It’s Hard for 2 to Keep Time on the Same Biological Clock

John and Carol, both in their 20s, had been married for five years when they realized that their body clocks were hopelessly out of sync.

John was a morning lark--he liked going to bed at 8 p.m. so he could get up at 5 a.m. to go to work at his construction job. Carol was a night owl, preferring to stay up until midnight and sleep until 9 or 10 a.m.

“It was causing them a great deal of difficulty. What would happen is he would want her to go to bed with him at 8 and get up and make him breakfast,” said Margaret White, a medical psychologist and member of the Sleep Disorders Institute at St. Jude Hospital in Fullerton.

“When she had difficulty with this, he perceived it as rejection. He thought, ‘She doesn’t love me. She doesn’t want to have sex with me.’ He was sure the marriage was over.”

John and Carol turned to White for counseling. She helped them work out a compromise. Carol would go to bed with her husband at 8 to cuddle under the covers, but after he fell asleep she would get up again and enjoy a few hours to herself. She also made him breakfast and lunch before they retired so he wouldn’t wake her up in the morning.

John, meanwhile, came to realize that his wife wasn’t rejecting him--it was just too difficult for her to change her sleep pattern.

“Once he became aware it was a function of her biological clock, he felt reassured,” White said. “It was a case of education.”

Conflicting sleep patterns can create serious disturbances in a relationship. When a morning lark shares a bed with a night owl, couples can find themselves leading separate lives that begin and end at different hours of the day.

“Having your partner wandering around while you’re sleeping is disconcerting,” said Kerry Delk, a clinical psychologist and consultant with the Sleep Disorders Center at Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach.

The problem can be especially harmful to couples with busy schedules because bedtime might be the only time they spend alone together all day.

“When that doesn’t happen there can be a loss of intimacy,” Delk said.

One couple he counseled found that their conflicting sleep schedules left little time for togetherness day or night. Bill loved to stay up late and sleep in until 10 or 11 a.m., a habit he developed growing up with indulgent parents who never set limits. After he married, his wife, Susan, found his owlish habits annoying.

“She would wake up to find him busy in the den at 2 a.m.,” Delk said.

Susan worked a traditional 9-to-5 job, so when she was up and about in the morning, Bill was sound asleep.

Delk helped the couple solve the problem by teaching Bill behavioral techniques so he could change his sleep schedule to a more practical 10:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. shift.

“His wife felt it was a great improvement,” Delk said. “He was more available” to be with her during their waking hours.

Weekends are prime time for owls and larks to be at odds. Often, an owl will want to stay up late and party when the lark wants to go to bed.

“He will want to sleep, and she’ll want to go to the symphony that doesn’t start until 8,” White said. “That’s hard for larks.”

Larks, meanwhile, will want to drag their mates out of bed for an early-morning church service, breakfast or a camping trip.

The result is that one person ends up cranky, and the weekend excursion--which was supposed to be a time of happy togetherness--turns out to be another source of discontent.

White, who is also an associate professor of psychology at Cal State Fullerton, tells her students that when contemplating marriage they should consider--besides family, friends, taste in food and credit history--sleep habits.

“The younger ones look skeptical, but the older ones nod knowingly,” she said. “That kind of incompatibility can be detrimental.”

Those who don’t understand the powerful sway of the biological clock may misinterpret their partner’s desire to go to bed at a different hour as a sign of rejection, White said.

Although some people do indeed avoid their mates by going to bed earlier or later, more often their conflicting sleep habits are a function of nature: Their bodies simply require different amounts of sleep at different hours of the day.

“Some need two or three hours of sleep a night. Others require 12. That’s normal for them,” said Peter Fotinakes, associate clinical professor of neurology and medical director of the UC Irvine Sleep Disorder Center in Orange.

“The problem is if you’re married to someone at the other end of the bell curve.”

Often, the one who needs more sleep doesn’t get enough rest in trying to keep up with the bright-eyed partner.

“If you’re an eight-hour person and your partner is a 10-hour person, you need to understand that’s a need,” White said. “Otherwise, you’ll find you’re married to an irritable, fatigued spouse.”

Even if both parties sleep eight hours, the hours they spend catching their Zs can vary greatly. One person may be naturally inclined to sleep from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m., while the partner will want to sleep from midnight until 8 a.m.

“Some people’s clocks are off two or three hours,” Fotinakes said.

When someone’s biological clock is seriously out of whack, it could be a sign of a sleep disorder. In those cases, couples should seek medical advice. A patient might be suffering from sleep apnea or chronic insomnia or some other malady that can be corrected through medical treatment.

If the two cannot reset their clocks to conform to each other through medical or behavioral techniques, White suggests they concentrate on being together during “the middle hours.”

“They meet in the middle of the day when their times overlap,” she said.

In the case of John and Carol, “they didn’t change their rhythm, they learned to live with it.”

Simply recognizing a mate is an individual with different physical needs can go a long way to solving sleep disputes, and enhance other areas of a relationship as well, said Barbara Kreedman, a clinical psychologist in Santa Ana.

“It’s allowing for someone to have his or her own individual needs without it being a sign something’s wrong. If your partner needs more or less sleep, you should be able to give them that without making them change,” she said.

That requires compromise--for example, lowering the lights and TV so the other can sleep.

“Couples have problems wanting to make the other person like them, but being different is OK. You don’t have to mirror one another in everything you do,” said Kreedman.