Knowing when to budge and when not to

Is there a reason he feels the need to wait up for you? I definitely wouldn't be waiting up for my husband if he worked until 3am 🙅🏽‍♀️.

I’d get to the bottom of why he’s so dead set on going to bed at the same time. It doesn’t make any sense if you work conflicting schedules for either of you to get a small amount of sleep just so you sleep at the same time. My advice would be to communicate and come up with a compromise to start- like maybe a few nights a week he stays up and the rest of the time he goes to sleep without you. Maybe look into couples counseling too if you can’t come to a better solution. Him constantly not sleeping is going to negatively impact his health and your relationship at some point, if it hasn’t already.

While I love it when my husband and I go to bed together, it just doesn't happen. He gets up at 4am and goes to bed at like 8pm. I don't even get home until around 6pm and am not ready for bed 2 hours after getting home. We are still incredibly happy together. Going to bed at the same time isn't a make or break in a relationship. I would ask him why it is so important to him. This way, you get a better understanding and maybe you two can come up with some kind of work around. Is it that it ensures some time together? Then you can maybe figure out another time of day where you two can connect?

My husband and I work different schedules. I have a more traditional work schedule (9 to 6ish), and he works 3 to midnight. I usually wake up by 7 am and am asleep by 10 pm. My husband doesn’t get up until noon and doesn’t go to bed until around 3 am. Some nights I’m up and will wait up on him, but other nights, I don’t. But we have a system where sometimes I wake up for a hour or two when he comes home from work or he wakes up early to spend a couple of hours with me. Very unconventional, but we do make time for each other, and we don’t require that the other wait up or get up with the other one on a regular basis. Neither of us would get any sleep! I agree with the other posters that you need to find out why this is such a big issue for him.

He needs to take some melatonin, and either sleep on his own time or stop complaining. Get to the bottom of this, but this is a him problem.


Honestly, it sounds like it may be a control or a codependency issue.
If you need to unwind, you need to unwind. How are you supposed to unwind if he's complaining that you're not in bed?

He probably just wants to spend time with you and feels like you don't get enough quality time together. I feel the same way but we are still are on almost the same schedule. I'd suggest making sure you're spending meaningful time together when you can.

My fiance and I work opposite schedules too, I work 3 days a week from 8 am to 8 pm, he works 5 overnights a week from 2 am to 2 pm. He runs loading belts for UPS so a pretty labor intense job, there's no way that he'd be able to wait up for me on days I'm working. When our days off line up, we make sure to take extra time together, even just with little things, like he'll hang out and talk with me while I water the flowers. On my days off, he'll spend time with me when he gets home from work before going to bed. We don't see each other a ton during the week, but we've found a pattern that works for us and that's just because we've had conversations about it and what we need from the other. I suggest just making sure you communicate and take that extra time that lines up and do something just you guys to make it meaningful.

I wonder if he just wants to make sure you make it home okay? That is late so he may just be concerned about your safety. If that’s the case then ensure him that you are safe and he can keep us phone volume up and near him while he sleeps so if anything is wrong he’ll hear your call.
That’s really the only reason I can think of other than spending time with you, but even that isn’t much of a reason because you guys just go to sleep after. Just ask him if there is a specific reason!

This is so not a sustainable pattern.

I know many couples who work opposing shifts (husband is a police officer and works 2nd or 3rd shift, wife is an executive assistant and works a standard 9-5; husband works early morning 7am-3pm shift, wife works in retail and may work as early as 9am or as late as 11pm). They all have nights where they go to bed and wake up at different times, and they share a bed. They make it work.

I don't know how your FH can teach effectively if he's getting less 4-5 hours of sleep a night or less. I assume he cares about his work (most teachers do). He needs to get in bed at a reasonable hour (8 hours before his wake-up time) and even if it takes a while for him to fall asleep he needs to be consistent with it. He's not doing himself, your relationship, or his students any favors by pulling near all nighters just to go to bed at the same time you do.

Also it is totally normal to need to unwind and decompress before going to bed. I used to work a mix of shifts and when I'd get home at 10:30-11pm I definitely couldn't get "wound down" and asleep any earlier than midnight, which was super challenging when I needed to leave the house by 8am the next day to get to work. Even just adjusting my late nights by one hour made a huge difference. Anyway, you aren't in the wrong here. He may just need to hear it from other couples that have very different work schedules, but many people have partners who have different work schedules from them and they make it work without sacrificing their health.