How Your Sleep May Affect The Relationships You Keep

Married women sleep better than those who are single? Apparently it’s true, according to an 8 year study released in June by The Pittsburgh School of Medicine, which found that women who are in good marriages get better quality zzz’s than those who spend their nights in bed alone.

Now many research studies suggest marriage is a healthier lifestyle to singlehood, but the notion that women who spend nights on a divided mattress, fighting for covers and listening to the sound of someone else snoring would be better well-rested than those who don’t seems even more preposterous than the last study.

As we at Single Edition are not clinical psychologists or sociologists, we defer (as we often do) to author and Ph.D. Bella DePaulo in these cases since she is someone who comes with that pedigree. Dr. DePaulo’s response to the sleep stats was posted June 13th on the Psychology Today website (“If You Get Married Will You Sleep Better? Not Likely”) and from it we can conclude that most of the studies’ evidence is of questionable use.

What appears to be true (and make sense from a non medical point of view) is that sleep patterns affect the relationships of married couples. The quality of a couples' relationship day to day can affect their sleep, and sleep quality can affect their relationship. In other words, when things are bad in couple land, it leads to a poorer quality of rest and less rest can result in poorer inter-marital relations.

So how does this information apply to the happily single you? Well, if you follow the same logic then it is fair to say that inter-personal conflicts you experience throughout the day may be robbing you of rest. And the sleepless all-the-more-cranky you may be jeopardizing your relationships with friends, family members, work associates and love interests.

Even worse is that according to findings revealed in a newer study out of the United Kingdom published in the journal Sleep, lack of sleep may increase risk of heart disease in women. This one found that women who reported sleeping less than eight hours had high levels of Interleukin-6, which can trigger inflammation and, ultimately, heart disease. Even those women who sleep seven hours a night are at risk.

Up until now, advice on how to improve sleeping suggested regular exercise (just not too close to bedtime), chamomile tea or hot milk and/or taking a warm bath in the evening. But perhaps the key to truly better zzz’s, married or single, is not going to bed angry…