Insomnia Forum Posting

Posted by A-B on August 13, 2002 at 18:42:45:

In Reply to: Incompatible sleeping with TV posted by sarah on August 13, 2002 at 13:33:56:

Oh yes - been down this path before!! An ex-boyfriend of mine (..and no, it wasn't just because of the TV..) insisted that he have the TV on to help him fall asleep. Like you, I need silence and total darkness to fall asleep, although I can tolerate music playing softly in the background. The problem with TVs is the irregularity of volume (..the ads always seem SO much louder..), which can jolt you out of a relaxed state of mind.

It seems that your fiance seems quite unwilling to make any concessions on this point - has he actually tried listening to a CD, or the radio to see if this helps? You can get radios with a "sleep" setting that will switch off after a set time. Perhaps he needs to delay going to bed if he is still awake and watching TV after being in bed for an hour or more so that he is ready to fall asleep once in bed.

One option we tried was a TV on a timer. If this is not something built into your TV, perhaps you could use a timer switch like the ones used to make lights go on and off while people go away on vacation. We would set the timer for 90min - adequate time for him to finish watching a movie and fall asleep - and when the time was up, I didn't have to worry about physically having to get up to switch the TV off, which also helped me to relax because I wasn't constantly checking to see if he was asleep yet.

I hope you manage to reach a compromise soon so that you can both get a good nights sleep. Let us know how it goes.

A-B : )

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