She snores like a freight train carrying freight trains, a sound so comprehensive it seems to originate from geological processes rather than human respiration. But lying beside her in the dark, listening to this involuntary symphony, I understand something profound about intimacy: love is not just accepting someone’s conscious choices but embracing their unconscious surrenders.
Snoring is vulnerability without permission, authenticity without performance, the sound of someone being completely human without trying to be human in any particular way. She cannot control it, cannot prettify it, cannot make it more appealing for my benefit. It simply is—raw, honest, unedited humanity at its most defenseless.
There is something sacred about witnessing someone in complete unconsciousness, about being trusted with their most unguarded state. While she sleeps, she cannot be charming, cannot be considerate, cannot be anything except exactly what she is when all intention falls away. The snoring is the sound of someone who feels safe enough to be completely undefended in my presence.
This involuntary intimacy creates bonds that conscious interaction cannot match. I know the rhythm of her breathing when she’s content versus when she’s troubled. I can predict when the snoring will intensify based on how she fell asleep. I’ve learned to find comfort in the sound that initially kept me awake, to treat it as a lullaby rather than an annoyance.
The strange thing is how the snoring becomes part of your understanding of the person, woven into the fabric of who they are in your mind. When she’s away, the silence feels wrong, incomplete. The sound that once felt like an intrusion becomes a presence whose absence creates loneliness.
Maybe this is what real intimacy looks like—not just loving someone’s best qualities but finding tenderness in their most human imperfections, not just accepting their conscious choices but feeling affection for their unconscious habits, not just being together during the performed parts of life but being present for the unperformed parts too.
Tonight I listen to the vulnerable symphony and understand that sharing a bed with someone who snores is practice for sharing a life with someone who is beautifully, imperfectly, unconsciously human.