Does Improving Marital Quality Improve Sleep? Results From a Marital Therapy Trial

For most adults, sleep is a dyadic behavior. Only recently have studies explored the dynamic association between sleep and relationship functioning among bed partners. The current study is the first to examine bidirectional associations between changes in insomnia and changes in marital quality over...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Behavioral sleep medicine 2017-07, Vol.15 (4), p.330-343
Main Authors: Troxel, Wendy M., Braithwaite, Scott R., Sandberg, Jonathan G., Holt-Lunstad, Julianne
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Bidirectionality
Couples therapy
Female
Help seeking behavior
Humans
Husbands
Insomnia
Male
Marital satisfaction
Marital Therapy
Marriage - psychology
Quality
Risk Factors
Sexual Partners - psychology
Sleep
Sleep - physiology
Sleep disorders
Sleep Initiation and Maintenance Disorders - psychology
Spouses - psychology
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Summary:For most adults, sleep is a dyadic behavior. Only recently have studies explored the dynamic association between sleep and relationship functioning among bed partners. The current study is the first to examine bidirectional associations between changes in insomnia and changes in marital quality over time, in the context of a marital therapy trial. Among husbands, improvements in marital satisfaction were associated with a 36% decreased risk of insomnia at follow-up. Regarding the reverse direction, counter-intuitively, wife baseline insomnia was associated with improvements in husbands' marital satisfaction, but only among the non-treatment-seeking comparison group. Results are discussed in terms of implications for sleep and marital therapy, and suggest that improving sleep may be an added benefit of improving the marital relationship.
ISSN:1540-2002
1540-2010
DOI:10.1080/15402002.2015.1133420