Want a good nights sleep? Of course you do. Here’s a new strategy: make your wife happy.
We already know that couples with poor sleep patterns fight more. This new study published in Sleep (pdf warning; pg. A352) has found that, in heterosexual couples, a wife’s marital satisfaction predicts better sleep for both partners.
Researchers had forty-six couples complete relationship assessments. Then, they measured the quality of their sleep over ten days with actigraphy (have a fitbit? Same deal). On average, sleep synchrony (i.e., the amount of time couples spent sleeping at the same time while in bed) was about seventy-five per cent. However, in couples where the women reported higher marital satisfaction, that number rose. The same wasn’t true in the reverse.
So, are neither of you getting enough sleep? It might be time to up your A game.
