The $10 sleep mask that saved my marriage

Or, how blue lights, husbands, Alexa, perimenopause, and women’s guilt almost broke me.

Welcome to the next installment of Gifts to Yourself: A Holiday Season of Letting Go, my series on small gifts to make the season a little saner. So far, we’ve talked about being unapologetically yourself, opting out of body talk, and giving yourself a kinder relationship with food and your body. Today’s gift is one we take for granted until it goes away: the gift of sleep.

If you’re finding this series meaningful, consider subscribing so you don’t miss what’s next. There’s more to come, and I’d love to have you along. 💙

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I haven’t always prioritized sleep.

In the days when I was actively trying to control the size of my body, exercise was the thing I prioritized over all else. Sleep was way way down on that list. But not anymore.

When I decided to focus on actual health versus “health but really weight loss,” sleep suddenly seemed very important. But it hasn’t been easy to get, especially now that I’m in perimenopause, and even though I no longer have to wake up at the crack of dawn for school dropoffs or to beat the traffic to a traditional 9-to-5.

The husband (and Alexa) problem

I blame my husband.

Yes, I still have a husband and like him, although it’s no longer fashionable to claim you have or like yours. But I have blamed him for most of my sleep woes in the last few years. The reason is easy: the man never sleeps. He’s up all night, playing games, reading books on his Kindle, and, yes, even answering email.

The other thing is we use Alexa to control our reading lights because the wall scones in our bedroom are too far away from the bed to just reach over and flip on (I know, I know, first world problems).

Don’t even get me started with Alexa. She’s always so damn loud in the middle of the night when my husband calls for her, even through my ear plugs (a habit I picked up during my first marriage). And, yes, just like the wife always blaming the mistress, I know Alexa isn’t the real problem. It’s my husband, requesting her help in the middle of the night when he should be sleeping.

For years now, I’ve protested my husband’s sleep habits. I’ve railed against him many, many times in the middle of the night over our six years together. And what does he do? Ignores me. If I awaken to his bright lights or shuffling around for whatever device he’s lost in the sheets and scream at him, he says absolutely nothing! When I asked why, he said it’s because you scream, but three minutes later, you’re back asleep. Rude. But mostly true.

Now, I know some of us are wired differently. My husband easily survives, thrives even, on little sleep. Much less than me. But all those little sleep interruptions in the middle of the night were adding up.

When perimenopause enters the chat

Perimenopause wasn’t making it any better either. For a while, before I realized what the hell was up with my body, I didn’t understand why I was suddenly waking up every night at 3 a.m. drenched in sweat. It was only when I got on HRT and progesterone for brain fog and the wake-ups went away, that I realized these things might be connected.

Needless to say, I prioritize sleep these days. And I’ve been slowly changing my habits to make this known. This summer, when the night sweats started returning, I realized that I couldn’t just crank the AC down to 65 every night (well, I could, but I didn’t want to deal with that bill). I was already on a pretty high dose of HRT and everything else was okay, so I didn’t feel like bumping it up was the answer. Instead, I determined a “summer quilt” was in order. Light and airy, just the barest hint of coverage if I got nippy.

Now, we can’t always buy our way to wellness. Nor do I believe self-care requires a bunch of products. Lots of self-care can be internal kindnesses and shifts in habits. But there are some things that really do help.

I found the perfect embroidered floral quilt at Pottery Barn and splurged (mine is apparently no longer available, but here is a close match). While I was there, I fell for their linen sheets, but couldn’t bring myself to pay PB prices for a set, so I found a higher-quality, French-made dupe on Amazon. Three months later, it’s holding up well and still so soft. (Many of those cheaper linen sheet sets aren’t, which defeats the point of linen in my opinion.)

Somewhere over the summer, I also upped my pillow game, investing in one of those fancy contoured neck pillows. I was waking up with cricks way too often.

The big sleep shift that made all the difference

These small changes definitely added up! But the big game changer came a month or so ago, when I finally (after months of suggestion from my husband) broke down and bought a sleep mask.

You’d think it was because I’d finally had enough of my husband’s antics, but no, what tipped me over the edge was the stupid alarm system in our house somehow turned itself on after three years of dormancy. Night after night, the control panel was blasting a bright blue beam of light across the bed straight into my eyeballs!

We tried deactivating the damn thing ourselves but were unsuccessful and then decided we’d keep it, so we did nothing. Or well, I draped an old tank top over it in an attempt to block the light. It was mostly unsuccessful. My house cleaner would remove it every few weeks when she came in, and then I’d have to do the delicate dance of trying to get it to hang on the keypad without falling off again.

Finally, one morning I decided enough was enough. I went to Wirecutter (my go-to for researching the best products), read through its sleep mask recommendations, and picked the one that seemed most suitable for side sleepers. It arrived the next day, and it’s been mostly blissful ever since.

It fully, completely, 100 percent blocks out all the light. It feels light on my face, and thanks to the molded indentations, it never brushes my eyes.

Women and men and worry and sleep

There was just one problem.

It worked so well that I started worrying I was getting too much sleep. I confided this to my husband one morning over coffee, after stumbling out of bed a couple hours after him. His response? “You obviously need it. I don’t know when you’re going to learn to listen to your body.”

Which I thought was pretty funny, considering the whole theme of this newsletter is learning to listen to your body. But then again, I’ve never said I had it all figured out!

Seriously though, this feels like such a woman thing to worry about. And of course, I also felt guilty for it and then had to play the comparison game. Because this is what we’ve been trained to do. We feel bad about allowing ourselves to rest. Or we compare ourselves to all the other harried women of the world subsisting on a few hours of winks and buckets of caffeine and somehow think we’re falling short because we’re actually getting a full night’s sleep.

Do we need to say it all together? Productivity is overrated. Doing doesn't make you any better. You're good enough just as you are.

Women shouldn’t have to earn their rest. Yet, so many of us feel like we do.

There is no man alive who thinks this way.

If he’s sleeping more, he assumes his body needs it. He doesn’t give it a second thought. And earning his sleep doesn’t even cross his mind, because his mere existence is enough.

It’s simply not culturally hardwired into him the way personal sacrifice is with women. We’ve turned self-sacrifice into an Olympic sport.

Then it hit me. All these years, like so many women, I’ve been white-knuckling my way through sleep, chronically undercutting myself in the name of doing, progressing, earning, justifying my enoughness.

I’m done with all that. Give me all the sleep I can get.

Sleep in perimenopause

Of course, we all know sleep is important, and we tend to skimp on it until it becomes an issue.

Like most side effects of perimenopause, the importance of sleep was another wakeup call. It probably wouldn’t have been as big a deal if brain fog hadn’t hit so hard, but when it did, I started digging. What I found was surprising.

Most of us midlife women know sleep issues exacerbate memory loss and cognition issues, but few of us are aware of the link between sleep and our heart health.

One recent study of midlife women published in the journal Menopause using the eight components of the American Heart Association’s health assessment tool, found that poor sleep was the strongest predictor of long-term cardiovascular events and death from any cause. It surpassed nutrition, physical activity, smoking abstinence, body mass index, blood lipids, blood sugar, and blood pressure, what the American Heart Association calls its Life’s Essential 8.

All these years I had been prioritizing weight loss above all else, I was giving up the one thing that could have supported my body and my overall health the most: sleep.

And that’s why this little foam mask feels like a real gift.

Did I mention it’s currently $10???

In this season of giving, I want to gently suggest the idea of giving yourself permission for more sleep. Or at least permission to buy the damn sleep mask.

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Now it’s your turn …

When did you start taking sleep more seriously? How have your sleep habits changed in perimenopause? And what’s the one sleep product or habit that has been the biggest game changer for you?

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ICYMI

Losing it all in perimenopause

It's not just you, the body pressure is back

Permission to exist as yourself: The greatest gift you can give

Pass the pie, not the shame