A new study has found that relationship skills in your twenties may bear on your slumber quality for years to come.
Many of us view the relationships we have in our early twenties as a time to make mistakes and figure out what not to do in the future. New research suggests, however, that those early bonds may be more important than we think and may even have lasting effects that “get under our skin” and influence our stress levels and how well we sleep many years later.
In research published today in Personal Relationships, investigators found that participants who had positive, long-lasting romantic relationship experiences at 23 encountered fewer stressful life events at age 32, which in turn predicted better sleep quality at age 37.
“People who have other relationship skills, as well as positive relationship experiences, are exposed to fewer stressful life events, and perhaps are better able to cope with those stressful life events,” says the lead author, Chloe Huelsnitz, a PhD candidate at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. “Facing fewer stressful events leads to better sleep quality.”
This research also suggests that it is the relationship itself, and not only the skills, that can be beneficial, says Wendy Troxel, PhD, a clinical psychologist and researcher in sleep who was not involved in this study. “If you are a person who has learned through your history that you can find people who care for you and will be there for you when you need them, it can provide a very strong buffer towards future stresses as well,” she says.
Relationship Effectiveness and How It Affects Stress and Sleep
This prospective study uses data from the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation (MLSRA), which from 1975 to 1976 recruited first-time mothers living below the poverty line. Researchers then tracked the children of those mothers, assessing their health, relationships, and social and emotional life from birth to middle adulthood. This study uses information collected from 112 individuals born to those mothers at the ages of 23, 32, and 37 years old — all of whom were in relationships at 23.
Subjects were all interviewed about their current and recent romantic relationships at age 23 and age 32. People were asked to detail conflicts — both how they started and whether and how they were resolved. Participants described how their partners treated them and how the relationship functioned, including what they liked and did not like about the dynamic.
Trained coders rated each participant on a scale of one to five in “relationship effectiveness” based on the interview. High relationship effectiveness means a person has positive experiences and constructive engagement in relationships; and they also have a track record of partnerships with mutual caring, trust, sharing of experiences, and honesty. Low relationship effectiveness is when a person has had negative experiences and engages with their partner in a more destructive way. The people who were given a low effectiveness rating had difficulty initiating or maintaining positive relationships.
The researchers also collected data about participants’ life stress exposure, measured through a 41-item questionnaire that asked about the existence and size of life-changing events such as moving, job changes, health and legal problems, and divorce, as well as the circumstances behind those events. Each stressor was rated on a scale of zero to three, ranging from no disruption to severe disruption.
Sleep quality was measured by subjective reports from participants about the quality and duration of sleep. Participants answered the following two questions: “How well do you sleep most nights?” and “How rested or refreshed do you feel when you wake up most mornings?”
“We did find that the amount of stress that people experienced affected their sleep quality, but not their sleep quantity,” says Huelsnitz, adding that the researchers were somewhat surprised that stress didn’t seem to be connected to how long a person slept.
The researchers then tested several different hypotheses to compare the levels of relationship effectiveness and stress exposure with the subject’s experience of quantity and quality of sleep. Each model was tested to see what impact if any the experiences had on sleep, revealing that across all the models, relationship effectiveness was negatively correlated with stress exposure (meaning the better your relationship in your 20s, the fewer stressful events you were likely to report having into your 30s). And across all the models, better relationship skills were linked to both better sleep quality and quantity.
This research is a step toward understanding and quantifying the effects that a person’s romantic relationships can have on their health, says Huelsnitz. “We know that relationship partners have a huge impact on our well-being, but there’s less information out there on how they impact health behaviors like sleep, eating, and exercise,” she says. “Our relationship with our partner can be very influential for our health behaviors,” says Huelsnitz.
The Data Provide Important Insights Into a Key Health Factor, With Implications for Many Individuals
Given that the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation had collected so much data spanning so many years, it was a rich resource from which to learn about what types of behaviors were affecting sleep, Huelsnitz explains. Sleep has become more recognized in the last few years as a critical health behavior, she says. “It has health implications for eating behaviors, mood, aggression, and all kinds of other things. We really wanted to see what was determining people’s sleep,” she says.
“The participants’ mothers were below the poverty line, so this is a group of people who are at risk,” says Huelsnitz. When looking at the results, even after accounting for income level or the mother’s education level when the child was born, the effects of relationships and stress on sleep still held. “This suggests to us that the results would be applicable even for people who aren’t in that risk group,” says Huelsnitz.
What We Can Learn From the Research: Sleep May Not Be as Individualized a Behavior as We Thought
If there is a message for twentysomethings in these findings, it may be to realize that the relationships you have with people and the stress you experience does impact your sleep, even years after you’ve had those relationships and experiences, says Huelsnitz. “Ideally people would be taking steps now to improve their relationships and reduce their stress,” she says, adding that it remains to be seen what the immediate impact those changes would have on a person’s sleep quality.
“We are learning beings; we learn based on prior associations,” says Dr. Troxel. “This study suggests that relationships might have this cumulative impact on our health. When we have a history of trusting others and feeling supported during times of need, this can influence how we experience stress and our reactions to stress,” she says. The history of a solid relationship can have both emotional and physiological benefits on stress responses in both sleep and other health outcomes, says Troxel.
This study is a valuable addition to existing research that explores the social nature of sleep, she adds. “Science has mostly looked at sleep as an individualized behavior, when in reality, the majority of adults sleep with a partner. Sleep is intricately tied with our social relationships,” she says. “This research suggests that it’s not only our current relationship that might matter for our sleep, but there’s also an enduring effect that our relationships have on our sleep quality.”
Becky Upham
FEB