Are you an early bird or a night owl? Your chronotype (a classification based on when you feel most alert) could determine everything from your ideal career to your propensity for mental health disorders. It could also spell trouble for your relationship. Sleep disturbances cause stress, which is obviously not conducive to a healthy marriage.
How Differing Sleep Patterns Impact Your Marriage
Differences in sleep time may be prompted by either natural patterns or life circumstances. For example, your spouse may naturally be a night owl…or he might simply work the night shift. Either way, he’ll crawl into bed hours after your ideal bedtime. This disrupts your natural sleep pattern. Likewise, when you wake up, you may inadvertently compromise your spouse’s REM cycles.
Sleep loss makes even the most patient person irritable and prone to arguments. Lack of sleep also increases the intensity of otherwise mild spats. An Ohio State University study revealed that sleep-deprived couples didn’t automatically suffer higher inflammation, but rather, inflammatory responses to conflict. The study’s lead researcher sums it up best: “Sleep [increases] vulnerability to a stressor.”
What Is a Sleep Divorce? How Can It Help?
An increasingly popular option for couples on radically different schedules? Sleep divorce. Keep your rings and your joint bank account; sleep divorce simply means sleeping when you want and in separate rooms. This prevents you from disrupting one another.
It’s time to do away with the stigma of sleeping in separate beds. Sleeping apart doesn’t mean you’re in the doghouse; it means that you respect your spouse’s desire for a full night’s rest. This arrangement is no longer taboo; results from a National Sleep Foundation survey indicate that one in four Americans either sleep in different beds or rooms.
No matter the role chronotype plays in your relationship — or divorce — you deserve legal assistance from an attorney attuned to your unique needs. Seek personalized service from the law firm of Barna, Guzy & Steffen, Ltd.