I married a snorer. 

I didn't know he was a snorer until after we had been hitched for a couple of years. It started with the occasional grunt and rasp when he was having a particularly restless night and progressed over the years to full-blown log-sawing every night. 

At first I thought it was because he was sleeping on his back.  So, when he was really loud, I'd poke him. "Whhhaaaatttt???" he'd say in a still-asleep-why-the-fuck-did-you-jab-me-in-the-ribs-whine.

"You're snoring.  Roll over" I'd retort.

"Whatever." And he'd roll over and be immediately asleep again....and I'd roll over and follow suit shortly thereafter.

Well, that worked for quite some time.  As long as he wasn't on his back, things were cool and we'd both get some rest. He still swore blind that he didn't snore, no, not him. Only old dudes and lard-asses snored, and he was neither old nor overweight, ergo, he did not snore.

Then slowly, insipidly, the snoring didn't go away when he rolled over.  He'd snore laying on his side, then it progressed to when he was laying on his belly, then to when he was propped up on a hill of pillows...it was just there, all the time.  My nights of unbroken sleep got to be scarcer and scarcer, and I was of the opinion that if I wasn't going to get any rest because of his snoring I was damn well going to make sure he wasn't going to get any rest because of my poking.

The problem was, the poking had to get harder and harder, because he was getting used to my elbowing him and wouldn't take much notice of it anymore.  I was literally having to swing my arm and give him really good whack in order to get a reaction from him. 

"What the fuck!!!???" was the standard angry response.

"You're fucking sawing logs again and it's pissing me off!" was my standard pissed off reply.

"What the fuck ever, Dharma.  It's all your imagination" was what he said to me one night.

I'd had it.  I was going to prove him wrong. 

We had a micro-cassette recorder that he used for work, so I filched it out of his bag one evening and hid it in my bedside table.  I had to wait a couple of nights before I used it; I wanted to make sure I got him on a particularly loud night so the recording would leave no shadow of a doubt that he was a snorer and possibly a prize-winning snorer at that.

I got my evidence. I held that micro-recorder under his nose for a good 9 or 10 mins worth of tape.

Next morning, I woke before he did.  I laid there watching him for a bit, and when he finally stirred and opened his eyes I smiled at him and asked him if he'd slept well.

"Yeah, thanks" he said, stretching and yawning.

"I didn't".  I said, reaching for the evidence "Wanna know why?"  And I pressed play.

He sat there, looking first at me, then at the recorder, then back to me.  After a few minutes, he said "Is that me?"

"Yes"  I said.

"God, Dharma, how'd you get any sleep?!" He said, and got up and went to take a leak.

That was it.  No apology, no refuting the facts, no denial, no nothing.  Just "how'd you get any sleep".  Nothing more.

He is better about rolling over when I poke him in the ribs, though.  And I got more immune to his decibel output in the night.  Something that was blatantly obvious to me right after he'd left last August.  I couldn't sleep unless the TV was on.  The silence of an unshared bed was just too deafening.  It was also apparent when he came home on leave in January.  The first night he was home I was able to fall asleep with no TV...the white noise of his snoring was incredibly comforting. It woke me up a few times, but instead of jabbing him in the ribs I was content to lay there, relishing the sound of his breathing and rasping next to me.  Next to me, instead of thousands of miles away. I had trouble sleeping properly when he went back to Greenland in February, and now I'm back to drifting off with the TV on.

I am so excited at the prospect of nights of broken sleep again.