I’m getting weirder as I age. Especially my sleep pattern. Just like Napoleon, I don’t need more than six hours of sleep a night, and I’m often active up to 2 am for no apparent reason. That drives Mark crazy because he prefers early nights without me reading or scrolling through the net endlessly.

We both noticed that the only thing that put me in an early sleep was his heartbeat. I know it is weird, but each time I put my head on his chest, carefully avoiding the gorgeous fur tickling my nose after a moment or two, I feel totally relaxed. It feels almost like his slightly stuttering heartbeat has some hypnotic properties that lull me in no time.

Mark learned to use it to his advantage, and each time he wanted to shush me up or make me turn off all the devices, he simply grabbed me by the scrap of the neck, pressed my head to his chest and, like a chicken when you put its head under the wing,  I just freeze before drifting into snoring.

Worse, he also started to do it subconsciously in the morning. Each time I start to stir awake, and he wants a morning cuddle, he just manhandles me to sleep more. However, today, it all went wrong. I woke up and wanted to read, but he pulled me to his chest. I was drifting away peacefully when our hungry cats decided to give it a chase.

Mark thinks it is our epileptic cat having a seizure catapulted out of bed, and I felt like a ripped bandaid when I landed on my side, awakened, confused and with an aching shoulder. And this bastard denies my morning trauma, saying he only gently moved me to the side.

There is nothing gentle in ripping the woman from the source of her content. Nothing but no (straight) man understands how snuggly it feels to cuddle to the masculine chest.