The interplay between relationship effectiveness, life stress, and sleep: A prospective study

Abstract

Research has shown that greater stress responses predict worse sleep and that the quality of one's current romantic relationship predicts one's sleep. Despite these established links, research has not examined connections between ongoing patterns of interpersonal experiences and competencies (relationship effectiveness) and stress exposure on sleep. Participants in the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation (MLSRA) completed measures assessing relationship effectiveness and stress exposure at ages 23 and 32 years, as well as sleep quality/duration at age 37 years. Analyses demonstrate that relationship effectiveness at age 23 years positively predicts sleep quality—but not sleep duration—at age 37 years via reduced stress exposure at age 32 years. These findings highlight the effects of relationship effectiveness and stress exposure across early to middle adulthood on sleep.

Romantic relationship satisfaction is associated with sleep in undergraduate students.

“…Among 443 Colombian university students, higher levels of satisfaction in one’s romantic relationship were found to be associated with reporting needing fewer hours of sleep to feel rested (Talero-Gutierrez et al, 2017). Also, Huelsnitz et al (2019) found that the impact of relationship functioning in young adults may have robust and enduring effects on sleep. Data from 112 individuals drawn from a longitudinal cohort study demonstrated that relationship effectiveness at age 23—the extent to which participants were judged to be "competently engaged in romantic relationships" (p. 81) by trained coders of recorded relationship history interviews—was associated with better subjectively rated sleep quality at age 37, but not sleep duration (Huelsnitz et al, 2019).…”