Getting yourself out of bed when necessary is part of the growing up process for most people. At some point, they transition from a parent or guardian waking them to setting an alarm and getting up and ready for the day on their own.
But some people struggle with the process for a variety of reasons. Once they begin cohabitating as an adult, their struggle can become a group problem.
A significant other dealing with their partner’s waking woes turned to the “Am I The A**hole” (AITA) subreddit for feedback.
DumpsterGiraffe asked:
“AITA because I won’t let my partner set 17 alarms every morning?”
The original poster (OP) explained:
“Every single morning, my partner sets like 17 alarms starting at 6 am. I don’t need to be up until 8.”
“The alarms go off every 5 minutes, they snooze them all, and then roll over and go back to sleep instantly while I’m lying there wide awake, reconsidering my life choices.”
GIPHY
“This morning, I grabbed their phone and turned off the last 10 alarms. They woke up late, got mad, and said I ‘sabotaged their system. ‘”
“It’s been going on for months, and I’ve brought it up a bunch of times. They always say they’ll ‘try to fix it,’ but nothing ever changes.”
“They said they’d change — right after ‘just five more minutes’. I was driven to this madness.”
“AITA?”
The OP summed up their situation.
“My action was turning off my partner’s alarms, which ended up making them late. The conflict is with them since they were pissed and called me an a**hole.”
“I figured I might be the a**hole because I knew I was messing with their system, even if it was driving me nuts.”
Redditors weighed in by declaring:
- NTA – Not The A**hole
- YTA – You’re The A**hole
- NAH – No A**holes Here
- ESH – Everyone Sucks Here
Redditors decided the OP was not the a**hole (NTA).
“NTA. Someone who needs 17 alarms doesn’t have a system: they have a problem, and they’re making it yours.”
“Instead of lying there wide awake, reconsidering your life choices, try reconsidering their life choices. They can choose 17 alarms and peaceful existence without you, or some self-discipline and one, maybe two alarms.” ~ tosser9212
“Get them a smart watch which vibrates to wake him up without waking you up.” ~ ozzieinsanjose
“I agree, but I think the OP’s partner should pay for it.” ~ libraryofgardens
“I use my wife’s old Samsung watch for literally only this purpose. The vibration wakes me up enough that my first alarm gets me out of bed without disturbing her too much.”
“It’ll be said lots, but seriously, if your partner cares about you, they will work on this. There are multiple solutions.”
“What I did for the longest time was get up at alarm 1 and pass out again on the couch to wait for my next alarms. I got my alarms and she got sleep.” ~ CMDR-TealZebra
“My husband and I always had different times we worked. His alarm was set to the radio. Yes, the radio. Sometimes, it was not turned off, and he hit the snooze button instead.”
“He went to the shower, and when he came back, that stupid radio would be on and I would be staring at him. He learnt very quickly that it would be wise to turn it off!”
“It’s unfair to have multiple alarms set when someone doesn’t have to wake at the same time. Tell him. One alarm or sleep somewhere else!” ~ PearGlum1966
GIPHY
“I mean… what system? You won’t feel any more rested when you compare how you feel after 1st alarm vs the 17th that was set for every 5minutes or less.”
“You set up an alarm for the time you need to wake up, not ‘uhhh, 1st alarm is for when I can eat breakfast, 2nd when I have to wash, 3rd brush my teeth’. You either are an adult and know your obligations, or still a child and have no self-control.” ~ SoulSiren_22
“The system doesn’t even work, though. It’s scientifically proven that you get better sleep by just setting an alarm for later than you do having 17 to snooze through.”
“The people who set a ton of alarms and snooze each one think they have a ‘system’, but it doesn’t work, and they just punish their partners with it.” ~ numbersthen0987431
“NTA. My husband, twenty years in, still tries to pretend like he couldn’t possibly wake himself up and I need to wake him up. Nope, not having it.”
“He managed before we got together and will wake up just fine when it’s something he wants. And no he doesn’t have any medical issues—that’s been checked.”
“A few weeks ago, we had plans; he hadn’t woken up with the alarm going off for a solid 2 and a half hours, so we just left without him, and he had to apologise to his disappointed children.” ~ HmNotToday1308
“NTA. They can go sleep somewhere else because they wouldn’t do it two mornings in a row. You don’t mess with my sleep.” ~ MOGAE-0804
“My dad wakes up at 4, my mom at 7. They have slept separately for almost 10 years now, and they prefer it that way…”
“No shame in sleeping separately when you need your sleep.” ~ goddessofthewinds
“Their system sucks. Hubby gets up before me, too, and he snoozed his alarm four times this morning. He doesn’t remember because even though he hit snooze each time, he didn’t actually wake up. I, on the other hand, woke up every single time.” ~ Bubbly_Chicken_9358
“Alarm clock extreme (app) lets you set an alarm where you have to solve an easy/medium/hard math equation or enter a password to snooze or turn off the alarm that you can program with exactly the ringtone/song you choose.” ~ Cuddles_Kitteh
“Snoozing 17 times is insane, and completely a**hole behavior. It’s also sleep deprivation torture, so I think OP gets a pass.”
“Assuming the snooze time is 5 minutes, then doing it 17 times means he does it for an hour and a half.” ~ numbersthen0987431
“NTA. My husband started doing this. I turned all the lights on one morning after the first alarm. I was a SAHM to very small kids at the time.”
“He was annoyed. I sat up, looked him in the eye, and said, ‘I can’t live like this. I need to be able to go back to sleep when you get up for work. If you don’t start getting up after the first alarm, I might actually hurt you’.”
“It must have scared him a bit, because he never set multiple alarms again.” ~ KingsRansom79
“NTA, those 10 alarms create bad sleeping habits. It also disrupts natural sleep, making their sleep quality worse..it also disrupts your sleep making your sleep quality worse, which will mean decreased performance at work.”
“This would be a deal breaker for me, because interrupted sleep literally messes up my entire day.” ~ annoyedvideographer
“NTA. They’ve been sabotaging ‘your’ system for a while by keeping you awake too early. Research silent alarms. You can get a thing that straps to you wrist and vibrates.” ~ MerlinBiggs
“I dated a guy for a while who was so proud of the ‘fact’ that he woke up at 4 AM every day, no matter what. Like that is some sort of life achievement.”
“After he stayed over a few nights, I realized he woke up at that time because HE HAD A 4 AM ALARM SET. EVERY DAY. INCLUDING WEEKENDS.”
“I hate waking up early and, after a few mornings of waking up to his alarm, which he very clearly did not wake up to, and pondering shoving his phone somewhere interesting to get it to be quiet, I decided that wasn’t a relationship I was compatible with. NTA.” ~ CraZ-Qat-LaD
“If you love someone, let them sleep! He’s being HUGELY unkind and disrespectful. NTA.” ~ Impossible_Balance11
“We’ve been together for decades, we both snore, we both have different sleeping habits, I like to sleep with the TV on, she likes 4 cats in the bed, etc…”
“I set a couple alarms and then snooze them for an hour or more.”
“We both get a good night’s sleep because separate rooms are a thing.”
“A good night’s sleep is more important, to us, than spooning.” ~ allbsallthetime
“My wife and I have our issues sleeping, and any violation of the tentative ‘sleep agreement’ treaty requires immediate and intensive discussion.”
“What your partner is doing would constitute an act of war.” ~ kheltar
“NTA. One thing that might be worth trying to get him to actually understand the insanity he’s putting you through is to record what happens one morning and later ask him to sit through the full recording.”
“Once he starts complaining after a few minutes and says he gets the point, tell him, ‘No. You don’t. Even if you sit through this until the end, you are still not being woken up and robbed of hours of sleep by it. If you can’t even make yourself sit through this recording one time, how on earth do you expect me to go through the real thing, which is much worse as it is stealing sleep from me, every day? Surely you can understand how crazy this is now?’.”
“One problem is that his daily experience is floating through slapping the alarms into snooze mode and then drifting back to sleep. He surfs waves of alarms comfortably until he finally wakes. He’s not really getting what your experience is—which is nothing like his.”
“He shouldn’t need you to go this far in order to get it, but if he had the ability to think beyond himself, he would never have subjected you to this in the first place, so I guess he does need to experience for himself what should be obvious.” ~ kurokomainu
If it takes more than 2-3 alarms to get out of bed, that is already a failed system.