Sleep and Marriage

My friend, Tamara, shared an article summarizing a recent study about how sleep effects marriage.  The gist of it is this: "For wives who had trouble going to sleep, marriage interactions turned substantially more negative than positive for both partners, the study found. In contrast, when husbands slept poorly, there was little difference in how the couples related the next day."  It turns out that when the wives had a bad night sleep, that tended to trigger marital tension the next day.   Adding to the problem, when there is marital tension, wives tend to have difficulty sleeping.  So you can see the cyclical nature of the problem: Bad Sleep-->Marital Tension-->Bad Sleep.  Another interesting fact is that "the stable presence of a husband or partner predicted better sleep quality in women, and wives who were happy in their marriages reported fewer sleep disturbances."  Many studies have shown that sleep is very important to our health, mood, memory, weight, and energy level.  Now we know that it can have an impact on our marriage as well!  Knowing this might help us to be on the lookout for the grumpies in our marriage the day after a bad night's sleep, and hopefully it will provide some added motivation for us ladies to get our beauty sleep every night.  :)  Here's the link to the whole article if you're interested:


When Wives Can't Sleep, Marriage May Suffer - Sleep Center - Everyday Health