Insomnia Tips and Answers: Looking at the issue of the shared bed.
Kelly couldn’t sleep with her partner. Every creak in the bed frame when Kelly’s girlfriend shifted herself to every breath of air Angela breathed, the sensory stimuli was enough to drive Kelly crazy. She would just begin to drift when, “jiggle jiggle.” Kelly’s eyes would pop open, her heart rate would increase as she was yanked from a hypnogogic state of slumber into full on wakefulness. Angela had readjusted her sleeping self and it was too much for Kelly to bear. She didn’t want to share her bed.
Two miles away, Terry couldn’t sleep without her partner. She’d have a couple of glasses of wine, pop two benydryl, take a bath and read her book, but nothing! Without Ted with her she felt uneasy, alone and, as a result, became extra vigilant of her surroundings.
Was her boss going to reprimand her tomorrow for not having finished that document? Will Ted get bored with her and eventually find another woman? Wait…is that someone breaking in downstairs? When Ted was present, however, Terry felt safe and secure. His presence cast a peaceful feeling over her life, as if everything was going to be okay. She wrapped herself in his arms and slept like a baby.
How is it that Kelly and Terry could have such polarized experiences when sleeping with their partners? It’s not as if Kelly’s partner snored like a freight train and kept her awake for obvious reasons. Angela was a quiet sleeper, really, and turned minimally in bed. Ted, on the other hand, was a big guy and took up quite a portion of the bed. But instead of disrupting Terry’s sleep, he seemed to induce it.
Depending on one’s attachment style, a person may either be bothered or soothed by a bed partner. Attachment styles are ways in which we learn to be in relation to other human beings. Our individual attachment style is usually influenced by how our parents responded to us when we were babies. Were they attuned to our needs, smothering, critical or absent?
Depending on our experience, we may feel secure in the presence and closeness of others, avoidant of the presence and closeness with others or anxiously search for the presence or closeness of others.
In Kelly’s case, her heightened sensitivity and fear of being hurt by people based on early childhood experiences, left her uneasy when sharing a bed with her girlfriend. She was anxious, but resistant. On the other hand, Terry’s mother was critical and abandoning of her. Terry longed to feel loved and needed the validation of her boyfriend’s presence to feel secure. She had an anxious attachment.
In 2007 Troxel, Robles, Hall and Buysse published a paper in Sleep Medicine Reviews (Troxel et al, (2007) 11) that summarized the research on relationship quality and sleep. They found three studies that showed statistically significant associations between attachment insecurity and subjective sleep quality.
One study in particular (Carmichael and Reis, Health Psychology, 2005) demonstrated that those with anxious attachment styles (like Terry) reported poorer sleep quality in general. This outcome was echoed more recently by Pagliani et al, at the Sleep Conference in June, 2016.
Their research showed that out of 43 subjects those with an insecure attachment style (those who “seem uncomfortable with relationships or depend on them”) had insomnia. In addition, Troxel et al found that relationship harmony was an important predictor of sleep quality as well. In other words, regardless of one’s attachment style, the more copacetic the relationship, the better one would sleep.
Both Kelly and Terry are anxious women. However, Kelly’s attachment style is characterized as anxious-avoidant whereas Terry’s is just plain anxious.
This may be why Kelly couldn’t sleep with her partner and Terry could only sleep with her partner. In Kelly’s case, she was acutely aware of Angela’s presence which, in some way, posed a threat to her. She then began to ruminate about every breath Angela took as a disturbance to her (Kelly’s) well-being. She was anxious (hypervigilant) but avoidant (she wanted to distance herself from Angela.) Terry just needed the validation that her boyfriend’s presence indicated. In other words, if he’s here with me, he’s not with someone else. If he’s here with me, I’m protected and safe.
To add fire to fire. Kelly and Angela weren’t doing that well. They argued frequently and lately there had been daily tension between them. To have an anxious-avoidant attachment style and to have relationship strife, puts one at risk for chronic insomnia.
Indeed, Troxel et al’s review of the literature found that relationship quality could impact a person’s hypothalamic-adrenal-pituitary axis, which when dysregulated, seems to increase risk for insomnia. They also found that a person’s autonomic nervous system in which blood pressure and plasma catecholamine levels rise is affected by marital conflict, thus potentially disrupting sleep.
Last, a person’s proinflammatory state seems to fluctuate according to relationship conflict. Certain sleep modulating cytokines (inflammatory markers) are elevated in the body when couples demonstrated hostile behavior to each other.
All of this said, here are some staggering facts from a 2012 survey by The Better Sleep Council:
• 25% of partnered adults say they sleep better alone than with their partner
• 63% of couples sleep most of the night separated (including in the same bed, but clinging to opposite corners)
• Women are more sensitive to their sleep environment than men (60% vs. 48%)
• The older we get the less likely it is that we will sleep closely with our partners
Insomnia Tips and Answers: Conclusion
My practice seems to echo the research. That is, while most adult Americans have a bed partner, whether that partner’s presence is an asset or a hindrance to the other’s sleep seems to depend on whether the partner has an environmentally disturbing sleep disorder, whether the person is in a harmonious vs discordant relationship with the partner and with which attachment style the person embodies to navigate life.
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Dr. Van Deusen received her PhD in Clinical Psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology in Los Angeles in 1992. She has cultivated deep knowledge of attachment theory and stress and has worked with various populations over her two and a half decade career. Her practice is in Seattle, Washington. Buy her book Stressed in the U.S.: 12 Tools to Tackle Anxiety, Loneliness, Tech-Addiction and More here