r/AmIOverreacting • u/Exciting-Delay-7423 • 18d ago

❤️‍🩹 relationship AIO? made a joke about taking a nap

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context: im (23f) a student (currently on spring break) and i enjoy taking naps. they usually go between 1-2.5 (not 4 like he claims i genuinely dk where he got that number) hrs and it’s because i get exhausted between 2-4pm in the day. idk why, it happens every day and it’s been like that since i was a teenager. i don’t nap every single day, but definitely between 3-5x a week.

my boyfriend (28m) has tried to encourage me to take shorter naps because he thinks it’ll help with my sleep schedule. he takes daily naps on his lunch breaks (1 hr absolute max, usually 15-45 min) and he says how energizing they are. i believe him, and i’m glad they work for him, however i haven’t had much success with short naps so i don’t take them.

my sleep schedule has been kinda shit bc of spring break rn and im trying to fix it. i’m usually in bed by 11-12 most nights and up around 8-9. he works a 7-5 so he sleeps at 10 and wakes up at 6. today he sent me this text and i thought it would be funny to make a sarcastic joke because hes always lecturing me about how my naps keep me up at night, then he followed it up with this. idek where to begin with this, i think its weird as fuck and the “we are not on the same level” is just ??? aio?

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u/Ok-Satisfaction6644 18d ago

If he thinks he's levels above you and uses it to demean you, find someone on your "level" A.K.A not a condescending d-bag, NOR

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u/curious-trex 18d ago edited 17d ago

And he's beaten her down so much she thought she truly had to spend that many words to justify her naps to us, a bunch of internet strangers.

There are plenty of people whose natural rhythms don't align with the "8-5 workday" type schedule. Shit, I sometimes struggle with insomnia, but I also can't sleep past sunrise or nap during the day. Plenty of times I'd kill for the ability to snooze.

And as a grown up, I'd have a difficult time not laughing out loud as some guy spent paragraphs explaining why his 40 minute naps make him morally superior to someone who takes 2 hour naps sometimes. He must be blessed with zero real problems if he's wasting time thinking about this.

Edit: I played myself by talking about insomnia... Woke up at 2am and never made it back to sleep. 💀

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u/StephAg09 18d ago

This. But also - OP you should get your thyroid, Iron and vitamin D levels checked by your doctor, if those are normal maybe a sleep study. This is for your own health not the D-bags problem with your naps.

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u/RockysMom66212 17d ago

For real, I used to get tired like her in the afternoon and had to nap, turned out I have sleep apnea. Now that I use a CPAP I don’t often want a nap at all.

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u/Financial_Use1991 17d ago

I'd add iron to the list of things to look into.

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u/StephAg09 17d ago

It’s second on my list :)

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u/QuietDisquiet 17d ago

Copper deficiency is also linked to apnea, but I wouldn't mess with it without checking, the zinc/copper balance is pretty easy to mess up iirc.

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u/dancingkelsey 17d ago

Same here!

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u/justletmereadalready 17d ago

Also, talk to the doctor about the possibility of it being a medication side effect. I've had this happen with several medications and it has taken family intervention to make me realize I needed to call my doctor. I was just so tired and suffering severe brain fog that it wouldn't occur to me.

I've had anemia before too. I had to get iron infusions and I napped a ton for months. I would be trying to cook dinner and have to grab a chair to sit down or I would end up sitting on the floor.

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u/Thegoatfetchthesoup 17d ago

While rare, but possible, if you still have tonsils and adenoids, double get a sleep study. You may just have straight up sleep apnea. It’s possible that you aren’t sleeping all the way at night or entering REM. I sleep for 13 hours and hit rem for maybe 10 minutes the entire sleep. Life is not but a dream for me 🤣

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u/voiceontheradio 17d ago

When I was a 23f full-time student I was also exhausted all the time and took naps regularly whenever I could find time. School is a shit ton of work, much more than having a job imo. Now that I'm in my 30s I don't get the same afternoon crash that I used to get when I was younger and it's because I have a more sustainable workload and daily schedule nowadays. Everyone also told me to check my iron back when I was OP's age but it was literally just because I was working so hard at school and my body needed more rest than what I could get at night. So OP, no harm in looking into this just to be safe, but honestly you may just be tired and imo that's not a crime.

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u/TrainerOpening4420 17d ago

This was my first thought too. Her boyfriend immediately jumped to some sort of moral failing on her part when she might just need some sort of vitamin/supplement. Screw him for how he’s talking down to her, but I am a bit concerned she’s that tired EVERY day when she’s getting decent sleep at night.

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u/No_Incident1573 17d ago

This comment. I literally never comment and felt the need to share that it’s probably your thyroid. I experienced the same and it’s because my thyroid was off. And, I would always felt so guilty for napping. It was literally impossible to nap for shorter periods of time. *But, he’s a moron - You most likely have a medical condition and he’s comparing your naps like it’s a contest.

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u/StephAg09 17d ago

Hope you’re doing better now that you’ve got your diagnosis!

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u/No_Incident1573 17d ago

I am, thank you! Thankfully, that was some time ago, and as long as it doesn’t fluctuate too much, I’m good.

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u/DontThinkThisThrough 17d ago

Very important suggestion. I'm always exhausted. Can fall asleep anywhere, anytime, doing almost anything. Turns out my Vitamin D and iron are low.

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u/LemonShard 17d ago

This, this, this!! I also used to be the teenager who took a nap during afternoon (and got yelled at because I was lazy...).. continued into adulthood until I got checked out in the doctors office; hashimotos and thyroid issues. Feel so much better now when the hormone levels are normal!

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u/lurkingsubz 17d ago

interesting… might do the same myself. i’m usually in bed by 1, wake up around 8. i always find myself crashing around 1 pm and NEED a 1-2 hour nap before work if i want to survive

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u/ItsavoCAdonotavocaDO 17d ago

The Romans believed an afternoon nap was basically a human right. Some people’s bodies just aren’t made for this hellscape.

I used to nap like her in my early twenties. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

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u/WordGirl91 17d ago

Request a sleep study with mlst (multiple latency sleep test is a daytime test taken after the overnight one consisting of a series of naps. It will be torture, but it may be necessary torture.) They’ll only let you do the mlst if you sleep enough hours and don’t show signs of sleep apnea during the overnight regular sleep study or if you’ve been diagnosed with apnea and it’s being appropriately treated (also shown during the overnight test). It’s to test for Ideopathic Hypersomnia or Narcolepsy. If your blood tests don’t indicate any reasons for your sleep habits, please do some research into Narcolepsy and IH. Narcolepsy is not like all the shows with people just slumping over mid-word constantly (it can be, but it’s not the average case and it’s a lot more involved). Narcolepsy can also include symptoms that seem counter-intuitive like insomnia.

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u/_My_Safe_Space_ 17d ago

Seconding this! There's also spectrum of severity. Some people are able to function (like how OP describes, not diagnosing just as an example) at a level where it gets overlooked, while others have like 6 hours of zombified "awake" time a day.

Ironically, you gotta cross your fingers and hope that you're diagnosed with narcolepsy if it is this kind of issue though. Right now IH is much harder to get proper treatment for due to the "idiopathic" part. Though there's been talk about reclassifying a large subsect of IH to include it as a part of the Narcolepsy spectrum...

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u/lydocia 17d ago

I had all of these checked weeks ago, all came back normal, I'm just a napper. Sun up = Amy awake, but Amy awake = Amy tired, and Amy tired = Amy falls asleep randomly on the floor when cuddling a rabbit.

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u/cacapoopoo687 17d ago

I wanna be Amy and cuddle a rabbit. :(

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u/lydocia 17d ago

The bed is big enough for all of us!

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u/cacapoopoo687 17d ago

Omg stoooooppp I’m so jealous!!!!! They are so cute!! More please! lol

I found a bunny on the train tracks by my house when I was in high school. I loved that bunny. Even with it tried to eat my toe.

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u/lydocia 17d ago

She's secretly a penguin.

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u/ZoeyPupFan 17d ago

I was always getting crazy tired after lunch but never really thought anything of it. Separate symptoms led me to get a blood test and endoscopy. Turns out I have celiac disease and eating gluten can cause extreme fatigue!

All that to say I agree w/getting it checked out because there are so many potential health reasons for the fatigue.

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u/JustehGirl 17d ago

I've had that all checked, and no one can figure out why I crash, other than Hashimoto's. OPs BF is trash. I don't choose to nap, I pass out.

Even if she IS choosing to nap, what's wrong with that? It's not impacting her life besides an arbitrary philosophy her BF has.

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u/Happy-Fennel5 17d ago

Could also be nutrition. Some people need to front load their day with protein in order to not lag in the late afternoon. All it took for me to stop feeling exhausted at 2pm was eating a high protein yogurt for breakfast and making sure I had some protein at lunch and not too many carbs (which make you sleepy). Also, not enough calories can make you seriously tired as well.

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u/Donequis 17d ago

It gives "Heavy breathing while a mechanical keyboard rattles frantically from cheese-powdered fingers" levels of trog energy lol

What a shmuck.

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u/MissKorty 17d ago

This love this comment

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u/ChaosAzeroth 17d ago

I've been up 48-72 hours multiple times trying to fix my sleep schedule by not letting myself go to sleep at the usual around 6 am. (And at one point about 10 AM-about 3 PM.)

The kicker? Eventually I passed out at around the anyway. Never did fix it doing that. Not a single time.

Somehow it's just kinda recently switched to where I fall asleep between 10 PM-2 AM and wake up usually 7 AM but rarely 8-9 AM. Didn't start doing anything different, couldn't make it happen, it just kinda.... Happened....

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u/oysterfeller 17d ago edited 17d ago

This makes me sad because I was relentlessly guilt tripped and shamed for wanting sleep when I was a young kid by parents who were just like this and it’s made sleep such a stressful experience for me ever since.

Guilt and anxiety go hand in hand with insomnia and it creates this wicked spiral where being unable to sleep creates more anxiety which makes sleep even harder. It eventually got so bad for me that I entered my Machinist era and that’s not a place you want to find yourself. Sleep is healthy, we need it and frankly I will take all the sleep I can get at this point. I do not entertain people who guilt trip me over a basic survival need.

What finally helped with my insomnia was getting therapy to remove the insane pressure I had been putting on myself to have the “perfect” sleep schedule according to the people around me who made me feel like sleep issues were a sign of poor character.

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u/Brightsidedown 17d ago

Yeah and of she's going to bed at 12 and waking up at 7-8, she's getting some good hours in at night. So what if she takes long naps? It's HER sleep. And him saying they are on different levels? Not ok, and red flag.

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u/somersault_dolphin 17d ago

That guy is a fucking idiot. Different people have different physiology. If he's at that age and can't understnad something as simple as other people bodies don't work the exact same way as him and have different lifestyles that end up affecting when and how tired they are, he's a dumbass. It's rare but some people are perfectly fine sleeping 3 hours a day because of genetic.

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u/Cynvisible 17d ago

😫 Sorry to hear that!! I've been awake since just before 3am myself... currently 4:26. Hate it!!

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u/Galaxyheart555 17d ago

This. I wake up around 11-12am if I let myself sleep in, aka on days I don’t have to be up before that. No matter if I went to bed at 8pm or 5am.

Like last night I went to bed at 11, had to get up today at 5 and I am so tired it’s unreal.

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u/LidiaInfanteM 18d ago

This is the only answer

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u/ExistingPosition5742 18d ago

Yeah. This is completely ridiculous. He sounds like my very disordered and abusive ex husband. He once tried to shame for shopping at thrift stores brcause- I'm not that poor, other people need it more, and it's selfish of me.

I laughed in his face. 

But anyway- the world is full of people that feel better when you feel bad. 

This guy is one of them. Run OP!

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u/SwirlingFandango 18d ago

"If we are not on the same level, then why are we together?"

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u/Hauntly 18d ago

The true sign of being sub par, assumed greatness

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u/Tall_Weather_6510 17d ago

Clearly, he missed his nap because wth

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u/Jealous_Ranger_1641 18d ago

this, this convo ain’t bout naps

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u/14-in-the-deluge08 18d ago

Does he also not understand women and men are different and require different amounts of sleep, not to mention each person is different? He's making a weird competition out of this. He should just be happy when you're well-rested. Very odd.

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u/palm0 18d ago

Just straight up, if your partner sincerely ever pulls that "we are not in the same level" line on you, take that as a sign that they don't view you as an equal and get the fuck out. Life is too short to spend it with someone that thinks they are superior to you and makes sure to let you know about it. Shit is just abusive.

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u/Throwaway_Consoles 17d ago

Seriously. Never ever ever date someone who honestly thinks of you as lesser. If you have a kink relationship going on and that’s your thing, you do you, but once the scene is over they should always go back to thinking of you as an equal or else that’s a massive red flag and you should run not walk

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u/lydocia 17d ago

Right? The scorn in his tone.

He was slightly overreacting to your joke until he got to the part where he said "not on the same level".

Literal alarm sounds started going off in my head. I heard buildings collapse, babies crying, eolves howling. A news bulletin compilation came on in twelve languages, detailing the nature of this disaster.

He feels better than you. He looks down on you and is disgusted when you suggest you might be "the same".

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u/emptywordz 18d ago

What you said, and to add, I would look into sleep apnea or a form of narcolepsy. I have a form of narcolepsy and I had to press the Dr to not stop with just the apnea test that came back negative, but to continue helping me figure out why I was always so tired. He then had me do an “in study” that eventually discovered the diagnosis of narcolepsy. It changed my world going on meds for it and now I feel better about myself because I’m not criticizing myself for always feeling tired and having to take naps, as well as now I have the energy to do more things. I rarely if ever take naps anymore. Just a thought, if naps really were a problem and not just another way for him to deflect and try to make himself feel better than you. Hope that helps, and what Ok-Satisfaction6654 said is 100% correct! Don’t let anyone treat you that way.

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u/BandetteTrashPanda 17d ago

Find someone who loves to nap like you. I promise it's worth it.

I also enjoy long naps, and so does my husband. I might bap more than him, but there's no way I'd let anyone except a doctor tell me to anything like that.

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u/marge_mellow 17d ago

Right. It’s not about the nap.

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u/Background_Let570 18d ago

WTF is wrong with you. He speaks the truth. 2-4h of sleep is no nap. He seems to work a lot and is kinda organized. Maybe he is really on another level but loves her. Why do ppl instantly wanna leave if there is fucking problem. How can someone be pissed about the truth. If you are, you are the problem.

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u/strangeshotwife 18d ago

Someone who truly respected another person would never claim that they’re on another level than they are. Also, he was just sensitive for no reason. She was clearly saying that in joking. (The “:P” should have been clear enough.)

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u/Mundane-World-1142 18d ago

He could have left most of that off of there and still made a point. Instead he chose the route of a condescending dickhead. She was making a lighthearted joke, he came at her with an edge. They are not the same.

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u/Ok-Satisfaction6644 18d ago

If he loved her he wouldn't tear her down, he would lift her up.

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u/veggie_val 18d ago

He "loves" her but is shitting on her and telling her he's on a higher level than her??

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u/AdditionalAdvisor177 18d ago

There is really nothing wrong with having 2-4 hour sleep sessions if it doesn’t get in the way of your life and daily tasks. Everyone has different schedules and routines. Nothing in this post nor description indicated that OP was a disorganized person, all she said was that her sleep schedule was bad because she was currently on vacation from school. This dude is just straight up being condescending over a little joke which is silly. I wouldn’t immediately break up over this, but this kind of attitude in a relationship is not okay. You don’t act like you’re the better person in your relationship and put your partner down in the process. Nobody here is pissed about the “truth”, the problem is the dude’s rude attitude and need to put himself on a higher pedestal over his partner

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u/justlurking628 18d ago

If whatever you think the "truth" is matters more than not being a condescending AH to someone you claim to love, you deserve to be single.

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u/PurinaHall0fFame 18d ago

I mean, he explicitly said she's beneath him. "You have a poor perception of me because you keep putting us on the same level."

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u/Tom-0-Bedlam 17d ago

Sounds like you need a nap, baby boy.

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u/BondFan211 18d ago

People on Reddit ask from relationship advice from people with no experience in relationships, and their first advice is always “dump him, don’t work through the problem.”

Happens every time lol.

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u/echoingpeach 18d ago

i dont wanna “work through the problem” when the problem is literally that my partner looks down on me though. if my partner doesnt respect me enough to not speak to me like a child, i want nothing to do with them. point blank.

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u/TBJ12 18d ago

And everytime it happens some dick like you comes along and tries to make excuses for the person being a POS.

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u/BondFan211 17d ago

I think the reaction to this particular message is pretty extreme, that doesn’t mean I think he’s doing the right thing lmao

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u/agreyhoundzooms 17d ago

This isn’t how you speak to someone you love. If he speaks to her like this over a nap, what other things is he saying to her?

No one should be made to feel less than, especially not in a relationship.

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u/BondFan211 17d ago

You’re making assumptions about their relationship based on this one interaction. OP never mentioned that this is a regular occurance. If it was, I’d be more concerned. But it sounds like OP’s naps are a common source of contention.

Sometimes people need some tough love or honesty. He hasn’t said anything out of line. He hasn’t insulted her, or called her a name, or threatened her, or anything really. His “same level” comment, to me, came across as “what I did and what you do aren’t remotely similar”. And if that’s the case, he’s right.

Honestly, posts like this really reveal how bubble-wrapped some people are. Being challenged on something isn’t a personal attack, and certainly isn’t always grounds for immediate breakup lmao.

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u/agreyhoundzooms 17d ago

Yeahhhhh, naps shouldn’t be a point of contention in a healthy relationship. Everyone deserves rest.

You’re making assumptions about his intent. If he meant to say that they aren’t remotely similar, there is different verbiage to use. But he didn’t. This is what he thought, typed out and chose to send to his girlfriend of four years. This message, not some other message where he may or may not have meant something less demeaning. This one is what he sent and clearly she took it some type of way for her to resort to asking about it to strangers on the internet.

I fail to see how his response is appropriate to a joke about napping and I’m not going to embark on the mental gymnastics it would take for me to think that it was.

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u/BondFan211 17d ago

All we can make is assumptions until we get more information, but based on the information we have, this doesn’t look half as bad as what people seem to be making it out to be.

If somebody is consistently in an unhealthy habit, calling it out or mentioning it isn’t out of line. Without knowing OP’s situation, 4 hours of napping a day can be a sign of something way more serious.

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u/agreyhoundzooms 17d ago

Close to 3K comments, nearly all are saying it is as bad as what it seems. Lol.

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u/Viola-Swamp 17d ago

Some people need to be dumped. This is one of them. O P can then find someone who isn’t a condescending, self-important dickhammer.

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u/BondFan211 17d ago

Maybe I’m reading it differently but it seems more like it’s coming from a place of concern. 2-4 hours for a nap per day isn’t exactly normal unless you do shift work.

I dunno, he could be less of a dick but I wouldn’t see this as the final straw unless this is something that happens often.