Relationships and Sleep

Relationships are all about compromise, but your quality sleep is one thing you shouldn’t settle on. 

Sharing a bed with a partner may not always be the romantic fantasy you dreamed about. Instead of cozy night’s filled with cuddling, you may be facing trouble sleeping due to your partner snoring, kicking, talking, sleepwalking, overheating the bed, or staying up to watch TV.

Sharing a sleep space can be complicated, and it can even take a toll on your relationship. We’ll address all issues couples face in the bedroom ranging from sharing the bed to maintaining intimacy to your satisfaction in your relationship.

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Sharing A Sleep Space: Relationships and Sleep

In the romance movies you sleep couples peacefully cuddling to sleep and waking up happily in each other’s arms. In reality, you may be dealing with a long list of annoyances from sleeping with your partner. 

Maybe in the beginning it was all roses and butterflies, but now it’s a nightmare. After endless sleepless nights from your partner’s sleeping habits, there’s bound to be some tension in your relationship, not to mention irritability and emotional instability as an effect of sleep deprivation. 

Other complications can also get in the way of a restful night’s sleep with your partner. How do you overcome the embarrassment of morning breath, snoring, or other not-so-pretty realities of sleeping with a new partner? How do you get good sleep when your partner needs a CPAP machine for sleep apnea? What if you work different shifts and sleep on different schedules? Should you get a sleep divorce? 

We’ll help you navigate through all stages of sharing a sleeping space with a partner in our resources below.

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Sleep and Sex

We can’t talk about relationships in the bedroom without touching on intimacy! 

The relationship between sleep and sex is a deep connection that goes both ways. Sleep is a key factor in hormone regulation in the body, so without sleep you won’t be energized for sexual activity and if your hormones are unregulated you may even experience a reduced sex drive. 

On the other hand, sex may even be able to help you sleep, especially if you achieve orgasm. During sex, your body releases the hormone oxytocin, which helps your body relax and can ultimately help you fall asleep. 

Check out our resources below to learn more about the connection between sex and sleep. 

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Relationship Satisfaction

It hasn’t always been this way, but in today’s culture, sleeping with your partner in the same bed at night is emblematic of a happy relationship. 

If you start having issues in the bedroom, that can start to affect your satisfaction in all parts of your relationship. And if your bedroom issues grow so severe that you have to enter a sleep divorce and sleep separately, that may harm your relationship even further. 

Making sure you are your partner both get great sleep and trying to find a way to do so together in the same bed can be more complicated than you expect. But for the sake of your relationship and your sleep health… it’s worth it. 

Learn more about the intricacies between your sleep and relationship satisfaction in our resources below.