Is Snoring a Deal-Breaker for You?

Lovelies:

Someone who shall remain nameless recently mentioned to me that because he has allergies, he "occasionally" snores.

Now, I may or may not have a TINY little crush on this person. But the news of the snoring has nearly dashed all my dreams about the two of us eventually living happily ever after.

I think I'd rather live with a crack addict, a petty thief, or even the kind of person who never buys toilet paper and always leaves dishes in the sink than with a SNORER!

In my experience, no one "occasionally" snores. You either snore or you don't. And if you DO, you do it ALL THE TIME. And you usually begin right when I am finally starting to fall asleep. And you don't stop till you have driven me out of the bed to a place where there is none of that terrible, terrible noise.

The last time I dated a snorer--let's call him Senor Le Snore--I was 25 or so. I was driven so crazy by his snoring that I seriously began to lose my mind--I would babble incoherently to people on the subway in the mornings because I was so tired, that kind of thing. When I told Pepe that something would have to change, he generously suggested that I simply wake him up whenever he was snoring, and ask him to roll over onto his side.

Easy enough, right?

Wrong! I'd already tried to do that, a million times--and because he snored so loudly he NEVER HEARD ME SCREAMING IN HIS EAR TO WAKE THE HELL UP!

No, the solution I was envisioning had less to do with getting him to change positions and more to do with getting him to consider plastic surgery. Like, A NOSE AMPUTATION.

Because I liked Senor Le Snore, I tried to figure out a reasonable way around the problem. A few times, I tried sleeping in my "living room" (which could not have been bigger than 100 square feet). I would pull out the IKEA "couch"--which was basically, a big piece of foam with some red material wrapped around it. But for many reasons, that didn't work out so well. For one thing, the couch was about as comfortable as a cardboard box. Even worse, only a set of French doors separated me from my roommate's bedroom, and since she was in grad school at the time (and never had to be up for work), she and her boyfriend (whom she met in yoga class) would have loud sex until dawn. In the mornings, I wanted to give them a real sun salutation--using my middle finger. But finally, and perhaps most damningly of all, the living-room-option didn't work because ... sometimes Senor Le Snore would wake up in the middle of the night (startled by the atrocious noise coming out of his own nose, I'm sure) AND HE'D COME OUT TO SLEEP WITH ME ON THE COUCH, BECAUSE HE MISSED ME!

Le Snore also thought if I REALLY liked him, I wouldn't be making such a big issue of his snoring.

It was an untenable situation. Forced to choose between my sanity and Le Snore, I voted in favor of my mind. We broke it off.

But by then, I'd already developed an insomnia problem. Any little sound would wake me up in the middle of the night, and I'd never be able to go back to sleep. (I've only finally had some relief in the sleeping department recently, thanks to the anti-depressants I've been taking.)

All of which is to say: I dated a snorer for two or three months--and he RUINED my beauty sleep for years and years to come.

Since then, I've sworn to myself many times that I will never date a snorer again. I even listed on not one but two Internet dating profiles I've put up over the years that SNORING IS THE DEAL-BREAKER TO BREAK ALL DEALS, as far as I'm concerned.

Ladies, men: How do you feel about the snoring issue?

Perhaps more importantly: short of sending someone to a really expensive clinic to get one of those scary scuba mask no-snoring contraptions--which makes it look like you have some kind of space alien lying on the pillow next to you--is there ANYTHING reasonable (and not too expensive) that one can do, in the early stages of the dating game, to prevent the snoring from wreaking his nasal havoc? HELP!

xxx

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PS: Commenters: Maureen: you gotta come move here! Get the hell out of the Beltway! And I-Heart (is there some pseudonym I can use for you besides I-Heart, btw? I always feel slightly silly doing that!): Thanks for reminding about "Adam's Curse." He has so many good ones! ... Raye, girl, you just have to spend more time in the right places in New York. Like, one of my new faves is this little secret gem in South Williamsburg, a place called MOTO. ... I'm also just really glad you guys liked that story. xxx