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Modern Love: Living in different time zones

2021-08-17T10:07:06.420Z


A couple whose story appeared in the column managed to reconcile their daytime and nighttime habits to achieve a happy marriage.


Miya lee

08/16/2021 2:49 PM

  • Clarín.com

  • The New York Times International Weekly

Updated 08/16/2021 2:49 PM

In her 2016 Modern Love essay "Night Girl Meets Daytime Boy," writer Amanda Gefter explains what it's like to live - and date - with delayed sleep phase syndrome, a circadian rhythm disorder.

For most of his adult life, Gefter has led a night owl life:

She wakes up around 4 in the afternoon, works as a freelance physics writer all night, and goes to sleep around 8 in the morning.

Amanda Gefter and Justin Smith getting married under a giant moon at the Franklin Institute planetarium in Philadelphia in July 2017. Photo JD Land, Salt & Sonder Studio via The New York Times.

Daniel Jones and I caught up with four writers whose essays inspired episodes of the new season of the television series "Modern Love" on

Amazon Prime Video.

Here is my conversation with Gefter, whose episode stars Zoë Chao and Gbenga Akinnagbe.

The interview has been edited to be longer and clearer.

Miya Lee: When did you realize that your sleep cycles were different from other people's?

Amanda Gefter: My parents noticed it first.

When I was a baby, I slept until 11 in the morning, whereas most babies, I think, get up at 7.

My mother was excited to have a baby who fell asleep.

But when I grew up, I was forced to have a normal schedule due to school and everything else, and I was tired all the time.

I recently went through my diaries and found an entry from when I was 9 years old.

I wrote: "I can't wait to grow up and live in 'Alter Hours'", as in "alternative".

When were you officially diagnosed with delayed sleep phase syndrome?

I wasn't diagnosed until I was 33 and dating Justin.

It never seemed like a problem to me until then.

Wasn't it a problem because you had the flexibility to live in "disturbed hours" as an adult?

Yes. University was the beginning of being able to live with a much more natural schedule for me.

I remember looking at the course catalog and only choosing the classes that met after 3 in the afternoon.

And it didn't seem weird to me because, anyway, everyone at the university went out to party at night.

My father and mother - my grandmother - had a very nocturnal life.

When my father was growing up, my grandmother would prepare him and his sisters for school in the morning and then go to bed.

Then he would get up when they came home from school.

So I had a very similar schedule to mine.

How did you make the social connections as an adult, with your night time schedule?

It worked on its own for a long time.

Almost all the people I dated before Justin were bartenders, DJs, or someone who worked late.

And my friends leaned toward people who stayed up later because they were the one around.

Does Justin work from 9 to 5?

Yes. When I met people in the world, I met them at night, but I met Justin on a dating app.

So it was like meeting someone from a foreign land who lived drastically different hours.

Did you say you were a night out on the dating app?

I used the phrase "extreme night owl".

He saw it, but I think he interpreted it as what seemed extreme to him, which is not extreme to me.

And his profile said, "Send me a message if you want to talk late into the night."

So I thought, "Great!"

Ha

I think each of us entered our relationship with slight misconceptions.

And when did those misconceptions come to a head?

Things came to a head rather quickly because Justin loves to go out in the day, eat breakfast, and walk in the sun.

I can bear that for a day or two, but then I'm exhausted and I need to sleep.

At first, he would try to stay up late and I would try to get up early.

And we end up a little resentful and very tired.

We didn't know if we could make it work.

How did that feel?

It was heartbreaking because we are so compatible;

we connect deeply on an intellectual level.

That was the only big problem we had.

And it's a strange problem to live, you know, two metro stops away and feel like you live in different worlds.

And what did they do?

When it was clear that it was going to be a problem, Justin asked, "Well, is it possible to change your schedule? For example, could you go to bed earlier or get up earlier?"

And that's when I really started asking: Why can't I?

What is really happening?

So I went to sleep specialists and doctors.

And that's when I got the official diagnosis of Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder, which was very clear.

It was the most manual case.

Do you think there are any major misconceptions about your syndrome?

I think the main misconception, even from people who know it's a disorder, is that on some level you could change it if you just wanted to go to bed early.

After posting my essay, I heard from many people with delayed sleep disorder who felt seen.

It makes me see that there are so many people who have this disorder that they cannot live on their own schedule, that they just have to adjust to society's schedule.

And they go around massively sleep deprived and miserable.

There is a lot of understanding in the world for certain disabilities, but this is an invisible one.

What prompted you to write your essay?

I wrote my essay the day after Justin proposed to me.

At that time we had moved in together, and that made a difference.

I give Justin all the credit for that.

He sent me this beautiful email that said, "Let's stop trying to force this. Let's seize the moments when we coincide."

And did living together allow them to overlap more?

Living together is a way of having our lives intertwined and of letting ourselves live as we have to live and love each other from different ends of the clock.

He proposed to me on a beach and it was 2 in the morning, and we were basically the only people there.

It was so meaningful to me that he proposed to myself during my day - that this thing that had almost broken us, the biggest challenge in our relationship, had led to this beautiful moment where it felt like we had the entire universe to ourselves.

How has married life been?

How have your hours been?

I go to bed around 9 in the morning, sometimes later.

He wakes me up when his workday ends.

In fact, we buy two wall clocks with our own hours to remind each other what time of day we are in, because we often have very different energies.

We eat together: his dinner, my breakfast.

I can be in my pajamas having my morning coffee while he is in work clothes pouring himself a glass of wine in the evening.

Then we hang out together until he goes to bed and I start my workday.

Since our time together is at night, we often sit outside and gaze at the stars.

The other night we saw the rings of Saturn and the moons of Jupiter through our telescope.

We walk through our neighborhood of Somerville, Massachusetts, and see coyotes and night flowers.

Everything is quite magical, but it is also still a great challenge.

There are many simple things that we cannot do together and it can be hard and lonely.

But I'm not sure our challenge is fundamentally different from others: It's about how to love each other while still being true to ourselves.

Amanda Gefter, a physics writer in Somerville, Massachusetts, is the author of "Trespassing on Einstein's Lawn."

Miya Lee is the editor of Modern Love and co-host of the Modern Love podcast.


c.2021 The New York Times Company

Look also

If the pandemic affected your sleep, there are ways to get back to rest

Modern Love: A marriage affected by obsessions and compulsions

Source: clarin

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