My husband stays up and plays video games as a form of escapism. He has a huge project resting on his shoulders- a 50 minute presentation in front of a lot of very important people. How the presentation goes will make a huge impact on his career. The presentation is next month, he has had more than a year to prepare for it but hasn’t started working on it until a few weeks ago.
He is good at working on it and chipping away at it, but it has caused him a lot of stress. He has started to stay up until 3 am some nights playing video games and then sleeping in until late. He then tells me he doesn’t feel well and he calls in sick to work.
This project is consuming him and I really need help knowing how to support him. I tried to tell him he doesn’t feel well because he’s not prioritizing his sleep but he just shuts down and doesn’t want to talk about it. Or he will say “yeah you’re right I should get to her earlier” with no change.
At night I will start preparing for bed and encourage him to prepare with me and he does, but after laying down for a minute or two he gets up and leaves me. We have sleeping pills but he doesn’t want to take those, which is fine. We have sleepy time tea that I made us last night but that didn’t help.
I don’t want to nag him about this, but it affects my sleep life when I am alone in bed worrying about him. I tell him this and he agrees he needs to come to bed but when the night comes he doesn’t.
Ultimately he is in control of himself and I cannot force him to take care of his mind and body, but I feel helpless. There must be something I can do.
Has anyone else been in this situation? How have you handled it?