Here's a fun fact: I used to sleepwalk as a child. It didn't happen often, but when it did, it was always a shock. I once woke up to my mother's prodding because she'd witnessed me leaving my bedroom and moving to sleep on the living room sofa. Another time, I went down to the basement and started snacking on stuff in the pantry. I'm pretty sure this only happened a handful of times (if that) and it hasn't happened since. My sleepwalking experiences still make for funny stories, however.
Now imagine being in a long-term relationship with someone who's a sleepwalker or often talks in their sleep. The results can be hilarious, as we discovered once Redditor hoeka_moss asked the online community,
"Partners of sleep-talkers or sleepwalkers, what gems have you to share?"
"And I went back to bed."
My wife will tell me the next day when I do this.
Her favourite story to tell is that she woke up in the middle of the night to find me slowly walking out of our bedroom. Wife: "Are you ok? What are you doing?" Me: "There's somebody downstairs in the kitchen, unrolling the tinfoil" Wife: "Ooooo-Kay. What's your plan?" Me: "I'm going to stop them" Wife: "Shall we get a bit more sleep then both go down together?" Me: "Ok".
And I went back to bed.
Subsequent investigations found a small plastic bag on the floor, near my head, being rustled by the movement of the curtain, the window being open.
"He farted very loudly..."
He farted very loudly and proceeded to say, "You got the wrong guy."
"She has no recollection of this."
My girl woke up one night and said "Did you find your rocks?" and I asked her what she was talking about and she said, "I don't know, I'm just trying to make conversation," and promptly went back to sleep.
She has no recollection of this.
"Brilliant."
My boyfriend woke me up the other day by gently putting his fingers in my mouth and I kept moving my head out of the way until eventually I was like, "Can you stop that!!!"
He then sounded genuinely upset and asked why I woke him up as he was having a really nice dream about feeding a deer. Brilliant.
"So either he is mad..."
Sigh; my boyfriend either recites postcodes (delivery driver) or calls the dog in his sleep. So either he is mad no one is responding to his postcode nonsense or I get a flying 30kg dog to my body.
"My aunt likes to tell me the story..."
My aunt likes to tell the story about her and my cousin sharing a hotel room one time. My aunt woke up having to pee, and found my cousin sitting up in bed with her arms folded across her abdomen, kind of rocking back and forth and giggling quietly. When my aunt asked her what she was doing, my cousin said, "I'm holding a baby and it has an adult smile!"
I found this story deeply unsettling.
"My wife started screaming one night..."
My wife started screaming one night that she was lost in the local grocery store. And that no matter where she went she couldn't find her way out. I asked her has she tried checking out at the cash registers? She then looked at me and said in her most sincere voice, "That's why you are the smartest person I know." And she rolled over and fell back asleep.
"Predictably..."
One night, my boyfriend woke me up in the middle of the night, tapping me on my shoulder. He put his finger on his mouth, whispered "shush" to me, then pointed at the door and told me "I can hear something, don't move." Predictably, I nearly s*** my pants. All the worst possible scenarios crossed my mind, and the moment of silence after he shushed me felt like hours. Then, he started waving his hands and talking about tetris, 'the twirlies' (idk), and making sure we don't align... And that's how I learnt my boyfriend talks in his sleep.
"He's lactose-intolerant."
Not my current partner but my ex-boyfriend sometimes talks in his sleep and the funniest story was this one time i was still up reading a book and i hadn't noticed that he was already asleep next to me. Suddenly he bursts out " Will you just give me the f*cking yogurt already, Shannon!?" in a flawless british accent and scares the s*** out of me.
We're both german and none of our first languages include English. We didn't know a Shannon. He's lactose-intolerant.
"No idea what I might have been..."
Not a partner, but me: a few nights ago I apparently said, out of nowhere, "My teeth have lost their fear."
No idea what I might have been dreaming about, and I don't think I want to know.
"In college..."
In college, this guy wakes up all the roommates by yelling "I'll be Charles Manson!"
He swears he was having a dream about putting on a play and noone else wanted the part, and he was just trying to be helpful.
"One night my husband..."
One night my husband was poking me on the shoulder in his sleep, I woke up and said "Huh, you ok?" Then he goes "Ooooooh, what is in your hand? A penny?!?!?" Then he laid back down to sleep.
"I then fell back asleep."
My wife has had nightmares for most of her life. When we first started sleeping in the same bed, she told me that one night i rolled over, looked at her and said "She's here."
I then fell back asleep. She was terrified and didn't sleep for the rest of the night.
"When I was three..."
When I was three, my father jumped up out of bed screaming, "No! No! Rattlesnakes!" Of course he scared my mother half to death.
He then ran into my bedroom to 'save' me. He grabbed me out of my crib and half threw me to my mother. He collapsed on the floor screaming, "They're all biting me. Help! Oh God, I'm dying!'
My grandmother, my mother's mother, who was visiting, ran in and threw a bucket of water on my father. My father woke up, lying on my bedroom floor, soaking wet, and confused. When he asked what happened, my grandmother said, "My daughter married a dumb ass," and went back to bed.
"I woke up to find..."
I woke up to find my former girlfriend sitting in the closet crossed-legged with the light on, going through dresses at three in the morning. I asked her what she was doing, and she said she was "getting ready as fast as she could" before she started to cry a little. Then she climbed back into bed, never waking up, and has no memory of any of it. I, on the other hand, spent the next two hours in the dark wondering about unknowing pressures I place on other people.
We're engaged now.
"My husband will periodically..."
My husband will periodically tell me he loves me and goes back to sleep. Super sweet.
"She just went around in circle."
My fiancé loves Super Mario 64 so I was playing on the DS one night and she just started mumbling about getting a star somewhere so she grabs the DS with both hands and started playing while not even holding the DS remotely close to her face. She just went around in circles. She will also ask for and eat chocolate in her sleep if I feed it to her.
"My first time sleeping over..."
My first time sleeping over at my now boyfriend's house (we had been dating for two weeks at the time) he thought there were giant spiders on the bed and lifted me up bridal style before throwing me across the room. That my first introduction to his night terrors.
"Before I went to bed..."
I did sleep pushups.
Before I went to bed, I was reading this book about inspirational CEOs taking risks to grow their business. I went to sleep and in the middle of the night, I turned over, leaned over my girlfriend, did three pushups right on top of her, giving her a kiss when I was down, and proceeded to say "You gotta take more risks." And went back to sleep.
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