‘I hate the way my husband breathes'

When Jane Gregory met her husband Steve at a comedy night in Melbourne, she thought she had hit the romantic jackpot. He was handsome, clever, and funny, and the two of them couldn't stop chatting. The only catch? He was British and lived 10,000 miles away. What followed was a three-year-long, transcontinental relationship, a wedding, and eventually – for Gregory, anyway – a one-way ticket to London.
At last, they were living together in wedded bliss.
'After a few weeks, I started to realise something was really bothering me,' she says. 'Eventually, I turned to him and asked if he had always breathed that loudly. He looked really confused.'
At the time, Gregory had never heard the word 'misophonia'. She just knew she felt a hot rage descend on her each time he inhaled. And then exhaled shortly after.
Unlike a snore, which will often stop with a well-aimed kick, or a cough, which will usually get better with time or antibiotics, breathing is a sound you can't turn off. It's not a bad habit. It's a fundamental proponent of being alive – and even the most irritable spouse would pause before asking their partner to 'Please, for the love of God, just stop breathing'.
Soon, Gregory was unable to sleep next to her husband or even share a sofa with him. 'I would beg him to breathe a bit quieter, but that wasn't easy for him either,' she recalls. 'It wasn't until much later that I understood what was happening.'
Misophonia, literally 'hatred of sound', is a condition that affects an estimated 18 per cent of people in the UK, according to a study from King's College London. It's sometimes called 'sound rage', but that barely scratches the surface of the emotional chaos it can cause, and one of the most common triggers is breath. While most of us find heavy breathing annoying at times, people with misophonia are flooded with an almost primal reaction – disgust, anger, even panic – that can be set off by the sort of gentle inhalations others wouldn't notice.
Now, new research shows that the way we breathe is as unique as our fingerprints – researchers measured the breathing of 97 healthy people for 24 hours and found that they could identify participants with relatively high accuracy from their breathing pattern alone. That might be shallow, slow or raspy – but for those with a sensitivity to spousal noise, the adjective they'd preferably use to describe their partner's breathing is 'silent'.
Gregory, no doubt, is correct in saying that her husband breathes in an unusually loud way – but it is also true that if he had married someone without misophonia, they probably would never have noticed.
'I have lived with one other romantic partner before,' she says. 'But he was just a much quieter breather than Steve. My husband breathes loudly – that's just a fact. If he's standing next to someone, I can usually hear Steve breathing but not the other person.
Gregory was already a clinical psychologist when she got married, but since learning about misophonia, she has joined a research team at the University of Oxford and is now one of the UK's leading experts in the condition. The more research she does, the more she understands that neither she nor her husband is to blame. 'Telling someone that the way they breathe is repulsive can be incredibly hurtful. But if you're the one being triggered, it's unbearable. It's a real problem unless you talk about it openly.'
We are only in the foothills of understanding the condition, but some therapists believe an aversion to breathing can be an emotional shorthand for something going wrong in the relationship. A breath that's perceived as too loud might mean: You're not listening. You're not communicating with me. You're not helping me.
'By the time we landed at Gatwick, it was over'
Jasmine, 44, remembers the moment she realised she had misophonia. It wasn't during a doctor's appointment or in therapy. It was on a holiday in Mallorca with a seemingly great new boyfriend.
'I was 39 at the time and really wanted to meet someone and have a baby, and he ticked all the boxes,' she says. 'So I ploughed on with the relationship even though we didn't actually have that much to say to each other. We went on this romantic holiday together and one evening he told me he wanted to get serious, and I realised almost immediately that I couldn't stand the way he breathed. The more I was around him, the more I felt myself spiralling into panic whenever I could hear the sounds of his breath.'
The relationship was over by the time they landed in Gatwick. It was the first time Jasmine wondered if she should explore this aversion to certain people's breathing patterns – but it wasn't the first time she had felt this way. 'I've felt rage and disgust with boyfriends and dates who have breathed in a way I didn't like,' she says. 'I've literally looked for exits during dinner because I am so desperate to get away from the sound.'
Now, she is starting to understand that, for her, the condition is often tethered to situations where she feels trapped on some level. 'My therapist says it's like an alarm system. I notice it comes out when I feel claustrophobic: at home as a kid, at work, or with a partner I shouldn't be with.'
'We communicate now without actually speaking'
For Elizabeth, married for 15 years with two children, similar feelings play out, only in the subtler tones of long-term domesticity. She doesn't scream or panic or storm out when her husband's breathing drives her to distraction. Instead, she slams the fridge door slightly harder than usual. 'We can communicate now without actually speaking,' she says.
Elizabeth is so attuned to her husband's breath that she can now tell what response he is hoping to get from her by the tempo of his inhalations. Often, he will breathe more heavily while performing household tasks (cleaning the recycling bin with exaggerated sighs or grunting theatrically as he lugs garden waste to the car). 'It's his way of saying, 'Look at me, I'm being useful,'' she says.
It used to drive her to distraction, and her anger was only slightly mollified once she realised it was a family trait. 'His dad does it too,' she says. 'Opening the dishwasher sounds like a cardiac event. I don't even ask his dad to help anymore. I assume that was the plan all along.'
Like so much else in relationships, what began as an unnoticed quirk in those heady early days of dating has, over time, evolved into a major irritation.
Jane Gregory and her husband now sleep in separate bedrooms, a decision that once might have portended the beginning of the end, but which, to the couple, feels almost romantic. 'We spent so long in a long-distance relationship,' she says, 'that coexisting separately actually feels natural. And it makes things so much easier – I can't sleep at all once I tune into the sound of him breathing.'
They also use music as a buffer: often Gregory will turn on Taylor Swift mid-meal. 'When I click on Spotify, he knows something's bothering me. It's our way of handling it, without blame or drama.'
Ezra Cowan, a psychologist who specialises in misophonia, says that without tricks like these, the dynamic can be heartbreaking, and explains he has watched otherwise happy couples ruin their marriages over something as universal as breathing. 'You have one person who's desperate for relief, and another who is just breathing like they always have since the day they were born. It becomes a vicious cycle. The breather tries to change, the other says it's not enough. Guilt turns into anger. Accommodation turns into resentment.'
The real tragedy, he says, is that everyone is trying. And yet, the condition has a way of making both parties feel like there is something wrong with them.
Interestingly, studies show that breathing-related misophonia is more prevalent among women, with some academic papers suggesting that they are almost twice as likely to get the condition as men. 'It might be a socially acceptable outlet for emotional pain,' says Cowan. 'If a woman feels ignored or overwhelmed, it might manifest in sensitivit y to something as simple as breath.'
Equally, it is an aversion that is far more likely to come out in relation to your spouse than to your children or, say, a friend. 'I know people worry about having kids as they worry they would be triggered by the sounds they make,' says Gregory. 'But when they are really little, in particular, it is very rarely a problem. It is usually directed at other adults who you share an intimate space with, in other words, a partner. And it's hard: I know people who have ended relationships because of it.'
Complicated as it is to be driven to distraction by a sound that is keeping the person you love alive, misophonia doesn't always ruin relationships. In some cases, it even brings them together. Gregory and her husband are now putting on a comedy show together in Oxford this summer. And the title? If You Loved Me You'd Breathe Quietly.

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