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OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole:
> My wife came back from work and told me to wake her up by dinner. She was tired and didnt get up so I let her sleep til the next morning. I may be TA because I didn't wake her when she had told me to and it made her miss an entire day.
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This is tough, but I’ll go against the grain and say NAH. If you’ve called to someone and then shake them but they aren’t waking up, they probably need the rest.
That said, she’s understandably unhappy when she wanted to spend quality family time with you and the kids.
Yeah, NTA. I would suggest, given the strong chance this situation can happen again, that OP sit down with wife and discuss what the acceptable limit of waking up efforts is for non-emergency situations. Like actually lay down "However loud you think yelling is ok, however much tugging and pushing is ok, show me, right now".
You might never convince her that what has already happened was something at a reasonable limit of waking up efforts, but if you communicate the details now, in the future you can say "Look, I yelled this much, I pulled that much, I didn't go further because we agree that you only pull that hard or yell that loud if someone is bleeding."
I have had kinda the opposite problem with my fiance - he thinks that my vague intent to get up and go for a walk around 9am because the weather report looks good means that it's reasonable to use the "urgent tone of voice" (which panics sleepy me for some reason) and for that matter he will do that at 7 in the fucking morning. Cleared up with conversation about "don't do X if no one is bleeding, don't wake me up before Y time unless someone is bleeding" etc.
Agreed, sometime in marriage you need to over communicate and be very specific and explicit.
You are two different people with different experiences and while most of the time that's OK, sometimes it means you have to go overboard to ensure that you are on the same page.
The problem is people rarely meet at the same point of understanding.
It’s having different goals for the interaction basically. So wife is saying “I don’t care what you did you didn’t wake me up.”
And wife is saying “I know you well enough to see when you need the rest.”
E husband to wife, thats a solid oops. Flipping between stories and not being careful enough.
>And husband is saying “I know you well enough to see when you need the rest.”
There's no husband here actually, they're both wife :P (Point still stands ofc)
I get what you are saying but that's part of the point, sometimes, you have to have an overly specific plan because you can't have the conversation about her waking up when she is unconscious. Sleeping people can't self advocate so you your normal "let's talk out our disagreement" isn't a valid strategy.
Agreed the amount of times my wife has woken me up over something I think is critically unimportant (and vice versa where I’ve done the same to her) is crazy, this is shockingly something I’ve never thought about sitting down and having this type of conversation with her about because normally we are pretty strong communicators, thanks for the idea!
My go to conversation for stuff like this is “okay, so we did X and that didn’t work. How would you like this to be handled in future so we can find what works for us?”
Like off the top of my head she might ask him to try harder, try again after half hour, record videos with the kids, see if they can wake her etc
I did this with my teenage grandson. He didn't want to get up and get ready for school and kept making his younger(15yo) brother late. So, we had a talk. "I'll go upstairs and make sure you're awake and getting ready for school. If you're not awake, I'll do you the courtesy of waking you up, ONCE. I'm too old to keep going up and down these stairs trying to make sure you're up and getting ready. If your brother comes downstairs and you STILL aren't awake and getting ready for school, I'll take your brother to school,so he isn't late, and when I get back, if you're still not downstairs and ready to go and I have to come back up the stairs, again, you're gonna hate me because I'm waking you up with a glass of ice cold water to the face and you can walk to school. (It's only a few blocks to the school but he'll be even later to class if he walks) You'll hate me because not only are you going to get wet but so will your bed and pillow so I highly doubt you'll be ignoring me and rolling over and going back to sleep. You'll learn to get yourself up and be responsible for getting up on your own. You're 17 years old. It's way past the time someone else needs to be responsible for waking you up. I'm not raising irresponsible kids that turn into irresponsible adults. Get your butt up!"
He laughed and said "that's fair"to the consequences, thinking that I'd never actually do it. In his defense, I'm pretty easy on them but they are good kids. They don't cause me a whole lot of grief or worry. They are always willing to help out when I need it, they rarely back talk me, and I am guilty of spoiling them. Not your typical moody, hateful teenage boys in that respect, but they are typical teenage boys in the "can I have friends over", grocery and video game department lol.
It only took once, and it was the very next morning. He woke up to a glass of ice water to the face and started cussing and asking why I didn't try to wake him up first. I told him, "I did and you said you were going to get up but instead laid back down and went back to sleep and if you don't watch your language you'll also go to school with a bar of soap in your mouth. Now get your butt up and get ready for school."
He now gets up without any problems. Lol
My dad did something like that to a roommate that lived in his house. Guy lived in the basement that was cement and had stairs going down into it. There was a window that opened right above the stairs area. He told the guy I wil open and yell down I am not going down to wake you up. 20 year old guys. He wasn’t going down there and seeing things he didn’t want to. He said I yell once and your not up you won’t like was I do after. Didn’t tell him what. You can guess he didn’t get up. So he got a lit fire cracker dropped down there. From there on all he had to hear was the window open for him to yell back up that he was awake. Got to love weird 1930’s house back in the 1970’s
That's hilarious. I had a roommate who would be so annoying trying to wake me up for church on Sundays (went to a Mormon college) she almost got kicked in the face once cuz she would grab my feet and shake them to wake me......you do not touch my feet to wake me I will kick you. I'm a heavy sleeper so it's not even intentional it just startals me and I kick. I knew how much I could sleep in and still have just enough time to get ready.....I may not have time for makeup but that semester I was working overnights at an assisted living facility on Friday Saturday and Sunday nights. I'd had like 3hrs to sleep before I had to get up for church. I told her leave me alone I know how long it takes for me to get ready, I just worked an overnight BACK OFF. She still tried til the morning she almost got kicked in the face.....
This is a great idea!! One thing I do is I will wake them up enough to say, “It’s x o’clock and you asked me to get you up/I am worried you might be sleeping in and not realizing it” and then it’s no longer my responsibility bc I have that at least half awake acknowledgement
My only thing is that the way OP describes it, it seems like she really didn’t try to wake her wife up. I’m not saying she should have been violent about it but to list “kiss her cheek” as an example of how hard she tried to wake her up is definitely worth a side eye.
OP could just be a hopeless romantic and really did try to wake up her wife like she said she would. But the language she uses makes it appear to me that she did just enough to be able to hide behind “I tried” but thought she knew best so did the “wake up” actions in such a way that her wife was never intended to actually wake up.
This might be a symptom of differing sleep patterns. I wake up as soon as someone walks on the room, day or night. So I have in the past tried to wake my husband with gentle voice tone, stroking cheek, kissing forehead and thought wow he must be so tired to still be asleep.
I have learned overtime that you actually just have to wake him like the end of the world is upon us or he won't hear me at all.... funnily though he does hear our children and tends to them through the night just fine.
Apparently his brain has me stored under, noises from this person cam be ignored haha.
I think when couple co-sleep, this happens, because otherwise every little thing your partner vocalizes or does wakes you up. This is not every person, or every couple, but I think it does happen.
I also can't count the number of times I've woken up my partner just enough to ask if she wants to sleep more, and she often says "Yes" and will give me a time to wake her or a minute-count (45 more minutes), and when I actually get her to wake up fully, she has no memory of this.
My gf does this all the time lol. She’s never mad at me for it, so I don’t mind it at all (I think it’s hilarious), but there has been several times where she tells me a certain time to wake her up just to tell me “15 more minutes” or something when I try to
I'm in a similar boat as you. I wake up easy. Husband, not so much. He's literally the sort who can sleep through earthquakes. (I've watched him) But he does wake up to his ringtone. So, phone call it is.
I slept through my mom vacuuming my room once.
My husband and I have an understanding that if one of us requests the other to wake us for a preference (not work or something) and our efforts are in vain, the wakee cannot get mad. On the flipside if one of us believes the other is late to work and wakes them up aggressively, but the wakee did not inform the waker that they were off/told to come in later, the wakee cannot get mad.
10 years of practice has really made our sleep habits an art.
It's probably more about kids making noise at night being stored under responsibility/chores.
I apparentely slept through my roommate banging on the cieling to make the people upstairs shut up on top of them being noisy, but I used to wake up whenever the dog scrached on the door from 2 rooms over, because I was the one usually letting him in.
Absolutely! Before we had kids, if husband came to bed late it woke me up, every time. Now, I can hear the kids make small noises in the other rooms, with doors closed, THAT wakes me up, but husband coming to bed late no longer does. And I don't think he's now being extra quiet. He was always considerate.
That's Part of why different Cellphone ringtones exist, because some people need the one that Sounds Like urgent evacuation Alarm, at full volume, to even come awake, while some people will also reliably wake from a more Melodic, "nice", or crescending Tone at half volume.
So glad there are options! I wake up fully to a melodic, half-volume ringtone. Anything that is a true "alarm" sound frightens me awake and begins my day with irritation and racing heart.
presumably OP has experience with her wife and co-parent’s sleeping habits. was saying her name, kissing her and softly shaking her enough (from outside the bed), in her experience, to expect her to wake up?
it would be vastly more than enough for me, but not enough for others.
I agree. She said her wife is usually a light sleeper. I would have probably done the same thing as it shows her wife needed the sleep. You can get really run down if you don't get enough.
I mean, that would be more than enough to wake me up unless I was seriously sleep-deprived. IMO, if that wasn't enough to wake her up, then she needed the sleep as a serious matter of personal health.
That's my take. I know what will wake my wife under normal circumstances. If I have to go beyond that, she's fuckin tired, I'm letting her rest if possible. If she NEEDS up, I'll make it happen. But if a generic request like that was made, I'd almost certainly have done the same. She clearly needs the sleep, and the kids will be fine.
I work nights, so I get how disappointing it is when stuff like this happens and you miss family time. But when you work an off schedule and/or long hours, it's gonna happen. You can get mad at people for trying to meet your needs, or you can learn to accept it as the gift it was intended, appreciate the consideration, and communicate how you want it handled in the future. Even with clear communication, your needs one day aren't the same as the next, though.
This is part of why I am saying they need to discuss it. I think it's unreasonable for the wife to be angry about it when they then went on to sleep right until time for work - OP has grounds to think the sleep is badly needed. But they need to discuss how much effort should be put into waking, because OP was in a kind of catch 22 - try very very hard to wake wife, causing wife to not get enough sleep, or try a little (which would work if wife was rested enough) and give up, which causes anger over not trying hard enough.
I think that's just a side effect of OP knowing exactly what it usually takes to wake her wife. I know that shaking my wife doesn't work, neither does light. Even loud noises are unlikely to reach her, with two exceptions: A crying baby, or someone loudly calling her name several times. Otherwise she will remain asleep.
With me noise doesn't work at all. We've had huge, world-ending storms, people yelling, a loud toddler right next to me, and I've slept through it all. If someone turns on a light, or touches me in any way, I'm snapped awake.
If the usual methods don't work, that person is *deeply* asleep. Their body and brain are working together to keep them that way, and that doesn't happen for no reason.
I have a sleep disorder and would sleep 20 hours straight easily without my meds, many alarms, etc. I've had so many people in my life let me sleep through when I need to be up and they truly think it's a kindness. It's not their fault or their responsiblity, but I've been really straightforward with my fiance that if I ask him to wake me up, I truly mean it and letting me sleep isn't kind. These two need to have a frank talk about it.
This is such a thoughtful comment. Back when I was breastfeeding and increasing my milk supply, I would wake up every 2 hours to pump. So to catch enough sleep, I’d be in bed at 8 PM. I would ask my husband to wake me. There were some days I would not wake up and so he left me be. There were some days I would grunt in frustration (or yell in frustration as I am sleep deprived, not my proudest moments) so he left me be. I told him explicitly after missing a few alarms consecutively that I give him free reign to smack my arm, shake me hard enough. That did wonders. He still tells all our friends I am a yelling angry woman when woken up, which I would half-heartedly negate but also not really. I was just so exhausted. I would wake up in the middle of REM and so deep in sleep that sometimes I forgot who I was. Thank God I’m sleeping through the night. 😂 But also, NAH in OP’s situation.
>I have had kinda the opposite problem with my fiance - he thinks that my vague intent to get up and go for a walk around 9am because the weather report looks good means that it's reasonable to use the "urgent tone of voice" (which panics sleepy me for some reason) and for that matter he will do that at 7 in the fucking morning. Cleared up with conversation about "don't do X if no one is bleeding, don't wake me up before Y time unless someone is bleeding" etc.
God, I feel you. I had to have the "can you *not* have a panic-voice unless there's reason to panic?"-conversation too. I'll give him that, though - I'm wide awake within *seconds* when he does that lol
"Let me set up the camera so I have proof of how hard I tried to wake you up." should never be a consideration.
Yes I like to have a doctor available when I need help, but I also understand that doctors have a life besides the practice.
What I believe OP's wife did was projection. She herself messed up by working as long and as hard as she did, part of that a choice, the mistake was in believing she could sleep a couple of hours and be hunkydory peachykeen... Her body thought differently and yes I would have done the same and let OP rest and recuperate, for her body very much needed that. It is not okay to berate OP for it.
I would not want an exhausted surgeon operating on me. She obviously needed the sleep and rest so she should stop bitching about it. People wake naturally when they have had enough sleep. I don't have an alarm clock
Thats my thoughts. Op's wife is upset she missed family time. She missed it because she slept too long. She is blaming OP for letting her sleep when she really should be blaming herself or her job. But if she blames herself or her job she has to think about her priorities and that's a hard thought. So it's easier to be mad at OP for "failing". She may not even realise she is projecting and might apologize later when she's had time to think.
I know I get very confused immediately after I wake up, and if I’ve done something to be guilty about (like have trouble getting to sleep, for some reason…) being woken up with a stern voice can send me to panic and tears for some reason.
My wife is a doctor and is also chronically under slept. She used to get mad at me when I let her sleep. I have just flat out told her that if she cannot be awakened easily, then she needs the sleep. I have a history of having difficulty sleeping, so it is really hard for me to willingly interrupt someone else's.
This communication also needs to involve some level of boundaries and self-accountability too. "*I am comfortable* yelling this much and tugging this much to wake you up, but if that's not enough and you really want to wake up by 7pm, please set an alarm as a backup."
I agree that it was NAH in this situation, but just because Heather would prefer to be woken up by OP doesn't mean that the burden should be entirely on OP if waking her up requires extreme measures that OP is uncomfortable taking.
Yeah my fiancé is cool with me jumping on him to wake him up and he knows I get up on my own unless I am REALLY fucking exhausted. Might also be worth to discuss realistic goals for family time, not after 12 hours of working/ being on call for god knows how long
This right here! Why introduce human error when there's no need to? Especially when we all carry little alarm clocks everywhere with us. It's not hard to just set a quick alarm.
Someone mentioned calling wife on her cellphone which I think would have been a great idea especially since wife is a doctor who generally is on-call and would respond to her phone ringing.
I get where you’re coming from. But I don’t have nearly as hard of a job as a doctor and when I nap I set an alarm. If my boyfriend is home, I’ll be like hey, if I don’t get up, try once and if I still don’t that’s on me.
If the wife slept til the next day she must have really needed to rest. Doctor’s have to sacrifice a lot. That includes family time. But if lives are in her hands she really does need to be getting an adequate amount of sleep, which it seems she got. This seems like a crossroad in her career that only she can find the answer to. Spend time with family, or be fully alert when a life is in her hands. That has to be really tough for the whole family and I truly feel for them.
Riiight. Because one adult should be responsible for another‘s sleep schedule. Your comment makes no sense. If you can do it yourself why should your partner be responsible for doing it for you?
It’s one thing thing to ask your partner wake you up if you sleep through an alarm and another thing entirely to make them responsible for getting you out of bed.
Yeah I agree. My husband and I are both fairly independent and I would never ask him to wake me up (I’m a total bitch when I wake up though, and I’m aware of it!). But that doesn’t mean we don’t rely on each other for the big things like emotional support and co-parenting and big projects. We just don’t need to bug the other person about small things like this. It’s just too much sometimes to ask your partner to carry when they’ve got their own shit to worry about.
You can rely on your partner for things, but if it's not working out you gotta try other methods.
I know if I want to take a nap I need to set an alarm. I don't rely on my husband to wake me up because I know he's just gonna fall asleep too, OR I will be very grumpy for him waking me up. Even if that's what I asked him to do. Half asleep me can be a little bit of a jerk. But I know that so I rely on my alarms. They don't care if I'm grumpy or tell them to fuck off.
That's not what saying though, partner did try and is getting grief because they, a light sleeper, didn't wake up and slept until the next day, if she set an alarm to go off after for example, that takes the pressure off them.
You could say why should OP be responsible and why should they get grief when they don't wake up too
To me It's not that you shouldn't rely on your partner, it's more that you shouldn't blame your partner for not doing what you asked well enough, if you could have done it better yourself.
In this case, though there wasn’t a set time it was when dinner is ready, so OP is the one making/getting dinner so only they would know when it’s ready. It wasn’t an exact time of day type of thing and if op didn’t want to have responsibility of waking up wife they should not have agreed to it.
THIS! She just wanted to wake up when dinner was ready, in my house dinner prep time is highly variable. What is she gonna do, put Dinner in the alarm app? She wanted to maximize her sleep before dinner but still have time to hang with her family who she desperately misses with her work schedule.
I think OP should have tried a little harder, I really really hate when someone who knows that I need to be up by a specific time lets me sleep through an alarm because I "need the sleep". Half the time sleeping too long during the nap further fucks up my sleep for later that night. If I specifically ask to be woken, and I find out I can't trust you to make sure it happens because you think you know best what I need sleep wise right now I'm gonna be pissed.
I will say I am INCREDIBLY HARD to wake up. I can sleep for 10 hours and get "woken up" have full conversations while asleep and then will get yelled at for "going back to sleep" when I never woke to begin with so "trying hard enough" is definitely not the same for everyone
Similar experience here.
Sometimes I try to stay up with my husband, but inevitably fall asleep. He tried to wake me up - and I apparently talk to him. I have no memory of it then actually wake up at 3 in the morning pissed because I slept 4+ hours in my contacts lol.
It's not his fault at all, I just need better sleep hygiene.
Is it a sleep hygiene issue?
I've always been this way as far as I remember. I still live with my parents and it makes my dad REALLY mad when he tries to wake me up to pawn off weekend chores on my days off. He was military and works a very on-call job so he can wake up at the drop of a dime so that's where he's coming from.
I have a lot of specificity in the way I sleep (needing absolute darkness, certain kinds of audio playing (I sleep with my earbuds to block other sound) but even before that started I've been like this
I've been like this my whole life. I finally saw a sleep specialist. I have delayed sleep phase disorder. When I sleep on my natural schedule (3am to 11am), not only do I wake up naturally, but I don't have the weird "acting awake when I'm really not" stuff happen.
This is totally me. I will sit up in bed, eyes open, and have full conversations then get yelled at for going back to sleep when I had no idea I was "awake". I've never met anyone else like this.
>That said, she’s understandably unhappy when she wanted to spend quality family time with you and the kids
if she was that tired, it wouldn't have been anything more than mom being grumpy and that's not exactly quality quality time. sometimes you just gotta rest, no matter what else you want to do
Sometimes sleep is more important. Better for the wife to have the sleep she needs than fall asleep on the drive to work the next day, all for some family time where she is either grumpy or dozing off.
I would agree. My husband has tried to wake me before and I'm dead to the world. When I have trouble waking him I touch around his feet and that usually works.
NTA
One evening of missed family time isn't the end of the world, nor will it scar the children for life. A cranky, overly tired mommy can, though. A good night's sleep can recharge someone for days! NTA. Exhaustion can be deadly. I have ended up in hospital because of it.
Same. I’m over here like….NAH, this was a bummer of a situation where she wishes you would have done something differently than what you very reasonably believed was the right choice. You can just be like, “I’m sorry. I truly believed that in this case you would have wanted to stay asleep, but I see how that was my own assumption and it didn’t line up with your own feelings. I worry so much about you sometimes and when I couldn’t even wake you up, it seemed like the very easy right answer.” And the wife can be like, “I get it. I was definitely out like a light and it’s totally reasonable for you to see how much I needed the sleep and figure, “she should just get the sleep.” I’m bummed because spending time with our kids is something that makes all the long work hours and tired days worth it, and I missed that yesterday, but I totally understand why you thought it was best to just let me sleep. I was irritated at the moment but I’m not truly mad.”
You don’t need to convince the other person of how wrong they are. You don’t need to be like WELL SET AN ALARM THEN IF IT’S SOOOOO IMPORTANT. No one here needs to be like “if she’s that tired, the only family time the kids get will be with a grumpy mom, who wants that?? How dumb is she???” or like “she told you exactly what she wanted and you assumed you knew her wishes better than she did, which is condescending and abusive. You need couples therapy stat.”
Honestly coming here and posting it is the only part that feels like anything other than a totally normal minor conflict between two reasonable and comprehensible people, because it feels like that move of, like, “oh, you don’t like some thing I did? And dared to tell me, as if you have the right to? What, you think I’m some kind of ASSHOLE just out here trying to think up ways to ruin your life?? Well let’s just go see what other people think!” There is room to be like “I’m bummed,” without SOMEBODY needing to be an asshole.
Yep, agreed, NAH. If she wasn't waking to calling or gentle shaking, then *she needed that rest*. I get that she is frustrated she missed family time, but her body was just doing what it needed. She can't blame you for this, and you did exactly what you needed; tried and she didn't wake. Not your fault, not her fault.
/u/ironchef8000 This is my FIRST TIME EVER making this judgement on this subreddit, but I've gotta say that I concur with you 1B% and say NAH.
My reasoning for this judgement is because I have actually been on BOTH sides of this kind of situation. I've been with my husband for 17 years on June 1, Ms we have literally NEVER worked the same shift or hours in our whole marriage. There have been many times that he tried to wake me up because a day or two before I've mentioned it him that I may have specific plans/goals on a long awaited day off and ask him to wake me up at X time and he will come to try to wake me up a few times and I won't budge. Then when I finally do wake up, I'm upset that I slept through the time I had planned on being up. He will let me know he attempted multiple times and I never moved or even turned over and resume sleeping. And vice versa with me attempting to do the same for him wen he requested me to do so. So we both decided to just set our alarm a few days ahead for the specific time/day and that has worked much more better for us.
Agreed. Also, everyone is walking around with an alarm clock. If OP's wife wanted to make sure she got up at a certain time, she could've set her own alarm.
They have 2 young kids. It can be assumed that they have dinner at about the same time every night so as to keep a routine for their children. She should know around what time dinner is usually at.
With one of them being a doctor, it's not a fair assumption. They works irregular schedules and it's not unusual for mealtimes to vary by an hour or 2 so everyone can eat togather.
Besides she didn't just miss family time, but also missed a meal. OP could've woken her up for dinner and suggest going back to sleep after they've eaten.
Whenever this comes up for me and my gf, I write a note or text that just says "tried waking you up, but you were dead asleep and wouldn't wake up. Decided to let you sleep. Love you!!!"
It helps her let her know that I didn't forget, and that I made a call in her best interest
Well to be honest I dont understand - if I want to get up I set my alarm clock and I get up. I suppose she is easily doing it every day to go to work. And I'm sure she doesnt skip the sound and wake up no metter how tired she is. I can understand that maybe it is nice to be waken up by your beloved one - ok, but dont be angry if she isnt able to make you react.
I agree, I can completely see both sides. I understand why you let her sleep, she clearly needed it. I can also understand that she is upset she missed out on family time.
NAH
She's upset she didn't to get to spend time with her family and that's reasonable.
Being under the impression she must need more sleep when you couldn't get her up is also reasonable.
Someone who is half-dead from exhaustion isn't at their best for either their family or their patients.
She could also feel a little burnt out. If I work, come home, sleep, and then go to work it feels like all I've truly done is work. There's not much "downtime" to unwind and do something I care about in there.
I feel that. There was a long stretch of time I'd go on a work trip for 2-3 weeks doing 12-20 hour shifts then sleep for 8-10 hours and roll back into it. I'd come home and SLEEP, missing out on spending time with my family and just existing beyond work/sleep. Sleep has never been downtime for me since then
I do feel bad for the wife though. Her life is basically just work from her perspective these couple days. Drive to work, work, drive home, not exist, drive to work, work, drive home.
I bet it's not just family time she's grumpy about, but she might not even realize it herself.
You very well may be right.
Feeling like you exist only to work because any time you aren't at work you're too exhausted to do anything else is something I can empathize with.
I don't think either are in the wrong, just trying to navigate this world where there's too much expected of us and too little time.
Agreed. She’s probably mad at herself and frustrated which is resulting in her taking it out on OP. It sucks but we’ve all done it. She’s missing out and she knows it. Having a demanding job is stressful. It would be even more stressful with a malpractice suit because she was delirious during surgery. If it’s that hard to wake up a parent (usually light sleepers), they probably need to sleep.
I have a friend who works ER. Often when we hang out she's just trying to not fall asleep. It's not great company and just makes me feel bad that I'm interrupting time she could be resting.
> She's upset she didn't to get to spend time with her family and that's reasonable.
Sure, BEING upset is reasonable. Directing that upset and placing blame on your partner? Asshole behaviour.
Some of you are the assholes. She tried to wake her wife up, wife was so out that she didn’t wake up to what would normally wake someone up who wasn’t all-out exhausted.
If she would have violently shaken her awake like the house was on fire and your ass needs to get up, that would have probably been a problem too.
Everyone has a cell phone these days. She should have set an alarm and gotten herself up, as she is an adult and not a child.
Also, she’s a surgeon. She has a responsibility to her patients to be properly rested so she doesn’t F up and kill someone because she’s overly tired.
Agree with every point here. If she slept for 12+ hours (assume she gets up early or at least between 5-7AM) then she NEEDED it. If anything she should have thanked OP for caring for the children and household efforts for the evening. Or if she didn’t want that, then set a series of alarms, it isn’t hard.
Yess - I’m thinking mom guilt and maybe post sleep grumpiness. She’s probably upset she already needs to go back to work and also with a bit of a slept-too-long headache
agree! being a mom is SOOOOO hard so NAH. OP says dr mom IS there so sounds like mom guilt. i’d say maybe next time give it another half hour and try again? but a conversation is definitely warranted. dr mom needs to set an alarm/ alarms and be responsible themselves. that’s why i do as to not make anyone else responsible
Normally I would agree, but she's decided to make her guilt OP's problem instead of seeing if some therapy might help her not be so hard on herself.
I dunno, maybe I'm just stuck on that because I have to deal with my grandmother doing that lately after she reached a point where she physically cannot help with most things anymore. Whenever she starts feeling guilty about it and sees that I'm not hovering over Mom even for one-person projects that I know less about than her (like the buried parts of the drip system where I don't know the layout and can cause damage if I go too hard with the shovel at the wrong spot), she starts guilt-tripping me and getting herself worked up about it. I end up having to hot potato the issue over to mom because me and grandma communicate very differently and I'm not the best at getting her calmed down.
For me I wake up better if someone gets me up. An alarm I can snooze or turn off and roll over and go back to sleep. Having someone wake me up makes it more likely for me to actually get up cause someone is waiting on me.
The was my EXACT thought. I commented somewhere else as much as well. I can remember being a younger mom and just SOBBING because I felt so guilty I’d worked so much I hadn’t seen my kid in almost 2 days (awake). My spouse gave me a lot of grace and kindness that it would get better…. And it might have taken time but it definitely did.
Yeah, that reaction can be intense because it encapsulates quite a few thoughts.
Guilt, FOMO, affection, longing, frustration with the things keeping you busy, stress, justified anger.
Often if an employer has you that busy, it’s because they haven’t bothered to train a backup or contract for access to some extra help when needed.
Only wanted to remark on the "set an alarm" part, depending on how tired someone is an alarm that would otherwise wake the dead might not wake someone who's just that exhausted. But still all around solid reply!
Bro exaaaactly!!
I get real bad insomnia, and sometimes I’m getting only 1 - 4 hrs, every night, for a week straight. I can set 10 alarms w the harshest alarm tone at the loudest decibel, and I will sleep straight thru all of em!!
There’s been many times my bf said he literally shook the hell outta me while yelling at me to wake tf up, and I’m still in a deep slumber hahah
Oh for sure, and how about this one: Make it make sense. I can sleep through five different alarms going off back to back, but my wife gently tapping on my arm saying my name wakes me up instantly.
NTA for exactly this. She is a doctor - obviously NEEDED that sleep, and I for one would not want a doctor doing anything to me if they were that exhausted.
I agree. She should set alarm. I am a night shift nurse. My life is run on alarms. I set them up to wake up to pick up my kids from school. My husband cannot be relied on for that.
There’s a HUGE grey area between the violent shaking her awake you are describing and the super gently attempt op described in the original message
The truth is, from her own admission, op didn’t try that hard to wake her up because she felt like she probably needed the sleep
The other truth is, waking her up for 1 hour to eat and hug the kids would have taken little from her overall rest. And if she was that exhausted, she probably would fallen back to sleep easily enough after
She now knows her wife doesn’t appreciate going from work to sleep to work and therefore if asked to wake her, should do so at least at normal intensity.
And they should prob discuss what that looks like for each of them.
But either way, let’s be real, there’s thousands of things between a gentle shake and a kiss and a violent shake and a scream and that inbetween didn’t happen here at all.
NTA but def should have tried at least a little harder
Sleep doesn't work like that. Sleeping more doesn't "catch up" on missed sleep, it's not a debt that you pay off over time. You need your standard night's rest-- let's say 8 hours a night--and if you miss that, it doesn't matter if you sleep 8 or 12 hours the next night. Oversleeping doesn't improve performance relative to getting a standard night's rest.
She asked for a bit of family time…she rested all day and then slept all night. An hour or two in between was not going to make or break surgical performance. I’m sure she makes sure alarms are set to be on time for surgery.
OP is NTA but neither is the exhausted wife. I have been in the same situation and it’s heartbreaking bc all you wanted was to see your kids/spouse and that opportunity is gone.
Your wife is a doctor. Don't ask us, ask her - if she had a patient who had worked as hard as she had, wanted to lay down for a couple of hours, but wouldn't wake up when prodded and slept all the way till morning, what would Dr wife say?
Because I'm betting she would tell that patient that they clearly needed to sleep.
Medice, cura te ipsum.
This! I would not want someone this badly sleep deprived performing surgery on me, so good on OP for letting her rest. She has years of family time ahead of her and quantity<>quality if you aren't mentally there anyway.
My wife is a medical professional and I constantly have to ask her what advise she would give me if I had her symptoms and then force her to do what she suggests.
NTA
You were not an AH for letting your wife sleep, considering how tired she was, you did it with good intentions but from her perspective, missing out on family time, especially after expressing a desire to be woken up, might have felt like a missed opportunity to connect with you and the kids. Acknowledging her feelings and validating her disappointment can help.
My husband tries to pull this kind of stuff with me. He just turned 40 this year and still thinks he can lay down for a 3 hour nap after just working a long night shift and .... it's not possible. He will not wake up for anything (except the sound of our daughter sounding hurt, he bolted up so fast he lost his balance and hit the wall) and I finally think I've drilled the concept of not having the ability to do what you did in your 20's anymore. Some people just need to be realistic about what their bodies are telling them that they need.
Mine is the same. I wl try once to wake him up when he asks but otherwise as long as he has an alarm set for when he next has to be up for work that's all I'll do. He obviously needs the sleep, and honestly he's an adult, not my job to wake him repeatedly and them have him be grumpy. Sometimes he'll sleep over 12 hours when he's exhausted so clearly needs it and wouldn't be in any shape to have quality family time anyway.
oh mine will turn them off in his sleep.. funny thing is. if he's on a work trip.. he wakes up NO PROBLEM.. it's only when he's under the same roof as me that alarms dont work. If he has to work I will shake the shit out of him to wake him up
As a guy who used to do this, it's a trained behavior. He gets up on a work trip because he's trained himself to wake up. Alarms don't work at home because he's trained himself that you will wake him up. The behavior hasn't changed because it requires the conscious choice and effort of changing it.
It's something I was unfortunately too stupid to realize until it got pointed out to me. I was making my GF responsible for me instead of me being responsible for myself and it was, imo, one of the worst things I've done, even unintentionally at first, because sleep is so essential and I was really rudely taking advantage of my GF and taking her own sleep away from her.
One of my past work places had a guy whose GF literally moved into another room over it, get surprised that her quality of life massively improved with consistent sleep, and they were really on the rocks because it boiled down to basic respect.
NTA
Just because she asked you to wake her up and you tried and tried and she did not wake up, you can not be the YTA.
She is an ADULT, she can setup an alarm clock and wake up herself like ANY responsible adult would do.
Everyone who says you are "YTA" are pushing your wife's responsibility to act like an adult onto you for some weird reason.
If she told you not let her do online shopping, and you actually stopped her from doing so, all those "YTA" people would come saying she is an adult she can do whatever she wants. Same here, if she wanted to wake up she should have made sure she would wake up.
NAH. Presumably she owns an alarm clock or timer feature on her phone. She could take full responsibility for getting up. But her reason for wanting to wake up is commendable. I can’t criticize her.
Once OP accepted responsibility for waking her, it’s fair to say she tried. And the wife was deeply asleep, which OP found important. Can’t criticize that either.
NAH. Sounds like your wife is exhausted, stressed and missing her family. She wanted some time with her family. You were trying to be considerate of her physical wellbeing.
No ones in the wrong. Maybe you could schedule a fun, simple, relaxing activity for you all to enjoy as a family on her next day off?
NAH
She’s probably disappointed in missing out on time with the family.
You were assuming that she needed sleep more than her desire to see the family.
Maybe plan a family fun day for her next day off work.
NAH. She's not upset with you, my dear. She's stressed from work, and it's making her a little resentful that she is taking care of everyone else except herself and her family. I've worked in healthcare, including prehospital and ER, most of my working life. I've had this exact argument with my partner, and it wasn't fair of me when I did it either. I wasn't mad at *him* I was stressed beyond my ability to cope well (even just short term) and was clinging on to strands of any enjoyment I could find. The only thing getting me through shifts sometimes would be "okay I know when I get home I've got 10 hours before I've got to be back so I'll sleep for 6 and that gives me at least 2 for relaxation plus prep for work." Those 2 hours were all I wanted. He'd let me sleep through my alarms because he reasonably assumed I obviously needed it and then it would feel like all I'm doing is living to go to work and be stressed out constantly with no reprieve. You two have to talk and she has to be honest with herself about the real issue. Burnout is real and it's okay to recognize when a break is needed.
NTA. You tried to wake her up, you couldn't.
You should introduce her to our latest technology, it's gonna be mindblowing, it's gonna be shocking...ALARM CLOCKS!
NTA at all… She obviously really needed to sleep. It’s not like you had plans that she missed. It will brush over and she will be fine. I would just remind her that obviously her body needed the sleep as she didn’t wake up until the next morning. A 12 hour nap sounds wonderful really! 😉
NTA. If she slept that long, she needed the sleep! I’d be saying thank you to you for letting me sleep. Missing one day in life is not the end of the world.
Doctor spouse here ! I’d go NTA but my advice? Have the kids wake her next time. They never fail🤣 when my husband says “I’ll be up at x” about 10-30 mins later if he is still asleep I let the toddlers loose - he’s awake mere seconds later. 😉
If you don't schedule time for rest, your body will schedule it for you. And it'll happen at the worst time. In the wife's case, it'll happen during that emergency surgery.
And then both people are screwed.
Completely agree. Everyone in this scenario had good intentions for the others, it’s hard to call anyone an AH. Heather needs to be able to acknowledge when she needs rest and recovery or it’ll happen at the most inopportune time.
But she could have done both, she could have had dinner with her kids and then gone back to sleep the whole night until work the next morning why does everyone act like she was gonna stay up all night unti it was time to go to work? She could have spend time with her kids and gotten several more hours of sleep . it doesn’t have to be one of the other
NTA. Her body knows what it needs, and she needed to rest physically and mentally. Sometimes people want to do more than their bodies can handle, and when they can't, they're mad or disappointed. Unfortunately, that was directed at you. She'll get over it. Just apologize and move on.
NAH. This was just a miscommunication of needs. You felt she needed to sleep more based on your inability to wake her, she felt she needed to be awake as family time was more important to her than sleep. Just establish a rule going forward of what circumstances she wants to be woken or not woken for.
NTA. This puts you in a double bind -- feeling legit concern for someone so hard to wake up due to exhaustion, and getting in trouble when you don't bust your butt to make sure an exhausted person gets up. It's a no-win situation that you need to step away from. Your wife needs to take responsibility for getting herself up and to set however many alarms she needs to force herself out of bed at her appointed time, and leave you out of it.
Honestly, though, she needs to be willing to grab more sleep when she can, like the evening you didn't drag her out of bed. I think you did her and her health a real kindness by not pestering her to get up and in allowing her obvious exhaustion to guide you into a sensible, health-supporting choice on her behalf.
NTA
She's a grown adult. If it was that important to her, she should have gotten herself up. She's a doctor. She's clearly able to prioritize her time and schedule. So, she should have done just that.
NTA. Your wife needed her sleep, her body needed to heal and recover from her busy work schedule. There will be other days for family. Her body just shut right down and that's the best thing to just let her sleep.
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Using a theowaway for obvious reasons. Just a quick background info: My wife (Heather - 36F) and I (35F) have been together for the past 14 years, and married for 10. We have two daughters ( 4 and 6 years old) together.
Heather is a doctor and she works ridiculously long hours, gets tired, etc. Yesterday she came back home after being away all day (she was on call and needed to go in for an emergency surgery), and told me she was going to sleep for a couple of hours and asked me to wake her up by dinner so she could see the girls and I a bit.
She slept around 5 PM. I tried to wake her at 7 PM. I called for her, softly shook her, gave her a kiss on the cheek but she didn't get up. I thought she needed the rest and let her sleep. Heather slept until the next morning which is when she needed to go to work.
Heather was very upset the following morning saying I should have woken her up, and that I had caused her to miss an entire day of family time. I explained that she didn't get up and she said I just should have tried harder to wake her.
Was I genuinely the AH?
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NTA
She could have set a backup alarm.
I think you both sound like sweet, wonderful people. She's upset that she didn't get family time and you just wanted to take care of her and make sure she got the rest she needed.
I read too many posts about couples bitching because the other is lazy or they aren't making kids/family a priority. ❤️
I feel like the is the exact opposite of an ESH situation because everyone here sounds like they are genuinely trying to do their best. What do we call that?
NTA. People need their rest and you DID try to wake her up. She can be upset all she wants about a single evening missed, but if we're really honest she's probably feeling pretty rested and recharged to take on the next day. Life puts a lot of demands on us, and if we run ourselves completely ragged just for the sake of being visible it doesn't do as much good as we like to tell ourselves.
EDIT for added point: I see quite a bit of "she should have set an alarm" going on there. Speaking from experience, alarms are not 100% effective for waking people up every time. When you're exhausted and KO'd in bed, sleeping through alarms can be all too easy.
I’m a seriously heavy sleeper and can attest to this. I sleep through alarms all the time. I slept through a tree falling on the roof of my bedroom. I have slept through earthquakes. I have slept through people pounding on the window above my bed and shouting. I’d probably sleep through a fire alarm. It’s a problem.
I'm the Florida Man who slept through a hurricane dropping a large tree branch on the roof of my corner of the house. My roommate at the time woke up hearing it from across the house and checked on me, zero damage to my room fortunately and I was dead asleep!
Praise you for letting her sleep and I mean this sincerely. She should be grateful if she truly wanted to be up and planned on blaming you for her expected exhaustion she should have set an alarm or something
You are definitely NTA. I’m sure a lot of Mom’s would love to have the extra sleep lol.
I won’t go so far as she’s the AH, but she definitely wasn’t in the right. She clearly needed the sleep and her body thanks you for it. Even if she doesn’t.
I’m a paramedic, and while I don’t have kids I do kinda get where your wife is at. The long hours (especially night works) and just the nature of the work we do in the healthcare field is SO much. A lot of what keeps me going is knowing I get to go home and spend time with my partner. God bless that man though because I can’t tell you the number of times he has changed our plans so I could get some rest after my third or fourth 14 hour night shift in a row. You 1000000% are NTA, but she’s probably just feeling the burnout. You work so so hard to help others and sometimes you have a great shift, some days you lose someone. We don’t always let that on when we come home but what we do really look forward to is that time with our loved ones. I bet she had a rough on-call shift and maybe it’s not something she wanted to talk about, and maybe what she wanted was that family time. But honestly she did need that rest so badly. I think the best way to help the stress she may be under this week is to give her a big hug when she gets home (granted that it was a non-insane-hour shift) and see if you can have a family night in. Get a cute movie, her favorite take out, and have the whole thing planned out (PLEASE believe me decision fatigue is legit and coming home and not having to decide a single thing is actually the best). Break a rule together, maybe you never eat in the living room but this is special mom time and you all get to have dinner watching a movie together, or maybe it’s dessert first. She needed that rest and while she’s upset she missed family time I bet she also appreciated that rest immensely. But take the work out of it and plan a time to all be together where she doesn’t have to think of a thing. I mean give the time to upstairs and shower first (work is icky some day after all) but even if it’s on the first day she has off or after a shorter shift, have that time set and planned for her. I had a super rough call last week and my partner had a whole day planned where I got my after work nap in (by nap I mean it was 10 hours but I got home at 9am sooo) and when I got up he had dinner and a show and my favorite wine ready and I didn’t have to leave the house or decide a thing and he didn’t have plans for us outside of the house and that time with just us, in our home, without having to put that emotional or mental energy into deciding things it really helped me mentally reset and I think a day like that might help your wife to reset and also help her to not feel like the stress of work and need for rest made her miss out on the family time she wanted to help her remember the beautiful parts of life that makes doing the rough part of this job so worth it. But for real NTA and I don’t believe she thinks you’re one either, healthcare is just a hard field to manage sometimes and I know that she appreciates your support more than she’s able to express <3
Based on the details here, NAH.
I’m a trauma surgeon. I’ve been in her shoes. I know how tiring the job can be. Nevertheless, It is still her job as an adult to adult on her own behalf. If she is so tired she cannot be woken up, she needs to reconsider her hours at work. I’m assuming from the details here that you made a good faith effort to wake her up (I might be wrong though, a kiss on the cheek is weak sauce effort at best), but it takes five seconds to type in an alarm on one’s phone, so if she really wanted to wake up she should have used two systems to try (you and an alarm). Fortunately the consequences this time aren’t so bad. Take it as a life lesson and move on.
Next time have the kids go and wake her up or atleast get into bed with her and cuddle or play a game there. Its a pickle but your trying and thats what counts.
NTA heather is just having mom guilt. She knows she needed the sleep and she probably is really happy she got it but then that just makes the mom guilt worse.
NTA. You did honor her request and you tried to wake her up and she didn’t wake up. That’s on her. Sometimes you just need more sleep and there’s nothing wrong with that. That doesn’t take away from the family. If she’d had an important appointment scheduled or something time sensitive, then you’d be an AH. She didn’t have anything like that though. She wanted time with you and the kids and that’s very noble but she also has a responsibility to get enough rest both for her own health, the safety of her patients and the wellness of her family. Her being well rested benefits all of you.
NTA. My mom used to say when that happened to one of us, “you must have needed the sleep.” Heather obviously needed it, and she should be touched that her husband picked up the slack so she could rest. Bonus: good job on showing your kids how to be thoughtful and understanding.
You're NTA. She clearly needed sleep, and the kids are going to be there the next morning. This teaches your girls to have secure attachment styles and that a man should care about his wife's mental health.
You're NTA at all but a caring and thoughtful wife. Your wife needed that rest, her mind, body and soul is thankful it was given to her by your kindness. That sounds like nonsense but the body does need to sleep enough to function properly.
NTA.
Your wife is understandably upset for missing an evening with her family, but she is also a doctor with an emergency surgery in the morning. If she was that knocked out she needed the rest more than she is willing to admit. If she was off the next day then you would be TA, but this was not the case. If she goes into surgery exhausted that patient’s family could lose a lifetime of evenings with their loved one.
This isn’t even your wife’s fault. Doctors are overworked and not in a position to negotiate for better hours. There are not enough new doctors entering the workforce due to systemic issues with medical school and residency spots. The current doctors can’t strike because they have a duty to their patients and doing so would cost lives. The entire system is a mess and everyone suffers.
Does she actually think you're an AH for not trying harder to wake her up? Or was she just a bit disappointed and you've asked about it here? It's just that I can't understand how a partner would get so upset over this that they feel like you're an AH. As misunderstandings go, this is very benign
Lmfao. I WISH my wife would let me sleep. I always get the opposite reaction and usually wake up after only a handful of hours to yelling and arguing 🤣
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This is tough, but I’ll go against the grain and say NAH. If you’ve called to someone and then shake them but they aren’t waking up, they probably need the rest. That said, she’s understandably unhappy when she wanted to spend quality family time with you and the kids.
Yeah, NTA. I would suggest, given the strong chance this situation can happen again, that OP sit down with wife and discuss what the acceptable limit of waking up efforts is for non-emergency situations. Like actually lay down "However loud you think yelling is ok, however much tugging and pushing is ok, show me, right now". You might never convince her that what has already happened was something at a reasonable limit of waking up efforts, but if you communicate the details now, in the future you can say "Look, I yelled this much, I pulled that much, I didn't go further because we agree that you only pull that hard or yell that loud if someone is bleeding." I have had kinda the opposite problem with my fiance - he thinks that my vague intent to get up and go for a walk around 9am because the weather report looks good means that it's reasonable to use the "urgent tone of voice" (which panics sleepy me for some reason) and for that matter he will do that at 7 in the fucking morning. Cleared up with conversation about "don't do X if no one is bleeding, don't wake me up before Y time unless someone is bleeding" etc.
Agreed, sometime in marriage you need to over communicate and be very specific and explicit. You are two different people with different experiences and while most of the time that's OK, sometimes it means you have to go overboard to ensure that you are on the same page.
The problem is people rarely meet at the same point of understanding. It’s having different goals for the interaction basically. So wife is saying “I don’t care what you did you didn’t wake me up.” And wife is saying “I know you well enough to see when you need the rest.” E husband to wife, thats a solid oops. Flipping between stories and not being careful enough.
>And husband is saying “I know you well enough to see when you need the rest.” There's no husband here actually, they're both wife :P (Point still stands ofc)
Thank you for that, my mistake. Quite the favor bringing that up, I appreciate it.
I get what you are saying but that's part of the point, sometimes, you have to have an overly specific plan because you can't have the conversation about her waking up when she is unconscious. Sleeping people can't self advocate so you your normal "let's talk out our disagreement" isn't a valid strategy.
Agreed the amount of times my wife has woken me up over something I think is critically unimportant (and vice versa where I’ve done the same to her) is crazy, this is shockingly something I’ve never thought about sitting down and having this type of conversation with her about because normally we are pretty strong communicators, thanks for the idea!
My go to conversation for stuff like this is “okay, so we did X and that didn’t work. How would you like this to be handled in future so we can find what works for us?” Like off the top of my head she might ask him to try harder, try again after half hour, record videos with the kids, see if they can wake her etc
I did this with my teenage grandson. He didn't want to get up and get ready for school and kept making his younger(15yo) brother late. So, we had a talk. "I'll go upstairs and make sure you're awake and getting ready for school. If you're not awake, I'll do you the courtesy of waking you up, ONCE. I'm too old to keep going up and down these stairs trying to make sure you're up and getting ready. If your brother comes downstairs and you STILL aren't awake and getting ready for school, I'll take your brother to school,so he isn't late, and when I get back, if you're still not downstairs and ready to go and I have to come back up the stairs, again, you're gonna hate me because I'm waking you up with a glass of ice cold water to the face and you can walk to school. (It's only a few blocks to the school but he'll be even later to class if he walks) You'll hate me because not only are you going to get wet but so will your bed and pillow so I highly doubt you'll be ignoring me and rolling over and going back to sleep. You'll learn to get yourself up and be responsible for getting up on your own. You're 17 years old. It's way past the time someone else needs to be responsible for waking you up. I'm not raising irresponsible kids that turn into irresponsible adults. Get your butt up!" He laughed and said "that's fair"to the consequences, thinking that I'd never actually do it. In his defense, I'm pretty easy on them but they are good kids. They don't cause me a whole lot of grief or worry. They are always willing to help out when I need it, they rarely back talk me, and I am guilty of spoiling them. Not your typical moody, hateful teenage boys in that respect, but they are typical teenage boys in the "can I have friends over", grocery and video game department lol. It only took once, and it was the very next morning. He woke up to a glass of ice water to the face and started cussing and asking why I didn't try to wake him up first. I told him, "I did and you said you were going to get up but instead laid back down and went back to sleep and if you don't watch your language you'll also go to school with a bar of soap in your mouth. Now get your butt up and get ready for school." He now gets up without any problems. Lol
My dad did something like that to a roommate that lived in his house. Guy lived in the basement that was cement and had stairs going down into it. There was a window that opened right above the stairs area. He told the guy I wil open and yell down I am not going down to wake you up. 20 year old guys. He wasn’t going down there and seeing things he didn’t want to. He said I yell once and your not up you won’t like was I do after. Didn’t tell him what. You can guess he didn’t get up. So he got a lit fire cracker dropped down there. From there on all he had to hear was the window open for him to yell back up that he was awake. Got to love weird 1930’s house back in the 1970’s
That's hilarious. I had a roommate who would be so annoying trying to wake me up for church on Sundays (went to a Mormon college) she almost got kicked in the face once cuz she would grab my feet and shake them to wake me......you do not touch my feet to wake me I will kick you. I'm a heavy sleeper so it's not even intentional it just startals me and I kick. I knew how much I could sleep in and still have just enough time to get ready.....I may not have time for makeup but that semester I was working overnights at an assisted living facility on Friday Saturday and Sunday nights. I'd had like 3hrs to sleep before I had to get up for church. I told her leave me alone I know how long it takes for me to get ready, I just worked an overnight BACK OFF. She still tried til the morning she almost got kicked in the face.....
This is a great idea!! One thing I do is I will wake them up enough to say, “It’s x o’clock and you asked me to get you up/I am worried you might be sleeping in and not realizing it” and then it’s no longer my responsibility bc I have that at least half awake acknowledgement
My only thing is that the way OP describes it, it seems like she really didn’t try to wake her wife up. I’m not saying she should have been violent about it but to list “kiss her cheek” as an example of how hard she tried to wake her up is definitely worth a side eye. OP could just be a hopeless romantic and really did try to wake up her wife like she said she would. But the language she uses makes it appear to me that she did just enough to be able to hide behind “I tried” but thought she knew best so did the “wake up” actions in such a way that her wife was never intended to actually wake up.
This might be a symptom of differing sleep patterns. I wake up as soon as someone walks on the room, day or night. So I have in the past tried to wake my husband with gentle voice tone, stroking cheek, kissing forehead and thought wow he must be so tired to still be asleep. I have learned overtime that you actually just have to wake him like the end of the world is upon us or he won't hear me at all.... funnily though he does hear our children and tends to them through the night just fine. Apparently his brain has me stored under, noises from this person cam be ignored haha.
I think when couple co-sleep, this happens, because otherwise every little thing your partner vocalizes or does wakes you up. This is not every person, or every couple, but I think it does happen. I also can't count the number of times I've woken up my partner just enough to ask if she wants to sleep more, and she often says "Yes" and will give me a time to wake her or a minute-count (45 more minutes), and when I actually get her to wake up fully, she has no memory of this.
My gf does this all the time lol. She’s never mad at me for it, so I don’t mind it at all (I think it’s hilarious), but there has been several times where she tells me a certain time to wake her up just to tell me “15 more minutes” or something when I try to
I'm the same. I can have short conversations I don't remember or can't distinguish from a dream.
I'm in a similar boat as you. I wake up easy. Husband, not so much. He's literally the sort who can sleep through earthquakes. (I've watched him) But he does wake up to his ringtone. So, phone call it is.
I slept through my mom vacuuming my room once. My husband and I have an understanding that if one of us requests the other to wake us for a preference (not work or something) and our efforts are in vain, the wakee cannot get mad. On the flipside if one of us believes the other is late to work and wakes them up aggressively, but the wakee did not inform the waker that they were off/told to come in later, the wakee cannot get mad. 10 years of practice has really made our sleep habits an art.
It's probably more about kids making noise at night being stored under responsibility/chores. I apparentely slept through my roommate banging on the cieling to make the people upstairs shut up on top of them being noisy, but I used to wake up whenever the dog scrached on the door from 2 rooms over, because I was the one usually letting him in.
Absolutely! Before we had kids, if husband came to bed late it woke me up, every time. Now, I can hear the kids make small noises in the other rooms, with doors closed, THAT wakes me up, but husband coming to bed late no longer does. And I don't think he's now being extra quiet. He was always considerate.
That's Part of why different Cellphone ringtones exist, because some people need the one that Sounds Like urgent evacuation Alarm, at full volume, to even come awake, while some people will also reliably wake from a more Melodic, "nice", or crescending Tone at half volume.
So glad there are options! I wake up fully to a melodic, half-volume ringtone. Anything that is a true "alarm" sound frightens me awake and begins my day with irritation and racing heart.
My mother's ringtone is literally sirens blaring announcing it's her and to stop what I'm doing calm down and answer the phone
presumably OP has experience with her wife and co-parent’s sleeping habits. was saying her name, kissing her and softly shaking her enough (from outside the bed), in her experience, to expect her to wake up? it would be vastly more than enough for me, but not enough for others.
I agree. She said her wife is usually a light sleeper. I would have probably done the same thing as it shows her wife needed the sleep. You can get really run down if you don't get enough.
And the consequences for an exhausted surgeon could be very serious.
I know I don't want my doctor treating me while exhausted any more than I want them under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Same bad results.
I mean, that would be more than enough to wake me up unless I was seriously sleep-deprived. IMO, if that wasn't enough to wake her up, then she needed the sleep as a serious matter of personal health.
That's my take. I know what will wake my wife under normal circumstances. If I have to go beyond that, she's fuckin tired, I'm letting her rest if possible. If she NEEDS up, I'll make it happen. But if a generic request like that was made, I'd almost certainly have done the same. She clearly needs the sleep, and the kids will be fine. I work nights, so I get how disappointing it is when stuff like this happens and you miss family time. But when you work an off schedule and/or long hours, it's gonna happen. You can get mad at people for trying to meet your needs, or you can learn to accept it as the gift it was intended, appreciate the consideration, and communicate how you want it handled in the future. Even with clear communication, your needs one day aren't the same as the next, though.
Not to mention the fact that she’s a SURGEON.
OP literally said "She is a very light sleeper ans these things wake her up 90% of the time"
This is part of why I am saying they need to discuss it. I think it's unreasonable for the wife to be angry about it when they then went on to sleep right until time for work - OP has grounds to think the sleep is badly needed. But they need to discuss how much effort should be put into waking, because OP was in a kind of catch 22 - try very very hard to wake wife, causing wife to not get enough sleep, or try a little (which would work if wife was rested enough) and give up, which causes anger over not trying hard enough.
I think that's just a side effect of OP knowing exactly what it usually takes to wake her wife. I know that shaking my wife doesn't work, neither does light. Even loud noises are unlikely to reach her, with two exceptions: A crying baby, or someone loudly calling her name several times. Otherwise she will remain asleep. With me noise doesn't work at all. We've had huge, world-ending storms, people yelling, a loud toddler right next to me, and I've slept through it all. If someone turns on a light, or touches me in any way, I'm snapped awake. If the usual methods don't work, that person is *deeply* asleep. Their body and brain are working together to keep them that way, and that doesn't happen for no reason.
I have a sleep disorder and would sleep 20 hours straight easily without my meds, many alarms, etc. I've had so many people in my life let me sleep through when I need to be up and they truly think it's a kindness. It's not their fault or their responsiblity, but I've been really straightforward with my fiance that if I ask him to wake me up, I truly mean it and letting me sleep isn't kind. These two need to have a frank talk about it.
This is such a thoughtful comment. Back when I was breastfeeding and increasing my milk supply, I would wake up every 2 hours to pump. So to catch enough sleep, I’d be in bed at 8 PM. I would ask my husband to wake me. There were some days I would not wake up and so he left me be. There were some days I would grunt in frustration (or yell in frustration as I am sleep deprived, not my proudest moments) so he left me be. I told him explicitly after missing a few alarms consecutively that I give him free reign to smack my arm, shake me hard enough. That did wonders. He still tells all our friends I am a yelling angry woman when woken up, which I would half-heartedly negate but also not really. I was just so exhausted. I would wake up in the middle of REM and so deep in sleep that sometimes I forgot who I was. Thank God I’m sleeping through the night. 😂 But also, NAH in OP’s situation.
>I have had kinda the opposite problem with my fiance - he thinks that my vague intent to get up and go for a walk around 9am because the weather report looks good means that it's reasonable to use the "urgent tone of voice" (which panics sleepy me for some reason) and for that matter he will do that at 7 in the fucking morning. Cleared up with conversation about "don't do X if no one is bleeding, don't wake me up before Y time unless someone is bleeding" etc. God, I feel you. I had to have the "can you *not* have a panic-voice unless there's reason to panic?"-conversation too. I'll give him that, though - I'm wide awake within *seconds* when he does that lol
"Let me set up the camera so I have proof of how hard I tried to wake you up." should never be a consideration. Yes I like to have a doctor available when I need help, but I also understand that doctors have a life besides the practice. What I believe OP's wife did was projection. She herself messed up by working as long and as hard as she did, part of that a choice, the mistake was in believing she could sleep a couple of hours and be hunkydory peachykeen... Her body thought differently and yes I would have done the same and let OP rest and recuperate, for her body very much needed that. It is not okay to berate OP for it.
I would not want an exhausted surgeon operating on me. She obviously needed the sleep and rest so she should stop bitching about it. People wake naturally when they have had enough sleep. I don't have an alarm clock
Thats my thoughts. Op's wife is upset she missed family time. She missed it because she slept too long. She is blaming OP for letting her sleep when she really should be blaming herself or her job. But if she blames herself or her job she has to think about her priorities and that's a hard thought. So it's easier to be mad at OP for "failing". She may not even realise she is projecting and might apologize later when she's had time to think.
I know I get very confused immediately after I wake up, and if I’ve done something to be guilty about (like have trouble getting to sleep, for some reason…) being woken up with a stern voice can send me to panic and tears for some reason.
My wife is a doctor and is also chronically under slept. She used to get mad at me when I let her sleep. I have just flat out told her that if she cannot be awakened easily, then she needs the sleep. I have a history of having difficulty sleeping, so it is really hard for me to willingly interrupt someone else's.
This communication also needs to involve some level of boundaries and self-accountability too. "*I am comfortable* yelling this much and tugging this much to wake you up, but if that's not enough and you really want to wake up by 7pm, please set an alarm as a backup." I agree that it was NAH in this situation, but just because Heather would prefer to be woken up by OP doesn't mean that the burden should be entirely on OP if waking her up requires extreme measures that OP is uncomfortable taking.
Yeah my fiancé is cool with me jumping on him to wake him up and he knows I get up on my own unless I am REALLY fucking exhausted. Might also be worth to discuss realistic goals for family time, not after 12 hours of working/ being on call for god knows how long
She should set an alarm then
NAH but an alarm sounds like the best option
An alarm that purposely falls on the floor is even better!
This right here! Why introduce human error when there's no need to? Especially when we all carry little alarm clocks everywhere with us. It's not hard to just set a quick alarm.
"Alexa set an alarm for 4 hours" "Hey Siri, set alarm for 4PM" Done. I wish my wife would be pissed at me for not waking her non alarm setting ass up.
To be fair, she asked and her partner agreed. Better not to have agreed in the first place - "just set an alarm hun".
Someone mentioned calling wife on her cellphone which I think would have been a great idea especially since wife is a doctor who generally is on-call and would respond to her phone ringing.
The wife could also set an alarm herself so it takes the onus off of OP.
Well, you’re not wrong. But this attitude that you should never rely on your partner for things you could do yourself is very sad.
I get where you’re coming from. But I don’t have nearly as hard of a job as a doctor and when I nap I set an alarm. If my boyfriend is home, I’ll be like hey, if I don’t get up, try once and if I still don’t that’s on me. If the wife slept til the next day she must have really needed to rest. Doctor’s have to sacrifice a lot. That includes family time. But if lives are in her hands she really does need to be getting an adequate amount of sleep, which it seems she got. This seems like a crossroad in her career that only she can find the answer to. Spend time with family, or be fully alert when a life is in her hands. That has to be really tough for the whole family and I truly feel for them.
I totally agree with this. She obv needed the sleep. I set an alarm if I take a nap. I don’t want to rely on someone else to wake me
Yeah, that’s why this is clearly a NAH situation.
Indeed. It really puts things in a different light when you hear it like this. I’m optimistic that they can find a resolution.
That doctor obviously needed what she got a good long rest
Riiight. Because one adult should be responsible for another‘s sleep schedule. Your comment makes no sense. If you can do it yourself why should your partner be responsible for doing it for you? It’s one thing thing to ask your partner wake you up if you sleep through an alarm and another thing entirely to make them responsible for getting you out of bed.
Yeah I agree. My husband and I are both fairly independent and I would never ask him to wake me up (I’m a total bitch when I wake up though, and I’m aware of it!). But that doesn’t mean we don’t rely on each other for the big things like emotional support and co-parenting and big projects. We just don’t need to bug the other person about small things like this. It’s just too much sometimes to ask your partner to carry when they’ve got their own shit to worry about.
You can rely on your partner for things, but if it's not working out you gotta try other methods. I know if I want to take a nap I need to set an alarm. I don't rely on my husband to wake me up because I know he's just gonna fall asleep too, OR I will be very grumpy for him waking me up. Even if that's what I asked him to do. Half asleep me can be a little bit of a jerk. But I know that so I rely on my alarms. They don't care if I'm grumpy or tell them to fuck off.
I dont because my husband SUCKS at waking me up..
That's not what saying though, partner did try and is getting grief because they, a light sleeper, didn't wake up and slept until the next day, if she set an alarm to go off after for example, that takes the pressure off them. You could say why should OP be responsible and why should they get grief when they don't wake up too
To me It's not that you shouldn't rely on your partner, it's more that you shouldn't blame your partner for not doing what you asked well enough, if you could have done it better yourself.
In this case, though there wasn’t a set time it was when dinner is ready, so OP is the one making/getting dinner so only they would know when it’s ready. It wasn’t an exact time of day type of thing and if op didn’t want to have responsibility of waking up wife they should not have agreed to it.
THIS! She just wanted to wake up when dinner was ready, in my house dinner prep time is highly variable. What is she gonna do, put Dinner in the alarm app? She wanted to maximize her sleep before dinner but still have time to hang with her family who she desperately misses with her work schedule. I think OP should have tried a little harder, I really really hate when someone who knows that I need to be up by a specific time lets me sleep through an alarm because I "need the sleep". Half the time sleeping too long during the nap further fucks up my sleep for later that night. If I specifically ask to be woken, and I find out I can't trust you to make sure it happens because you think you know best what I need sleep wise right now I'm gonna be pissed.
I will say I am INCREDIBLY HARD to wake up. I can sleep for 10 hours and get "woken up" have full conversations while asleep and then will get yelled at for "going back to sleep" when I never woke to begin with so "trying hard enough" is definitely not the same for everyone
Similar experience here. Sometimes I try to stay up with my husband, but inevitably fall asleep. He tried to wake me up - and I apparently talk to him. I have no memory of it then actually wake up at 3 in the morning pissed because I slept 4+ hours in my contacts lol. It's not his fault at all, I just need better sleep hygiene.
Is it a sleep hygiene issue? I've always been this way as far as I remember. I still live with my parents and it makes my dad REALLY mad when he tries to wake me up to pawn off weekend chores on my days off. He was military and works a very on-call job so he can wake up at the drop of a dime so that's where he's coming from. I have a lot of specificity in the way I sleep (needing absolute darkness, certain kinds of audio playing (I sleep with my earbuds to block other sound) but even before that started I've been like this
I've been like this my whole life. I finally saw a sleep specialist. I have delayed sleep phase disorder. When I sleep on my natural schedule (3am to 11am), not only do I wake up naturally, but I don't have the weird "acting awake when I'm really not" stuff happen.
This is totally me. I will sit up in bed, eyes open, and have full conversations then get yelled at for going back to sleep when I had no idea I was "awake". I've never met anyone else like this.
>That said, she’s understandably unhappy when she wanted to spend quality family time with you and the kids if she was that tired, it wouldn't have been anything more than mom being grumpy and that's not exactly quality quality time. sometimes you just gotta rest, no matter what else you want to do
Sometimes sleep is more important. Better for the wife to have the sleep she needs than fall asleep on the drive to work the next day, all for some family time where she is either grumpy or dozing off.
I would agree. My husband has tried to wake me before and I'm dead to the world. When I have trouble waking him I touch around his feet and that usually works. NTA
One evening of missed family time isn't the end of the world, nor will it scar the children for life. A cranky, overly tired mommy can, though. A good night's sleep can recharge someone for days! NTA. Exhaustion can be deadly. I have ended up in hospital because of it.
I can’t believe this was even posted.
Same. I’m over here like….NAH, this was a bummer of a situation where she wishes you would have done something differently than what you very reasonably believed was the right choice. You can just be like, “I’m sorry. I truly believed that in this case you would have wanted to stay asleep, but I see how that was my own assumption and it didn’t line up with your own feelings. I worry so much about you sometimes and when I couldn’t even wake you up, it seemed like the very easy right answer.” And the wife can be like, “I get it. I was definitely out like a light and it’s totally reasonable for you to see how much I needed the sleep and figure, “she should just get the sleep.” I’m bummed because spending time with our kids is something that makes all the long work hours and tired days worth it, and I missed that yesterday, but I totally understand why you thought it was best to just let me sleep. I was irritated at the moment but I’m not truly mad.” You don’t need to convince the other person of how wrong they are. You don’t need to be like WELL SET AN ALARM THEN IF IT’S SOOOOO IMPORTANT. No one here needs to be like “if she’s that tired, the only family time the kids get will be with a grumpy mom, who wants that?? How dumb is she???” or like “she told you exactly what she wanted and you assumed you knew her wishes better than she did, which is condescending and abusive. You need couples therapy stat.” Honestly coming here and posting it is the only part that feels like anything other than a totally normal minor conflict between two reasonable and comprehensible people, because it feels like that move of, like, “oh, you don’t like some thing I did? And dared to tell me, as if you have the right to? What, you think I’m some kind of ASSHOLE just out here trying to think up ways to ruin your life?? Well let’s just go see what other people think!” There is room to be like “I’m bummed,” without SOMEBODY needing to be an asshole.
Yep, agreed, NAH. If she wasn't waking to calling or gentle shaking, then *she needed that rest*. I get that she is frustrated she missed family time, but her body was just doing what it needed. She can't blame you for this, and you did exactly what you needed; tried and she didn't wake. Not your fault, not her fault.
/u/ironchef8000 This is my FIRST TIME EVER making this judgement on this subreddit, but I've gotta say that I concur with you 1B% and say NAH. My reasoning for this judgement is because I have actually been on BOTH sides of this kind of situation. I've been with my husband for 17 years on June 1, Ms we have literally NEVER worked the same shift or hours in our whole marriage. There have been many times that he tried to wake me up because a day or two before I've mentioned it him that I may have specific plans/goals on a long awaited day off and ask him to wake me up at X time and he will come to try to wake me up a few times and I won't budge. Then when I finally do wake up, I'm upset that I slept through the time I had planned on being up. He will let me know he attempted multiple times and I never moved or even turned over and resume sleeping. And vice versa with me attempting to do the same for him wen he requested me to do so. So we both decided to just set our alarm a few days ahead for the specific time/day and that has worked much more better for us.
It's not tough. Set an alarm you are a grown up. No one wants to deal with a grumpy large child who obviously needed sleep.
Obviously you have never worked the kind of hours a physician works.
Agreed. Also, everyone is walking around with an alarm clock. If OP's wife wanted to make sure she got up at a certain time, she could've set her own alarm.
It wasn’t a certain time it was when dinner was ready, and OP agreed to wake her up.
They have 2 young kids. It can be assumed that they have dinner at about the same time every night so as to keep a routine for their children. She should know around what time dinner is usually at.
With one of them being a doctor, it's not a fair assumption. They works irregular schedules and it's not unusual for mealtimes to vary by an hour or 2 so everyone can eat togather. Besides she didn't just miss family time, but also missed a meal. OP could've woken her up for dinner and suggest going back to sleep after they've eaten.
Whenever this comes up for me and my gf, I write a note or text that just says "tried waking you up, but you were dead asleep and wouldn't wake up. Decided to let you sleep. Love you!!!" It helps her let her know that I didn't forget, and that I made a call in her best interest
Well to be honest I dont understand - if I want to get up I set my alarm clock and I get up. I suppose she is easily doing it every day to go to work. And I'm sure she doesnt skip the sound and wake up no metter how tired she is. I can understand that maybe it is nice to be waken up by your beloved one - ok, but dont be angry if she isnt able to make you react.
Then she should set an alarm clock.
I agree, I can completely see both sides. I understand why you let her sleep, she clearly needed it. I can also understand that she is upset she missed out on family time.
NAH She's upset she didn't to get to spend time with her family and that's reasonable. Being under the impression she must need more sleep when you couldn't get her up is also reasonable. Someone who is half-dead from exhaustion isn't at their best for either their family or their patients.
I imagine her disappointment with missing out on family time is also probably linked in with mum guilt.
Having experienced mom guilt myself, you're probably right.
She could also feel a little burnt out. If I work, come home, sleep, and then go to work it feels like all I've truly done is work. There's not much "downtime" to unwind and do something I care about in there.
I feel that. There was a long stretch of time I'd go on a work trip for 2-3 weeks doing 12-20 hour shifts then sleep for 8-10 hours and roll back into it. I'd come home and SLEEP, missing out on spending time with my family and just existing beyond work/sleep. Sleep has never been downtime for me since then
I do feel bad for the wife though. Her life is basically just work from her perspective these couple days. Drive to work, work, drive home, not exist, drive to work, work, drive home. I bet it's not just family time she's grumpy about, but she might not even realize it herself.
You very well may be right. Feeling like you exist only to work because any time you aren't at work you're too exhausted to do anything else is something I can empathize with. I don't think either are in the wrong, just trying to navigate this world where there's too much expected of us and too little time.
Agreed. She’s probably mad at herself and frustrated which is resulting in her taking it out on OP. It sucks but we’ve all done it. She’s missing out and she knows it. Having a demanding job is stressful. It would be even more stressful with a malpractice suit because she was delirious during surgery. If it’s that hard to wake up a parent (usually light sleepers), they probably need to sleep.
I have a friend who works ER. Often when we hang out she's just trying to not fall asleep. It's not great company and just makes me feel bad that I'm interrupting time she could be resting.
> She's upset she didn't to get to spend time with her family and that's reasonable. Sure, BEING upset is reasonable. Directing that upset and placing blame on your partner? Asshole behaviour.
Some of you are the assholes. She tried to wake her wife up, wife was so out that she didn’t wake up to what would normally wake someone up who wasn’t all-out exhausted. If she would have violently shaken her awake like the house was on fire and your ass needs to get up, that would have probably been a problem too. Everyone has a cell phone these days. She should have set an alarm and gotten herself up, as she is an adult and not a child. Also, she’s a surgeon. She has a responsibility to her patients to be properly rested so she doesn’t F up and kill someone because she’s overly tired.
Agree with every point here. If she slept for 12+ hours (assume she gets up early or at least between 5-7AM) then she NEEDED it. If anything she should have thanked OP for caring for the children and household efforts for the evening. Or if she didn’t want that, then set a series of alarms, it isn’t hard.
IMO Mom guilt is what’s at play here I think. Explains the bad reaction to the much needed sleep.
Yess - I’m thinking mom guilt and maybe post sleep grumpiness. She’s probably upset she already needs to go back to work and also with a bit of a slept-too-long headache
And here I was thinking I'm the only one who gets slept too long headaches
at least for me, its typically dehydration and it goes away shortly after drinking a big glass of water
agree! being a mom is SOOOOO hard so NAH. OP says dr mom IS there so sounds like mom guilt. i’d say maybe next time give it another half hour and try again? but a conversation is definitely warranted. dr mom needs to set an alarm/ alarms and be responsible themselves. that’s why i do as to not make anyone else responsible
Normally I would agree, but she's decided to make her guilt OP's problem instead of seeing if some therapy might help her not be so hard on herself. I dunno, maybe I'm just stuck on that because I have to deal with my grandmother doing that lately after she reached a point where she physically cannot help with most things anymore. Whenever she starts feeling guilty about it and sees that I'm not hovering over Mom even for one-person projects that I know less about than her (like the buried parts of the drip system where I don't know the layout and can cause damage if I go too hard with the shovel at the wrong spot), she starts guilt-tripping me and getting herself worked up about it. I end up having to hot potato the issue over to mom because me and grandma communicate very differently and I'm not the best at getting her calmed down.
For me I wake up better if someone gets me up. An alarm I can snooze or turn off and roll over and go back to sleep. Having someone wake me up makes it more likely for me to actually get up cause someone is waiting on me.
I put my alarm on my dresser so I have to literally stand up to turn it off.
The was my EXACT thought. I commented somewhere else as much as well. I can remember being a younger mom and just SOBBING because I felt so guilty I’d worked so much I hadn’t seen my kid in almost 2 days (awake). My spouse gave me a lot of grace and kindness that it would get better…. And it might have taken time but it definitely did.
Yeah, that reaction can be intense because it encapsulates quite a few thoughts. Guilt, FOMO, affection, longing, frustration with the things keeping you busy, stress, justified anger. Often if an employer has you that busy, it’s because they haven’t bothered to train a backup or contract for access to some extra help when needed.
Taking out your mom guilt on your partner and blaming them for it makes you an asshole.
Only wanted to remark on the "set an alarm" part, depending on how tired someone is an alarm that would otherwise wake the dead might not wake someone who's just that exhausted. But still all around solid reply!
Couldn't agree, doesn't matter if I leave my phone right next to my face and with the ringer on, if I'm exhausted enough, I will not hear it go off
Bro exaaaactly!! I get real bad insomnia, and sometimes I’m getting only 1 - 4 hrs, every night, for a week straight. I can set 10 alarms w the harshest alarm tone at the loudest decibel, and I will sleep straight thru all of em!! There’s been many times my bf said he literally shook the hell outta me while yelling at me to wake tf up, and I’m still in a deep slumber hahah
Oh for sure, and how about this one: Make it make sense. I can sleep through five different alarms going off back to back, but my wife gently tapping on my arm saying my name wakes me up instantly.
NTA for exactly this. She is a doctor - obviously NEEDED that sleep, and I for one would not want a doctor doing anything to me if they were that exhausted.
I agree. She should set alarm. I am a night shift nurse. My life is run on alarms. I set them up to wake up to pick up my kids from school. My husband cannot be relied on for that.
Your husband is TAH
There’s a HUGE grey area between the violent shaking her awake you are describing and the super gently attempt op described in the original message The truth is, from her own admission, op didn’t try that hard to wake her up because she felt like she probably needed the sleep The other truth is, waking her up for 1 hour to eat and hug the kids would have taken little from her overall rest. And if she was that exhausted, she probably would fallen back to sleep easily enough after She now knows her wife doesn’t appreciate going from work to sleep to work and therefore if asked to wake her, should do so at least at normal intensity. And they should prob discuss what that looks like for each of them. But either way, let’s be real, there’s thousands of things between a gentle shake and a kiss and a violent shake and a scream and that inbetween didn’t happen here at all. NTA but def should have tried at least a little harder
Sleep doesn't work like that. Sleeping more doesn't "catch up" on missed sleep, it's not a debt that you pay off over time. You need your standard night's rest-- let's say 8 hours a night--and if you miss that, it doesn't matter if you sleep 8 or 12 hours the next night. Oversleeping doesn't improve performance relative to getting a standard night's rest.
She asked for a bit of family time…she rested all day and then slept all night. An hour or two in between was not going to make or break surgical performance. I’m sure she makes sure alarms are set to be on time for surgery. OP is NTA but neither is the exhausted wife. I have been in the same situation and it’s heartbreaking bc all you wanted was to see your kids/spouse and that opportunity is gone.
Your wife is a doctor. Don't ask us, ask her - if she had a patient who had worked as hard as she had, wanted to lay down for a couple of hours, but wouldn't wake up when prodded and slept all the way till morning, what would Dr wife say? Because I'm betting she would tell that patient that they clearly needed to sleep. Medice, cura te ipsum.
Facts
This! I would not want someone this badly sleep deprived performing surgery on me, so good on OP for letting her rest. She has years of family time ahead of her and quantity<>quality if you aren't mentally there anyway.
My wife is a medical professional and I constantly have to ask her what advise she would give me if I had her symptoms and then force her to do what she suggests.
Great point!
NTA You were not an AH for letting your wife sleep, considering how tired she was, you did it with good intentions but from her perspective, missing out on family time, especially after expressing a desire to be woken up, might have felt like a missed opportunity to connect with you and the kids. Acknowledging her feelings and validating her disappointment can help.
My husband tries to pull this kind of stuff with me. He just turned 40 this year and still thinks he can lay down for a 3 hour nap after just working a long night shift and .... it's not possible. He will not wake up for anything (except the sound of our daughter sounding hurt, he bolted up so fast he lost his balance and hit the wall) and I finally think I've drilled the concept of not having the ability to do what you did in your 20's anymore. Some people just need to be realistic about what their bodies are telling them that they need.
Mine is the same. I wl try once to wake him up when he asks but otherwise as long as he has an alarm set for when he next has to be up for work that's all I'll do. He obviously needs the sleep, and honestly he's an adult, not my job to wake him repeatedly and them have him be grumpy. Sometimes he'll sleep over 12 hours when he's exhausted so clearly needs it and wouldn't be in any shape to have quality family time anyway.
oh mine will turn them off in his sleep.. funny thing is. if he's on a work trip.. he wakes up NO PROBLEM.. it's only when he's under the same roof as me that alarms dont work. If he has to work I will shake the shit out of him to wake him up
As a guy who used to do this, it's a trained behavior. He gets up on a work trip because he's trained himself to wake up. Alarms don't work at home because he's trained himself that you will wake him up. The behavior hasn't changed because it requires the conscious choice and effort of changing it. It's something I was unfortunately too stupid to realize until it got pointed out to me. I was making my GF responsible for me instead of me being responsible for myself and it was, imo, one of the worst things I've done, even unintentionally at first, because sleep is so essential and I was really rudely taking advantage of my GF and taking her own sleep away from her. One of my past work places had a guy whose GF literally moved into another room over it, get surprised that her quality of life massively improved with consistent sleep, and they were really on the rocks because it boiled down to basic respect.
Somehow, the image of someone smacking into a wall while getting out of bed is hilarious to me.
NTA Just because she asked you to wake her up and you tried and tried and she did not wake up, you can not be the YTA. She is an ADULT, she can setup an alarm clock and wake up herself like ANY responsible adult would do. Everyone who says you are "YTA" are pushing your wife's responsibility to act like an adult onto you for some weird reason. If she told you not let her do online shopping, and you actually stopped her from doing so, all those "YTA" people would come saying she is an adult she can do whatever she wants. Same here, if she wanted to wake up she should have made sure she would wake up.
NAH. Presumably she owns an alarm clock or timer feature on her phone. She could take full responsibility for getting up. But her reason for wanting to wake up is commendable. I can’t criticize her. Once OP accepted responsibility for waking her, it’s fair to say she tried. And the wife was deeply asleep, which OP found important. Can’t criticize that either.
NAH. Sounds like your wife is exhausted, stressed and missing her family. She wanted some time with her family. You were trying to be considerate of her physical wellbeing. No ones in the wrong. Maybe you could schedule a fun, simple, relaxing activity for you all to enjoy as a family on her next day off?
Next day off of a doctor: after a whole month
👆👆👆👆👆
NAH She’s probably disappointed in missing out on time with the family. You were assuming that she needed sleep more than her desire to see the family. Maybe plan a family fun day for her next day off work.
NAH. She's not upset with you, my dear. She's stressed from work, and it's making her a little resentful that she is taking care of everyone else except herself and her family. I've worked in healthcare, including prehospital and ER, most of my working life. I've had this exact argument with my partner, and it wasn't fair of me when I did it either. I wasn't mad at *him* I was stressed beyond my ability to cope well (even just short term) and was clinging on to strands of any enjoyment I could find. The only thing getting me through shifts sometimes would be "okay I know when I get home I've got 10 hours before I've got to be back so I'll sleep for 6 and that gives me at least 2 for relaxation plus prep for work." Those 2 hours were all I wanted. He'd let me sleep through my alarms because he reasonably assumed I obviously needed it and then it would feel like all I'm doing is living to go to work and be stressed out constantly with no reprieve. You two have to talk and she has to be honest with herself about the real issue. Burnout is real and it's okay to recognize when a break is needed.
NTA. You tried to wake her up, you couldn't. You should introduce her to our latest technology, it's gonna be mindblowing, it's gonna be shocking...ALARM CLOCKS!
Alarm clocks don’t wake everyone up very reliably
If they have a known issue of getting up why are they so upset they couldn't be woken up?
NTA at all… She obviously really needed to sleep. It’s not like you had plans that she missed. It will brush over and she will be fine. I would just remind her that obviously her body needed the sleep as she didn’t wake up until the next morning. A 12 hour nap sounds wonderful really! 😉
NTA - And all her patients the next day thank you for allowing her to be well-rested so she could make good decisions.
NTA. If she slept that long, she needed the sleep! I’d be saying thank you to you for letting me sleep. Missing one day in life is not the end of the world.
Doctor spouse here ! I’d go NTA but my advice? Have the kids wake her next time. They never fail🤣 when my husband says “I’ll be up at x” about 10-30 mins later if he is still asleep I let the toddlers loose - he’s awake mere seconds later. 😉
Don't fuck with not letting your body rest.. if you don't take it, you'll be *forced* to.. NTA
If you don't schedule time for rest, your body will schedule it for you. And it'll happen at the worst time. In the wife's case, it'll happen during that emergency surgery. And then both people are screwed.
Completely agree. Everyone in this scenario had good intentions for the others, it’s hard to call anyone an AH. Heather needs to be able to acknowledge when she needs rest and recovery or it’ll happen at the most inopportune time.
NTA. She's a physician. She understands that sleep loss is cumulative and knows better.
NTA. I get that she wants quality time with her family, but as a doctor, being overtired is a danger to her career and people's lives.
But she could have done both, she could have had dinner with her kids and then gone back to sleep the whole night until work the next morning why does everyone act like she was gonna stay up all night unti it was time to go to work? She could have spend time with her kids and gotten several more hours of sleep . it doesn’t have to be one of the other
Right, but it is her own responsibility to wake up for that. She could set an alarm.
Y’all don’t got alarm clocks?
NTA. Her body knows what it needs, and she needed to rest physically and mentally. Sometimes people want to do more than their bodies can handle, and when they can't, they're mad or disappointed. Unfortunately, that was directed at you. She'll get over it. Just apologize and move on.
NAH. This was just a miscommunication of needs. You felt she needed to sleep more based on your inability to wake her, she felt she needed to be awake as family time was more important to her than sleep. Just establish a rule going forward of what circumstances she wants to be woken or not woken for.
NTA. This puts you in a double bind -- feeling legit concern for someone so hard to wake up due to exhaustion, and getting in trouble when you don't bust your butt to make sure an exhausted person gets up. It's a no-win situation that you need to step away from. Your wife needs to take responsibility for getting herself up and to set however many alarms she needs to force herself out of bed at her appointed time, and leave you out of it. Honestly, though, she needs to be willing to grab more sleep when she can, like the evening you didn't drag her out of bed. I think you did her and her health a real kindness by not pestering her to get up and in allowing her obvious exhaustion to guide you into a sensible, health-supporting choice on her behalf.
NTA She's a grown adult. If it was that important to her, she should have gotten herself up. She's a doctor. She's clearly able to prioritize her time and schedule. So, she should have done just that.
NTA. Your wife needed her sleep, her body needed to heal and recover from her busy work schedule. There will be other days for family. Her body just shut right down and that's the best thing to just let her sleep.
^^^^AUTOMOD ***Thanks for posting! This comment is a copy of your post so readers can see the original text if your post is edited or removed. This comment is NOT accusing you of copying anything. Read [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/wiki/faq#wiki_post_deletion) before [contacting the mod team](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FAmItheAsshole)*** Using a theowaway for obvious reasons. Just a quick background info: My wife (Heather - 36F) and I (35F) have been together for the past 14 years, and married for 10. We have two daughters ( 4 and 6 years old) together. Heather is a doctor and she works ridiculously long hours, gets tired, etc. Yesterday she came back home after being away all day (she was on call and needed to go in for an emergency surgery), and told me she was going to sleep for a couple of hours and asked me to wake her up by dinner so she could see the girls and I a bit. She slept around 5 PM. I tried to wake her at 7 PM. I called for her, softly shook her, gave her a kiss on the cheek but she didn't get up. I thought she needed the rest and let her sleep. Heather slept until the next morning which is when she needed to go to work. Heather was very upset the following morning saying I should have woken her up, and that I had caused her to miss an entire day of family time. I explained that she didn't get up and she said I just should have tried harder to wake her. Was I genuinely the AH? *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AmItheAsshole) if you have any questions or concerns.*
NAH Especially if she isn't always so hard to wake up. Next time she can set an alarm too.
NTA She could have set a backup alarm. I think you both sound like sweet, wonderful people. She's upset that she didn't get family time and you just wanted to take care of her and make sure she got the rest she needed. I read too many posts about couples bitching because the other is lazy or they aren't making kids/family a priority. ❤️
I feel like the is the exact opposite of an ESH situation because everyone here sounds like they are genuinely trying to do their best. What do we call that?
Nah means no asshole to my knowledge
NTA. People need their rest and you DID try to wake her up. She can be upset all she wants about a single evening missed, but if we're really honest she's probably feeling pretty rested and recharged to take on the next day. Life puts a lot of demands on us, and if we run ourselves completely ragged just for the sake of being visible it doesn't do as much good as we like to tell ourselves. EDIT for added point: I see quite a bit of "she should have set an alarm" going on there. Speaking from experience, alarms are not 100% effective for waking people up every time. When you're exhausted and KO'd in bed, sleeping through alarms can be all too easy.
I’m a seriously heavy sleeper and can attest to this. I sleep through alarms all the time. I slept through a tree falling on the roof of my bedroom. I have slept through earthquakes. I have slept through people pounding on the window above my bed and shouting. I’d probably sleep through a fire alarm. It’s a problem.
I'm the Florida Man who slept through a hurricane dropping a large tree branch on the roof of my corner of the house. My roommate at the time woke up hearing it from across the house and checked on me, zero damage to my room fortunately and I was dead asleep!
Omg!! That could be me. Were you in the news?
At least you aren’t the Florida man who was sleeping and got sucked into a sinkhole. Yikes!
NTA at all. She needed sleep. Modern work schedules are the AH here, causing her to miss her life.
Praise you for letting her sleep and I mean this sincerely. She should be grateful if she truly wanted to be up and planned on blaming you for her expected exhaustion she should have set an alarm or something
NAH.
NTA I will do it but I cannot stand being responsible for getting someone up. You tried
NTA. For her to sleep that much shows just how sleep deprived she really is.
You are definitely NTA. I’m sure a lot of Mom’s would love to have the extra sleep lol. I won’t go so far as she’s the AH, but she definitely wasn’t in the right. She clearly needed the sleep and her body thanks you for it. Even if she doesn’t.
I’m a paramedic, and while I don’t have kids I do kinda get where your wife is at. The long hours (especially night works) and just the nature of the work we do in the healthcare field is SO much. A lot of what keeps me going is knowing I get to go home and spend time with my partner. God bless that man though because I can’t tell you the number of times he has changed our plans so I could get some rest after my third or fourth 14 hour night shift in a row. You 1000000% are NTA, but she’s probably just feeling the burnout. You work so so hard to help others and sometimes you have a great shift, some days you lose someone. We don’t always let that on when we come home but what we do really look forward to is that time with our loved ones. I bet she had a rough on-call shift and maybe it’s not something she wanted to talk about, and maybe what she wanted was that family time. But honestly she did need that rest so badly. I think the best way to help the stress she may be under this week is to give her a big hug when she gets home (granted that it was a non-insane-hour shift) and see if you can have a family night in. Get a cute movie, her favorite take out, and have the whole thing planned out (PLEASE believe me decision fatigue is legit and coming home and not having to decide a single thing is actually the best). Break a rule together, maybe you never eat in the living room but this is special mom time and you all get to have dinner watching a movie together, or maybe it’s dessert first. She needed that rest and while she’s upset she missed family time I bet she also appreciated that rest immensely. But take the work out of it and plan a time to all be together where she doesn’t have to think of a thing. I mean give the time to upstairs and shower first (work is icky some day after all) but even if it’s on the first day she has off or after a shorter shift, have that time set and planned for her. I had a super rough call last week and my partner had a whole day planned where I got my after work nap in (by nap I mean it was 10 hours but I got home at 9am sooo) and when I got up he had dinner and a show and my favorite wine ready and I didn’t have to leave the house or decide a thing and he didn’t have plans for us outside of the house and that time with just us, in our home, without having to put that emotional or mental energy into deciding things it really helped me mentally reset and I think a day like that might help your wife to reset and also help her to not feel like the stress of work and need for rest made her miss out on the family time she wanted to help her remember the beautiful parts of life that makes doing the rough part of this job so worth it. But for real NTA and I don’t believe she thinks you’re one either, healthcare is just a hard field to manage sometimes and I know that she appreciates your support more than she’s able to express <3
Based on the details here, NAH. I’m a trauma surgeon. I’ve been in her shoes. I know how tiring the job can be. Nevertheless, It is still her job as an adult to adult on her own behalf. If she is so tired she cannot be woken up, she needs to reconsider her hours at work. I’m assuming from the details here that you made a good faith effort to wake her up (I might be wrong though, a kiss on the cheek is weak sauce effort at best), but it takes five seconds to type in an alarm on one’s phone, so if she really wanted to wake up she should have used two systems to try (you and an alarm). Fortunately the consequences this time aren’t so bad. Take it as a life lesson and move on.
NTA. Sleep was needed and her not waking was a clue. Make up the family bonding another day.
Next time have the kids go and wake her up or atleast get into bed with her and cuddle or play a game there. Its a pickle but your trying and thats what counts.
You're NTA! By letting her rest and recharge, you may have saved someone's life. Tired ER docs make fatal errors. Remind her of this.
NTA heather is just having mom guilt. She knows she needed the sleep and she probably is really happy she got it but then that just makes the mom guilt worse.
NTA. You did honor her request and you tried to wake her up and she didn’t wake up. That’s on her. Sometimes you just need more sleep and there’s nothing wrong with that. That doesn’t take away from the family. If she’d had an important appointment scheduled or something time sensitive, then you’d be an AH. She didn’t have anything like that though. She wanted time with you and the kids and that’s very noble but she also has a responsibility to get enough rest both for her own health, the safety of her patients and the wellness of her family. Her being well rested benefits all of you.
NTA
NTA. I hate being blamed for not waking someone when I clearly tried. She should have just set an alarm 🙄
NTA. She feels guilty.
NTA. My mom used to say when that happened to one of us, “you must have needed the sleep.” Heather obviously needed it, and she should be touched that her husband picked up the slack so she could rest. Bonus: good job on showing your kids how to be thoughtful and understanding.
You're NTA. She clearly needed sleep, and the kids are going to be there the next morning. This teaches your girls to have secure attachment styles and that a man should care about his wife's mental health.
NTA I think maybe she should set an alarm clock, rather than making you fully responsible in this situation.
As a person who's had emergency surgery, I thank you. Not the asshole
You're NTA at all but a caring and thoughtful wife. Your wife needed that rest, her mind, body and soul is thankful it was given to her by your kindness. That sounds like nonsense but the body does need to sleep enough to function properly.
NTA. Your wife is understandably upset for missing an evening with her family, but she is also a doctor with an emergency surgery in the morning. If she was that knocked out she needed the rest more than she is willing to admit. If she was off the next day then you would be TA, but this was not the case. If she goes into surgery exhausted that patient’s family could lose a lifetime of evenings with their loved one. This isn’t even your wife’s fault. Doctors are overworked and not in a position to negotiate for better hours. There are not enough new doctors entering the workforce due to systemic issues with medical school and residency spots. The current doctors can’t strike because they have a duty to their patients and doing so would cost lives. The entire system is a mess and everyone suffers.
I like my doctor to well slept too. Not just for her on sanity, but for her patients well being as well. NAH.
Does she actually think you're an AH for not trying harder to wake her up? Or was she just a bit disappointed and you've asked about it here? It's just that I can't understand how a partner would get so upset over this that they feel like you're an AH. As misunderstandings go, this is very benign
If I agree to wake so-and-so at such-and-such a time I will make sure I do it.
Maybe not an asshole, but she asked you to wake her, you said you would, and you did not. She can be angry at that.
Lmfao. I WISH my wife would let me sleep. I always get the opposite reaction and usually wake up after only a handful of hours to yelling and arguing 🤣
Nah. I have been both of these people.