A new mom’s story of being repeatedly woken up by her husband has infuriated the internet and sparked a debate about intentional sleep deprivation as a form of abuse.
In a viral post on redditOn the “Am I The A**hole” forum, user u/assholeamithistime wondered if she was wrong in commenting on her husband’s behavior. Hair story collected more than 13,500 votes on Monday morning.
The 29-year-old woman claimed that her 37-year-old husband woke her up in the middle of the night several times a week to ask her what time it was.
“We both sleep with our cell phones charging next to our bed,” she explained. “So, it’s just as easy for him to get in touch and check the time on his own phone as it is for him to wake me up and ask me.”
While her husband said she “made a big deal out of nothing,” the wife thought it was “selfish” and “unnecessarily insensitive” of him to wake her up for such a trivial reason, when it would cost him less effort to do it himself. to check the time.
Tim Clayton – Corbis / Employee / Corbis Historical
“We both have full-time jobs and have a child,” she added. “I do 100% of the nighttime baby tasks because my husband commutes farther than I do. So he says it makes sense that I let him sleep because he has to get out the door before I wake up in the morning.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has described sleep deprivation as a public health epidemic, with more than a third of American adults getting less than the recommended seven hours of sleep per night in 2016. The COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated the problemwith stress, anxiety and fear about the financial and health effects of the virus driving up the rate of clinical insomnia.
Prolonged sleep deprivation can lead to: numerous health problems, including inflammation, obesity, Alzheimer’s disease, and an increased risk of heart attack and stroke. A lack of healthy sleep too undermines the brain’s ability to rejuvenateeffectively speeding up the aging process.
Reddit users were outraged by the wife’s account of her husband’s actions. Some even questioned whether his deliberate, constant interruption of her sleep was a form of abuse.
“She’s sleeping so little already because she’s doing ALL the baby tasks and he’s taking even more sleep from her. Sleep deprivation is literally torture if it’s extreme enough,” one comment noted.
“My ex used sleep deprivation on me as one of his abusive tactics,” said another reader. “This message has me screaming inside.”
A third user agreed: “It’s a form of psychological abuse if you ask him to stop, he continues, AND you are a baby’s caretaker. He has early meetings [has] no influence on the education of children. He needs a huge wake-up call.”
Inflicting sleep deprivation is an under-recognized form of abuse, according to DomesticShelters.org. In addition to the physical health effects, denying a person sleep can make it more difficult to leave an abusive relationship. The longer they sleep, the greater their risk of depression, hopelessness, and even feeling like they’re going crazy.
news week contacted u/assholeamithistime for comment.