Sleepless wives more likely to fight

Wives who have difficulty falling asleep at night are more likely to trigger marital woes than their peers who take sufficient and good quality rest.

A new research showed that women who have trouble falling asleep are more likely to report negative interactions with their spouse the next day.

University of Pittsburgh researchers studied 35 healthy married couples and monitored their sleep patterns by asking the participants to wear sensors that monitor body movements during night.

According to the findings presented at the Sleep 2011conference in Minneapolis, marital interactions of both partners are impacted when wives have difficulty falling asleep at night; sleeping problems of the husband, on the other hand, have little effect on marital woes.

"Wives who took longer to fall asleep the night before reported poorer interactions with their husbands the next day," said Wendy Troxel, the study's senior researcher.

Previous findings have showed that sleep deprivation is associated with more irritability. "When you're irritated, the person you're most likely to take it out on is your spouse," she added.

"Women are generally more expressive and tend to drive the emotional climate of a couple's relationship," she noted. "Men are more likely to repress their feelings or not be as aware or tuned into the climate of change taking place."

Troxel stressed that sleeping problems in women may be due to a stressful cycle as marital issues may lead to insomnia and other sleep disturbances that in turn may lead to negative marital interactions.

"It's a cyclical process that can get under the skin of couples and put them into negative trajectories when it comes to their mental health and well-being."

"Sleep problems need to be clinically addressed and perhaps marriage therapy started if the relationship is in trouble," the lead scientist recommended.


/Press TV/