up until midnight, but if left entirely to my own devices, I would happily stretch that to 3 a.m. or 4 a.m., reading, writing, watching television, or finally getting inspired to start a project at 10:30 at night. And despite what every seasoned parent assured me when I became a mother, having children never magically transformed me into someone who enjoys mornings. I kept waiting for that switch to flip — for me to become one of those women who bounce out of bed before sunrise to journal and exercise in the quiet dawn hours. It never happened. I still feel most like myself after dark.

For years, our different rhythms created a strange little disconnect in our marriage. Around 9:30 p.m. or 10 p.m., he’d start getting sleepy and announce he was heading to bed, while I was just hitting my stride. I’d stay up, doing my thing, sometimes relieved to have uninterrupted time to myself, but also feeling a little lonely after he disappeared down the hall. It felt oddly separate, like our day ended at different times.

It’s funny what being married a long time teaches you about intimacy. Sometimes connection is simply about proximity — choosing, over and over again, to inhabit the same space. At some point along the way, I started going to bed when he did.

I wasn’t usually tired. Except for those handful of years when we had two young children who would routinely wake me up before dawn, I’m rarely even drowsy before 11 p.m. But I realized I missed that small overlap at the end of the day more than I valued the extra couple of hours alone in another room.

So now, most nights, we head to bed together. He falls asleep quickly, a skill I both admire and deeply resent. Meanwhile, I prop myself up with pillows and read a book, answer emails, do some writing, or listen to a podcast while he sleeps beside me. Sometimes I stay awake another two or three hours after he’s out cold.

But that little stretch of time before he falls asleep has quietly become one of my favorite parts of our marriage. We talk about our day or rehash something funny that happened earlier, discuss how our teenagers are doing and share our retirement dreams, or have completely random conversations that somehow make us feel more connected. Some of our best conversations happen in those 15 or 20 minutes before sleep. Of course, I have to remember he’s ready to go to sleep and actually stop talking to him so he can.