Here is the full transcript of Wendy Troxel’s talk titled “How To Sleep Like Your Relationship Depends On It” at TEDxManhattanBeach conference.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
Lisa’s Story
My friend, Lisa, is a wife, a mother of three, an avid athlete, and a cancer survivor. Before kids, she and her husband, Mark, used to always snuggle in a double or at most queen size bed. But once kids entered the picture, even a queen size bed didn’t feel big enough for them. Many of us know what that’s like.
When suddenly your bed for two needs to accommodate the sleeping darlings, whether children or the furry kind, who might weasel their way into your bed at some point in the night. But as sleep grew more and more precious, their longing for solitary, uninterrupted sleep grew stronger, overpowering those former desires for closeness and intimacy. To make matters worse, Lisa is a lifelong insomniac, so she became especially protective of her sleep.
But all that changed when she got sick. At night, the fears about her diagnosis, the thought of losing her children, her husband, became most intense. And what she needed more than anything was to feel connected with her husband. And so did he. Ironically, once Lisa’s psychological need for closeness overwhelmed her pursuit of the perfect night of sleep, she actually started sleeping better.
The Science of Sleeping Together
The marital or otherwise shared bed is a window into our deepest vulnerabilities and how we look to our relationships to help us feel safe during threatening times. As a sleep scientist and clinician who has spent my career studying the coupled nature of sleep, there’s probably no question I’m asked more frequently than, “Is it bad if my partner and I sleep apart?”
There’s a lot of pressure around the meaning of the marital or otherwise shared bed. But this is largely a socially constructed belief system, not science-based. Most of the groundbreaking work in sleep science over the past 60 years has come from studies of people sleeping alone in a laboratory under tightly controlled conditions. But sleep in the real world doesn’t occur in laboratory environments.
Sleep in the real world is often noisy, interrupted, and most importantly, shared. Couples of all types, straight, gay, young, old, healthy couples, and those facing illness like Lisa and Mark, face all sorts of challenges when it comes to the shared sleep experience.
The Social Aspect of Sleeping
Truth is, most of us are sleeping together. Well, not together as in you and me, but with a partner. But other data suggests a growing number of couples are choosing to sleep apart. The National Association of Home Builders reports one out of three couples buying high-end custom homes opt for dual master bedrooms.
Throughout Western history, the pendulum has shifted back and forth from stigma attached to sleeping together versus sleeping apart. For example, the trend I mentioned of wealthy couples opting for separate master bedrooms is nothing new. Just think of the sleeping arrangements of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip as depicted in “The Crown.” Now theirs is a seriously enduring relationship, and they have slept apart for decades, at least according to Netflix.
The Cultural Shifts and Scientific Insights
Fast forward to the sexual revolution, and we began to equate the figurative meaning of sleeping together, i.e., sex, with the literal meaning, resulting in cultural attitudes that we still hold today that sleeping apart is necessarily a sign of a loveless or sexless union. We’ve even given a name for it, sleep divorce. Yes, when couples, even happy couples, choose to sleep apart.
Now how judgy is that? Here’s what the science tells us about the costs and benefits of sleeping together or apart. When sleep is measured objectively, people actually sleep worse with a partner. In fact, if you sleep with a snorer, you can blame your partner for up to 50% of your sleep disruptions.
The Complexities of Shared Sleep
But when you ask those same people, “Do you prefer to sleep with your partner, or do you prefer to sleep alone?” most say they prefer to sleep with their partner. This suggests our social brain is prioritizing our need for closeness and security at night, even if at times it comes at a cost to our sleep. That said, all of us need to make sleep a priority, because healthy sleep has the power to strengthen our relationships, whereas sleepless nights can bring relationship harm.
Take for example this all-too-common scenario. He falls asleep, the snoring begins. She lies next to him, awake and in agony, until in total frustration she gives him a fierce jab to the ribs. Let’s face it, neither partner is sleeping particularly well, and at least one partner is feeling increasingly resentful. This can set a vicious cycle in motion of sleep problems leading to relationship problems and so on, wreaking havoc on your relationship, not to mention your health and well-being.
Relationship Dynamics and Sleep Patterns
When we studied couples’ sleep and relationship quality night and day, we found that for men, on nights when he slept worse, his relationship quality suffered the next day. But for women, it was all about the relationship. On days when she was not so happy about her relationship, that night both her sleep and her husband’s sleep suffered. Like the old saying goes, “If she is not happy, no one’s sleeping.” Just ask my husband.
Sleeping together challenges can also emerge due to differences in sleep-wake patterns. Take my friend Lisa, the lifelong insomniac, and her husband Mark. Sometimes, even the most well-intentioned partner, like Mark, may inadvertently perpetuate a sleep problem. He would often tell Lisa to sleep in or go to bed early, so she could try to catch up on her sleep.
Unfortunately, that’s exactly what not to do when it comes to insomnia. A key step in the most powerful treatment for insomnia is to reduce time in bed, not extend it.