Husband blamed stress for the sleep he kept losing each day — until he discovered his wife’s frustrating early-morning habit
Broken sleep can easily throw off your entire day. A husband grew increasingly frustrated as his sleep kept getting disturbed day after day, and he tried to figure out what was wrong. At first, he believed his own tiredness was just due to a busy schedule and waking up early, but something about the sounds in the morning didn’t add up. As reported by Newsweek, he then discovered something that he later called the “dark truth” behind his wife’s habit. A Reddit post about the incident was shared under the username u/Cautious-Extreme-208 on Wednesday, February 11, 2026.
The man explained that his sleep had felt more broken with every passing week. His wife needed to be up by 6:30 a.m., while his day began at 7:45 a.m., so he assumed his fragmented rest was simply due to different routines. In their home, he thought, she would wake up early and start her day calmly. He didn’t expect to learn how she actually used her alarm clock and how much noise it made. What kept him awake was not just one alarm but a rhythm of repeated beeps.
When he finally took a look at her phone, he found the reason behind the chaos. Instead of setting just one alarm, she had programmed a chain of alarms at five-minute intervals from 6 a.m. to 6:45 a.m. Each alarm nudged him closer to waking up, and the constant beeps made it nearly impossible to stay asleep until his own wake-up time. In his now-deleted post, he called this the “dark truth” and shared a screenshot of all the alarms. Many on Reddit reacted by sharing similar experiences or offering advice on how to fix the problem. u/One_Anything_2279 said they could “strangely relate,” since his wife also woke earlier than he did, and joked, “I hope she doesn’t find this and think this is my post.”
Others pointed the conversation toward solutions that may help couples in the same situation. Several users warned that hitting snooze or setting multiple alarms at close intervals does not help sleep and can actually make it worse. u/Tempyteacup explained that this approach is “genuinely really bad for your sleep,” and suggested people set only one alarm at the time they need to wake, so the body can stop fighting for sleep. u/RefuseMysterious513 shared a trick from their life of using alarm apps that require solving simple math problems before they stop the noise, which forces them to fully wake up. u/MJR-WaffleCat said simply putting the phone across the room made it easier to get up and stay awake.
A study also suggests that setting many alarms or using repeated snoozes may actually harm your sleep quality. It found that more than half of sleep sessions end with snooze alarms, and the light sleep between repeated alerts disrupts the final, most important stages of rest. Experts suggest the better approach is to set a single alarm for the latest time you need to wake up.
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