All roommates have a fear: that their roommate will have that horrific quality, that mortifying condition. It goes by many names: the death rattle, the midnight muffler, the suffocating storm, but most people know it by its usual gerund: snoring. No matter how much people love their roommate, they may find snoring the relationship killer, the non-negotiable that drives them to contemplate pre-meditated murder, and in extreme cases, moving out.
I too once considered such drastic measures before I learned from experience that a snoring roommate is no big deal and that most people can adjust to it. This statement comes with qualifiers. I won’t say everyone can adjust: some people need more quiet to sleep than others. Whether trait this depends on mentality or physiology, I leave to scientists with the time and resources on their hands. What I will describe is how the majority of people can learn to keep calm and sleep on. Anyone can practice the tricks I describe, and most of them, everyone has heard already.
First, the non-snoring roommate can break the ice and say the snoring is bothersome. The roommate may not even have considered this. Whether the roommate is willing or able to address the issue is beside the point. For the other roommate, this will remove the tension from avoiding a difficult and necessary conversation that the roommates should feel comfortable discussing openly.
Second, the bothered roommate should try using earplugs. Earplugs do a good job blocking unwanted sounds. If heavy sleepers worry this will interfere with their waking, they might consider how readily they awaken to their alarm sound. The human body can perform amazing feats, including among other things, develop conditional responses. Setting an alarm nearby before falling asleep should awaken any regular riser. If this fails, ditch the earplugs and move on to step three:
Get used to it. Ambient noise will exist for millions of years until our Sun becomes a red giant and engulfs the Earth in its fiery embrace. From the start, trying to block it with earplugs probably was a waste of effort. Instead of fighting the noise, people should use it to their advantage. Use the good old sheep-counting method to achieve sleep status. Imagine every snore is a sheep opening a creaking barn door, then closing it behind them. Even if it fails, your head cinema will have entertainment for the night.
Finally, let’s be honest: unless they have insomnia or another sleep-precluding condition, people will fall asleep if they feel tired enough. For the first few nights, the sleep may be low-quality. After that, the sleeping should become like a scene from the movie My Cousin Vinny. In the movie, the character Vinny has to sleep in a hotel directly next to a train station that transports deafening cargo shipments before sunrise every morning. By the third or fourth night, Vinny has gone from waking in the middle of the night to sleeping soundly through the early morning racket. The lesson? If a fictional character can sleep through a barreling cargo train, nonfictional roommates can adapt to the snoring of their roommates.
If you have not discussed losing sleep with your snoring roommate, do it. If you have not tried earplugs, try them. If you have not watched My Cousin Vinny, watch it. Use your own judgment to decide whether you personally can adapt to the somnolent sounds of your bedtime buddy. Also remember patience and communication are powerful virtues paired together. Best of luck, and sweet dreams to you and your roommate.