This past Sunday New York Times had a fun article on sleep behavior and couples. Most interesting, though, was the link to a 1976 Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire nestled between stats on sleeping alone versus with another person.
The 16-question questionnaire does away with the strict morning-person/night-person divide and instead places your morningness and eveningness on a scale. After taking the questionnaire, you’ll get a number that corresponds with where you fall on the spectrum. The questionnaire will also tell you around what time of night you start feeling sleepy, and what time is your natural bedtime.
No exaggeration, it pegged my and Dave’s sleep patterns down to the half hour: 9:30pm for him; 10:15pm for me. Eeerily accurate. We’ve somehow slipped into our bodies’ natural sleep times, without even realizing it.
The questionnaire also interestingly may help you understand more precisely how different you and your partner’s sleep patterns are. I’ve always imagined myself as a night owl compared to Dave’s morning lark. It turns out, we just fall on either side of the divide. We actually aren’t that different at all. He is left-of-center to my right-of-center, if you will. The twain don’t exactly meet, but negotiations at least have the potential for success..
Where do you fall on the spectrum? Did you also find that you weren’t as night-owlish as you thought? Who are you people actually falling asleep past midnight, and how exactly do you function?
