What Your Bedtime Routine Says About Your Relationship

[caption id="attachment_834425" align="alignleft" width="1068"] Bigstockphoto.com/intimate young african couple in love[/caption] Bedtime is a sacred time. You probably have your routines to make sure you are fully relaxed and ready for a good night’s rest. You likely have your hygiene routines, too. Maybe you do a little tidying up around the apartment or house because you hate to wake up to a messy home. Whoever you are, you have a bedtime routine. Even if you don’t have one, that is one. When you start living with a significant other, your bedtime routine can be thrown off. Your partner has his own nighttime habits that could directly interfere with yours. For example, what if he needs total silence in the home an hour before bed and you like to play classical music throughout your apartment? What if he gets his best creative thoughts right before going to sleep—thoughts he needs to say out loud—and you prefer no talking in bed? Here’s what your bedtime routine says about your relationship. [caption id="attachment_693332" align="alignleft" width="418"] Corbis Images[/caption]

You wait for each other

If you and your partner don’t go to bed at drastically different times, then you can wait for the other person to come to bed before drifting off. When you’re in bed, you’re both finally totally disconnected from life. You can get in a little snuggle time. And there is something intimate about drifting off at the same time. If you wait for your partner to go to sleep, you’re probably very bonded.             [caption id="attachment_220083" align="alignleft" width="500"] Shutterstock[/caption]

You never wait

If your partner takes so much as ten minutes longer than you to get to bed, you go in the room, turn off all the lights, put in your earplugs, get under the covers, turn on your white noise machine and make it very clear that you are closed for business. If it’s come to the point where sleeping for ten extra minutes is more important than getting ten precious minutes snuggling with your boo (possibly the only ten minutes you’ll have together that day) there is likely a rift in the relationship. [caption id="attachment_697228" align="alignleft" width="468"] Shutterstock.com/Couple in a bathroom[/caption]

You get ready together

When you and your partner are best friends and love to be around each other, you’re bound to drift into one another’s bathrooms while getting ready for bed. Even if you have your own bathrooms, you’ll end up brushing your teeth side by side at his sink, or you’ll sit on the toilet and brush your hair while he stands at the sink washing his face. It feels like getting ready for a slumber party, so obviously, you’re going to stick together!               [caption id="attachment_712463" align="alignleft" width="420"] Image Source: Shutterstock[/caption]

You get ready strictly apart

You must have your space and be able to access the sink the moment you need it because your mud mask can stay on your skin for exactly 6 minutes—no more, no less. Plus, you just find it annoying to have your partner nearby when you’re getting ready for bed. If you get ready strictly in separate bathrooms, never popping into say hi to each other—like siblings who can’t stand each other—there may be a disconnect.         [caption id="attachment_710065" align="alignleft" width="420"] Image Source: Shutterstock[/caption]

You’re playful in bed

When you get into bed, it feels like playtime with your best friend. You joke around, snuggle, tickle each other, speak your own love language and talk utter nonsense—but it makes sense to the two of you. You just become giddy when your bodies are near each other. It feels like a time you get to sneak away from your obligations and just be kids again.             [caption id="attachment_608914" align="alignleft" width="500"] Shutterstock[/caption]

You talk business/house chores

Are you all business when you get into bed? Do you take the opportunity to go over all of the errands each of you needs to do over the next week? Maybe even mention the way your partner did some things wrong? Is bedtime just a time you finally have your partner’s attention to delegate chores and give criticism? If so, you may have lost some of your spark.   [caption id="attachment_612727" align="alignleft" width="420"] Corbis Images[/caption]

You put your devices away

If bedtime is your time to tune out the world and focus on each other, then you probably leave your devices out of it. You may even have a no-laptops-in-bed rule, or a set time when you both need to silence and shut off all of your devices. When you’re crazy about each other, you see bedtime as the time you get to tell the rest of the world to piss off—it’s you-and-boo time now.             [caption id="attachment_714445" align="alignleft" width="420"] Image Source: Shutterstock[/caption]

You’re all in your devices

Do you both have the glow of a cellphone or laptop in your faces until the moment you go to sleep? Do you exchange half-hearted comments to each other from across the bed about some article you’re reading or video you’re watching? Uh oh. You may be using your devices to escape each other, and the realization that you don’t feel that excited to be in bed together.           [caption id="attachment_706179" align="alignleft" width="420"] Image Source: Shutterstock[/caption]

You care about one another’s rest

If you simply cannot go to bed at the same time—maybe one of you gets up at 5 in the morning and the other gets up at 9—you at least respect one another needs to rest. If your partner needs to go to bed at 9 pm and you roam into the apartment at 11 pm, you take your shoes off and you’re quiet as a mouse. You try to make a dinner that doesn’t require banging pots and pans around, and you watch your show on your laptop with headphones. Your partner pays you the same courtesies when you’re asleep.        

Your conflicting schedules annoy you

Maybe it drives you nuts that you need to be quiet when you get home. This is the time you like to make elaborate meals—you’ve earned it. This is the time you like to blast music and drink wine and dance in the living room. It’s so annoying that your partner’s stupid schedule takes away from that…yikes. If that’s the way you feel then that means making your partner happy no longer makes you very happy. You only see doing things to ensure he sleeps well as a hindrance to your happiness. That’s not a good sign.       [caption id="attachment_703166" align="alignleft" width="420"] Image Source: Shutterstock[/caption]

You say sweet nothings

Before going to bed, you exchange a slew of “I love you’s”, “Sleep Well’s”, “Sweet dreams” and “Have a great day tomorrow if I don’t see you in the morning’s.” You want to make sure you send your partner off to bed with nothing but love.             [caption id="attachment_612606" align="alignleft" width="378"] Corbis Images[/caption]

You don’t see the point in sweet nothings

Your partner knows you love him. You don’t need to say it all of the time. It’s sort of a given that you’re going to sleep now so you don’t need to do all the goodnights and sweet dreams. Oh boy…sweet nothings aren’t about being practical. When you adore your partner, you just can’t help but say a dozen sweet things before you both go to sleep and can’t talk again for a while.           [caption id="attachment_607182" align="alignleft" width="376"] Image Source: Shutterstock[/caption]

You open up and share

If either person just had a bad day or has been mulling over an issue (not related to the relationship) this is the time they do a little venting. Their partner can comfort them, let them release some of the tension, and give them a little advice. Bed becomes a safe space to talk about life issues that get pushed to the side throughout the day.                 [caption id="attachment_620621" align="alignleft" width="425"] Corbis[/caption]

You stick to yourselves

You get in bed and hope your partner doesn’t have much to say because you have enough on your mind. You’d really just like ten minutes of peace to tackle a problem you’ve been thinking about all day. If your partner has a problem he needs to discuss, you hope he just keeps it to himself. That sounds like you’ve disconnected, and don’t really value your partner’s opinion anymore. You certainly don’t care enough to invest energy into helping him with any problems in his life.         [caption id="attachment_693996" align="alignleft" width="420"] Corbis Images[/caption]

You do your best to share a bed

Some couples simply can’t sleep in the same bed every night because one person is the lightest sleeper in the world. But couples who really love each other do their best to share some bedtime, even if that just means cuddling in one bed for a while until going to their separate beds. Maybe they put two separate twin mattresses in a king-size frame so they don’t disturb each other by moving, but can still roll over and cuddle any time they want.         [caption id="attachment_623342" align="alignleft" width="391"] Shutterstock[/caption]

You have separate rooms entirely

You and your partner have completely separate rooms. You’ve fully decorated them as your own—like you’re two roommates sharing an apartment. You hardly ever spend time in the same bed together. When you’re ready to go to bed you go to your room and your partner does the same. So you’ve fully lost your grasp on the importance of winding down together in bed.

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