Photo: Federico Marsicano / Shutterstock
Where there is smoke, there's fire.
By NyRee Ausler — Written on Jun 09, 2023
Sleep talking, known as "somniloquy," is a sleep disorder where people unknowingly talk in their sleep. It can be complex dialogue or mumbling.
But for one woman it was not so much that her husband was talking in his sleep, it was what he was saying that raised alarm bells.
The story, shared in a video uploaded by TikToker @jakkk226, was originally posted to the subreddit r/relationship and titled “My husband is saying another woman’s name in his sleep.”
It all started when a woman in her 30s, married to her husband for ten years, overheard him talking in his sleep, something he does frequently when tired.
The man’s ramblings usually consisted of rants about feeding the couple’s children or bathing them when they were little. Now that the kids are older, the sleep talking has slowed down since then, but still happens once a week.
Those weekly musings are usually about work, fishing, or his car, but the night before the woman shared her story, her husband said another woman’s name as he slept. He started by speaking her name, then laughing, but as the night progressed, he started saying things like “let’s go to bed” and something about a shower alongside mentioning her.
The woman whose name came up lives nearby, and though the woman doesn’t know her, her husband does.
The worried wife works afternoons but her husband gets off work around 4:00 p.m., the same time that the woman does, and they both spend time with their kids outside. “I’ve never seen them be anything but friendly,” said the Redditor.
Despite not noticing anything odd, the situation had the woman paranoid, and she wanted to know if she was “being ridiculous.”
After getting feedback, she decided to confront her husband about saying the neighbor’s name in his sleep. She approached her husband playfully to downplay the matter but, according to her, “He immediately got defensive and began saying he couldn’t believe I was making an issue out of this.”
Photo: Kzenon / Shutterstock
As if his defensiveness wasn’t strange enough, her husband called her “ridiculous,” “dramatic,” and said that if she expected him to quit hanging with the woman, she was out of her mind before leaving.
After sharing that tense interaction, the stunned wife shared another update. Her husband’s reaction to the questions she had made her super “concerned,” prompting her to investigate further into the relationship between him and the neighbor.
She decided to take half a day off work and got home around 4:15 p.m., the time her husband usually hangs out with the woman.
Upon arriving at her house, she noticed her kids and husband were gone. This was surprising, considering her husband told her he had retrieved the kids from their bus stop, his car was in the garage, and his Life360 app said he was at home.
She walked by the female neighbor’s house in hopes of spotting her missing family. As she approached, she could hear her husband and the neighbor splashing, talking, and laughing in her backyard swimming pool.
Instead of entering the yard, the suspicious wife yelled out her husband’s name and asked where their children were. As he scrambled for words, she cut him off, telling him to “shut up” and asking aggressively for the location of her kids.
He finally admitted that the kids were at his mother’s house, which prompted her to tell him that he had until she returned from picking them up to get his things and leave their home. Her husband rushed out to the street to explain, but she was not trying to hear anything he had to say.
“I told him I wasn’t messing around. If he was still there when I came home, I was going to lose it. He got the point. He was gone, but I did let him tell me his side of the story later that night on the phone,” she told readers.
The husband said him and the neighbor woman were just friends and he had downplayed how close they were for fear of upsetting his wife.
The woman explained that she had no problem with him having female friends as long as the boundaries were respected. In the end, she didn’t believe him and everyone hearing the story also thought he was lying to his wife. She decided to end the relationship and just co-parent with him.
Marriage is about respect, honesty, boundaries, and loyalty. It goes without saying that the man was hiding his actions, and likely for obvious reasons. A relationship built on dishonesty can never truly be successful.
NyRee Ausler is a writer from Seattle, Washington. She covers lifestyle, relationship, and human-interest stories that readers can relate to and that bring social issues to the forefront for discussion.