How to sleep like your relationships depend on it (with Wendy Troxel)
31:51 Share

What does it mean if you and your partner sleep in different beds? Is that okay? You're listening to How to Be a Better Human. I am your host, Chris Duffy. And on today's show, we're going to be answering that question and so many more. We are talking all about sleep. Personally, I have always thought that there are two kinds of sleepers.

There's light switchers like me, which are the people where we turn off the light switch and then we instantly go to sleep. And then there are the people like my wife, who I call doomsday preppers, because they have to spend hours before bedtime preparing for the apocalypse that is the night. Do either of those sound familiar to you? Well, whether you have an easy time falling asleep or it is a constant struggle, we've got some serious insights for you on today's episode.

We're going to talk about how to sleep like your relationship depends on it, because it very well might. We're going to talk about how sleep affects our relationships. And we are going to be asking that big question that I started with at the top. Is it okay if couples sleep apart?

Sleep doesn't just affect romantic relationships. It also has major impacts on society. So there's going to be useful information for everybody, whether you are currently single and sleeping alone or not. We're also going to be exploring what the most effective bedtime habits are to make it so you can actually fall asleep in the first place. And we're going to talk about why sleep has all of a sudden become such a hot topic. To get started, here's a clip from sleep scientist Wendy Troxell's TEDx talk. Is it bad if my partner and I sleep apart?

The answer is no, not necessarily. Just as sleeping together doesn't guarantee a successful relationship, if only it were that easy, sleeping apart doesn't guarantee an unsuccessful one. Use open and honest communication to find solutions that will maximize sleep quality for both of you. And if sleeping apart seems like the right choice,

then think of it not as filing for a sleep divorce, but rather forging a sleep alliance with your partner, or as journalist Jessica Goldstein calls it, unconscious uncoupling. Bottom line, there is no one-size-fits-all sleeping strategy for all couples. But all couples should make sleep a priority. After all,

we spend about one-third of our lives asleep. Proportionally, that's a major part of our coupled existence, much more so than sex. And yet it's so often neglected.

Research shows us when you're well slept, you're a better communicator, more empathic, happier, more attractive, all important attributes in developing and sustaining healthy and happy relationships. Sadly, we live in a culture that continues to view sleep deprivation as a badge of honor.

Perhaps by focusing on how our sleep problems affect not just ourselves, but also our relationships, we can begin to view sleep as the pillar of health that it is. If you're not going to sleep for yourself, then do it for your partner and everyone else around you. Consider it an investment in your relationship. At the end of the day, there is nothing happier, healthier,

We're going to have even more sexy sleep facts for you right after this quick ad.

How to be a better human is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. What if comparing car insurance rates was as easy as putting on your favorite podcast? With Progressive, it is. Just visit the Progressive website to quote with all the coverages you want. You'll see Progressive's direct rate, then their tool will provide options from other companies so you can compare. All you need to do is choose the rate and coverage you like. Quote today at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive.

Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Comparison rates not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy. These days we're surrounded by photo editing programs. Have you ever wondered what something or someone actually looks like under all the manipulation? I'm Elise Hugh and you might know me as the host of TED Talks Daily. This October, I am giving a TED Talk in Atlanta about finding true beauty in a sea of artificial images.

I'm so excited to share the stage with all the amazing speakers of the TED Next conference, and I hope you'll come and experience it with me. Visit go.ted.com slash TED Next to get your pass today.

Okay, let's get right into it. We are talking sleep and we have the incredible Wendy Troxell here with us now. Hi, I'm Wendy Troxell. I'm a senior behavioral and social scientist at the Rand Corporation and author of the book, Sharing the Covers, Every Couple's Guide to Better Sleep. How did you sleep last night? Well,

You're a sleep expert. How did you sleep last night? Well, the irony is I actually did not have a good sleep last night, and I blame my husband entirely for it. Normally, I'm a great sleeper. I know sort of the behaviors to do before bedtime. I have a nice wind-down routine. I have a very consistent bedtime and wake time. I read before bed. And I did all those things last night in order to

All was going swimmingly. But then my husband was having sleep problems as he was falling asleep because he was stressed about something at work. And that beginning of the night is so important for setting you up for the rest of your night. And as long as I fall asleep deeply and quickly, I have a really good night of sleep the rest of the night.

But because he was tossing and turning at the beginning of the night, that kind of ruined the whole start of my night. And then I got frustrated and resentful of him, which definitely didn't help my sleep. So I ended up being up a lot of the night. And then I started thinking about this interview and the irony that I was going to be sleep deprived as I talk about the importance of sleep and sleep within couples.

I see this in my clinic all the time, by the way. People come to me, often women, with insomnia and through gritted teeth, they will say, and my husband, his head hits the pillow and he's down for the night. I'm up all night.

All night struggling to sleep. But it's so easy for him. So it's very funny how the resentment can arise within couples with one who's an excellent sleeper and the other who has trouble. And you really can feel sort of some sleep envy over that. Well, I know anecdotally and from talking to friends and just from my own personal experience that.

a lot more people are having trouble than normal sleeping these days. At least it seems like that in my world. Have you noticed that? And why is that? Stress can certainly interfere with our ability to get good quality sleep.

Our daily lives and social rhythms, including our biological rhythms, have also been profoundly disrupted by the pandemic and stay-at-home orders, the fact that we're working from home. So we have little sort of distinction between our nights and our days. That can also contribute to sleep disturbances. And the stress is real. The disruption is real. And we're also spending a ton of

of time with our families and with our partners, and that can also create relationship conflict. So there's a great deal of salience between what I study, which is how we sleep, how that affects our relationships and vice versa. Diving into the actual relationship piece of this, which I know is really your area of absolute expertise here. Is it okay for married couples or for partners to not sleep in the same bed? And what does that mean?

Obviously, there's a lot that's tied up in that around like our emotions and our societal expectations, but also science. So how did you first start looking at that? Well, I've always been interested in how social relationships change.

our health and well-being. And I mostly study the marital or marital-like relationships and have been studying this for years. And we have lots of evidence to show that married or partnered people live longer, happier, and healthier lives.

than their unmarried or unpartnered counterparts. And it's also true that the quality of relationships matters for our health, but we don't quite know how that transpires. And I became interested in sleep because we know that sleep is critically important for our health and wellbeing. And yet at the time that I started studying sleep over 15 years ago,

very few people were studying sleep in the social context in which it occurs, which is with a bed partner. And as a result of this sort of neglected view of sleep as a social behavior,

We have all of these, you know, tired myths about how couples should or should not sleep together. And it's really not all science based. So I really wanted to bring the evidence to that critically important question. Yeah. I mean, this is one of the things that I love so much about your book is that it's written in a way that's super accessible and you're so good at explaining this for the general public. But it also it does debunk these things that I think a lot of us just take for granted as like that that has to be the way it is.

So what do you hear as the biggest myths that you wish people knew were not true? So I think the big one, as you alluded to, is this idea that sleeping apart is necessarily a sign of a loveless or sexless union. That is simply not the case. There is not a one size fits all sleeping arrangement for all couples. I mean, when you think about it, we spend about a third of our lives asleep.

And for many of us, that's shared with a partner if it works. If it's not working, then why do we need to be so prescriptive about how we should be doing this behavior that occupies a lot of our coupled existence? So kind of debunking this idea that there's a one-size-fits-all sleeping arrangement and that how you sleep or don't sleep with your partner necessarily says something about the quality of your relationship,

I think that that's a really big myth to debunk. And the research definitely bears that out. While there are some benefits for some people of sleeping together, there also are some costs to sharing a bed. And so I think every individual couple needs to find a way to sort of balance those costs and benefits

and find the strategy that's going to maximize sleep quality for the both of them in their relationship. Not what your parents do, not what your friends do, not what society does. It's what's working for you. Because just like mattress preferences are different across people, and I always encourage people to focus on comfort, comfort for you, not what other people think. And that goes the same for how you feel about sharing a bed. And there's lots of strategies to do it

if that's the choice that you want to make as a couple. I think that what I recommend to couples who are considering different sleeping arrangements, including sleeping apart, either permanently or more temporarily, is to have open and honest communication about it. Talk to your partner about what's working and what's not working. What too often happens in couples who choose, well, who end up sleeping apart, is that it's not really a choosing or an active decision as a couple.

rather it's sort of a default reaction that one partner goes stomping out of the room and onto the couch, the other partner can be left feeling kind of abandoned and rejected. And that's where problems could arise. So it's the lack of communication around the decision and the resentment and frustration that often builds when these conversations

aren't had as a dialogue within a couple that problems can occur. It's not so much the arrangement itself, but it's how you approach that arrangement that really matters. So I say this again to really emphasize to couples the importance of prioritizing sleep for the health of your relationship.

I know we've talked about how it depends on the person, but is there an ideal sleep? The subjective experience of sleep is truly one's own. And the best way to assess the quality of your sleep is do you wake up feeling restored and refreshed and like you had a good night quality sleep? I couldn't necessarily tell that just by watching two people sleeping together because the subjective experience doesn't always map on to some of the objective measures we have.

And that's actually a really interesting point about the limited data we have on couples sleeping together versus apart. The interesting thing is that when we measure sleep objectively, for instance, using motion sensing devices, when couples share the same bed, they actually show some objective costs to their sleep. So their sleep is disturbed in some ways. But if you ask those same people subjectively

Do you sleep better with your partner or alone? Most people will say they sleep better with their partner. And that's, again, I think speaking to the psychological benefits that some of us get from sharing a bed, that feeling of safety and security derived from

from being close to a significant other. Hearing you say it, it makes so much sense that if you woke up feeling restored and refreshed, of course you would be in a better place to be a partner and be in a better relationship, right? We all want our partner to look at us and feel refreshed and restored and with energy for us rather than drained and exhausted. What are the other ways that sleep affects relationships?

There's really some exciting research that has been coming out from a number of different laboratories lately, including our own, showing the sort of intricate links between how well you sleep at night and how you behave in your relationship the next day. So we've shown that there's really this kind of reciprocal influence that, particularly for men, on nights when men sleep poorly, the next day they report sleepiness.

poor relationship functioning or satisfaction. For women, the opposite was true. On days when women were more satisfied in their relationship, that night, both she and her partner slept better, which is really kind of interesting.

There's also research showing that under sleep-deprived conditions, people are less empathic. That is, they're less able to read their partner's emotions. Their communication skills suffer. Their problem-solving skills suffer. And they're more prone to conflict.

So you can see how in the context of sleep deprivation, this can really put couples on a rocky trajectory. This is the thrust of it is that if we don't take sleep seriously, we're really putting our relationship in danger. Absolutely. So as much as I talk about this vicious cycle of what we found in our work of kind of

how you sleep predicting next day's relationship functioning and vice versa, relationship functioning predicting that night's sleep. That's a vicious cycle, but where there are vicious cycles, there's also opportunities for virtuous cycles. So it suggests that we can intervene. You can intervene at the level of the relationship and we have good, you know, relationship therapies out there that may be very beneficial for some people,

But we also need to start paying attention to our sleep and intervening and improving sleep with the possible outcome of also improving our relationship health. Do you have any insights on how sleep looks different across other demographics, like age, profession, region, gender, all of those things? Other demographic differences include the fact that there are profound racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities in sleep.

We see that individuals with low-income households have higher rates of sleep disruptions and certain sleep disorders. So it's really interesting to look across. I mean, I focus often on our most intimate relationships, but sleep is really affected by...

by our broader social environments as well. And some of the things I think about within couples that matter for sleep, like feeling safe and secure with your partner, that also matters for our broader social context. For instance, if you live in a neighborhood that doesn't feel safe,

That can also drive what we see is, you know, poor sleep quality in low income, predominantly African-American neighborhoods, for instance. That's a study that we have. It's interesting because I think so often we think about, at least I so often think about sleep as something that is the most definitionally individual, right? Like it's just what do you do to make sure you have good sleep? But it's a new idea for me to think that there are

policies, whether they're government policies or social norms that could shift sleep on the large scale for everyone. I love to hear you say that because that is exactly the thrust of a lot of my work, that we have a lot of research that studies sleep as an individual isolated phenomenon. And we have a great amount of research showing all the individual factors that contribute. I

to sleep health or lack thereof. And those individual factors are very important. But we also need to start expanding our lens and looking at these broader social influences on our sleep, from our relationships, to the communities we live in, to our cultures, and to our policies. And that does relate to some of my other work, for instance, on

public policies like early school start times and their impact on adolescent sleep, as well as other broader social policies like neighborhood investments in disadvantaged communities and how that relates to sleep. We have much more on the importance of sleep and what you can do to make sure you are getting the rest you need. But first, a quick break.

Warmer, sunnier days are calling. Fuel up for them with Factor's no prep, no mess meals. You can meet your wellness goals thanks to this menu of chef crafted meals with options like calorie smart, protein plus, veggie vegan or keto. And Factor has fresh, never frozen meals, which are dietician approved and ready to eat in just two minutes.

That sounds like a dream come true. I cannot wait. So no matter how busy you are, you will always have time to enjoy nutritious, great tasting meals. Make today the day that you kickstart a new healthy routine. What are you waiting for? Head to factormeals.com slash betterhuman50 and use code betterhuman50 to get 50% off your first box plus 20% off your next month. That's code betterhuman50 at 50%.

factormeals.com slash betterhuman50 to get 50% off your first box, plus 20% off your next month while your subscription is active.

I want to tell you about a new podcast from NPR called Wild Card. You know, I am generally not the biggest fan of celebrity interview shows because they kind of feel packaged, like they've already told these stories a bunch of times before. But Wild Card is totally different because the conversation is decided by the celebrity picking a random card from a deck of conversation starters. And since even the host, Rachel Martin, doesn't know what they're going to

pick, the conversations feel alive and exciting and dangerous in a way because they're vulnerable and unpredictable. And it is so much more interesting than these stock answers that the celebrities tend to give on other shows. You get to hear things like Jack Antonov describe why boredom works or Jenny Slate on salad dressing or Issa Rae on the secret to creativity.

It is a beautiful, interesting show, and I love it. Wildcard comes out every Thursday from NPR. You can listen wherever you get your podcasts. And we are back with Wendy Troxell. OK, so, Wendy, let's imagine that you're in charge of everything and you can snap your fingers and magically policies fall into place. How would you fix the way that we sleep? Oh, that's hard. Well, I think that from a policy perspective, we really need sort of a top down approach to prioritizing sleep.

that we really need to culturally disabuse this idea that you sleep when you're dead or that sleep is a thing that you do once everything else is done. Because we all suffer from that misconception. Our economy suffers, our productivity suffers, our mental health suffers, our physical health and functioning suffers. And those all have societal consequences. So I think really, from a top-down perspective, we need

more sort of prioritization of the importance of sleep. And that can relate to many policies, ranging from shift work policies to school start time policies to family leave policies and policies in the military. So there's a kind of broader, more nuanced policies sort of within that general framework of we've got to start making sleep health a priority.

critical and vital priority within our culture because it is so critically important for all aspects of health, functioning, productivity, and the economy. What are the three biggest things to make sure that they and their sleep partners, if there are people sharing their bed, are getting the best nights rest that they can? Okay. So the first thing I recommend is that we all need to be

fairly rigid about setting a consistent bedtime and wake-up time. Time is a really important signal to our internal biological rhythms or circadian clocks, which in turn, by keeping that consistent, it helps set us up for sleep success that subsequent night. Tip number two is to keep technology out of the bedroom. There's really no place for it.

I recommend that you try to have a technology-free zone about an hour before bedtime. If that seems impossible, start with a half an hour and inch your way closer towards that goal. And if

If you're scrolling through social media, kind of doomsday scrolling, you're looking at content that often is distressing, even if not distressing, it's kind of emotionally activating. That's exactly opposite of where you want your headspace to be as you approach sleep. You want the time before bed to be a time to unwind, relax, and settle, and prepare your brain for a healthy night of sleep.

There is someone for sure listening to this podcast right now in bed, looking at their iPhone, being like, I have made every mistake right now. It's not too late to change person who's listening in bed. Not at all. Get that phone out of the room. So if you're really struggling with this, if the idea of being separated from your phone for an hour sounds impossible, try it in small increments. At least give yourself, for starters, a 15 minute free zone where you are separated from your phone as you approach the bedtime. Yeah.

And the other thing that I want to say about phones in our bedroom is that they're really taking away from a very important time if you share a bed with your partner. That, you know, instead of using that time before bed to relax and connect with your partner, so many people are now scrolling through social media and completely ignoring the

the physical human being who they care about, who's lying right next to them in bed? This seems like an obvious question for me, but you don't use your phone as an alarm then? I do not. In fact, people ask me this all the time and my clients who I see in my practice, when I suggest to them that no phone's in the bedroom and they ask me, well, it's my alarm. What I say is, guess what?

There are these things that they sell very cheaply and they have only one purpose in life. They are called alarm clocks and they were designed to do only one thing and they do it really well. So allow that thing to do the job it was born to do. It's only an alarm clock and it's good at its job. Your phone is just, it's too ubiquitous in your life. So that's no excuse. You know, you can run to your nearest store, buy yourself a cheap alarm clock and, and

It works magically. You're describing to me a phone that doesn't make calls. I don't understand. I'm confused by this concept. Again, just being honest, this is another change that I need to make, which is my phone is my alarm. And so that has always been my excuse for why the phone has to be in the bedroom. It's because I'm like, well, that's where the alarm is. But like you said, there's absolutely no reason I can't get a different device that does that.

Right, because your phone is your alarm. Your phone is your connection to your work life. Your phone is your connection probably to news and other media. Sometimes it has, again, stressful, distressing content. Okay, so that's two. What's your third tip? Third tip is to make your bedroom a haven.

And by that, I mean, you want your bedroom to be a place that is kind of free from clutter, free from technology and as comfortable and and sort of aesthetically pleasing as you can make it. So, you know,

investing in a good sleep environment that means a comfortable bed, a room that's comfortable in terms of light. You want the lights low, sound. You don't want a whole lot of noise in the bedroom. And temperature. We want our bedrooms to be cooler at night than you would during the summer.

your sort of daily daytime activities. Generally somewhere around, you know, 67, 68 degrees is a comfortable bedroom temperature for sleep because the lowering of your body temperature is one of the signals that happens to facilitate sleep onset. You've been doing so much of sleep research for many years. And I feel like for a long time, this was not like,

the hottest field. And I mean that respectfully. Like, I just feel like people weren't it wasn't something that was in popular consciousness when you started studying this. And in the last few years, it feels like all of a sudden people are starting to take this really seriously. I wonder if you have any sense of why that is, because I don't like what changed.

It's pretty amazing. I mean, it's exciting. And as a sleep researcher and somebody who cares deeply about public health, it's wonderful to see sleep now being elevated to the place it should be, which is as a vital pillar of health.

I think there are many reasons why it's suddenly gaining such traction and attention. Number one, now sleep is big business. There are lots of devices out there and companies that are really devoted to helping people sleep better. But that also suggests that, you know, I think people are now more and more cognizant of how not sleeping well is profoundly disruptive to

to all aspects of their lives. It's also true that we have an aging population, and as we age, certain sleep problems are more common. And then it's also true that sleep science as a field is a relatively young science, kind of 60 or so years, and it's really only been in the past couple of decades where we saw this

major emergence of study after study showing the many consequences of sleep loss and sleep disruption, ranging from increased risks of heart attacks, diabetes, stroke, now even dementia, and other indicators of cognitive decline. We also know that sleep loss is strongly linked with our mental health and well-being.

So we have a few more questions and then I will let you go and you can take a nap, which actually is that is that good? Should you take naps? OK, naps are OK.

I jokingly said take a nap. And then I was like, wait a second. Is that like the worst thing that I could suggest? Or is that actually a healthy suggestion? The general strategy with naps is shorter is better and earlier in the day is better. And it also depends on why you're taking a nap. For me, I had one bad night of sleep. If I had taken a nap earlier in the day, that would have been totally fine. I probably would have set, had I had the time, you know, an alarm for a 20 to 30 minute nap. Kind of the idea of a power nap, you know,

There is some validity to that. You don't want too long a nap. Okay. Yeah. So yeah, shorter naps is better and earlier in the day. So I would have done it probably, you know, before 2 p.m. It's sort of like the why you're napping or are you napping every day because you're not allowing yourself sufficient opportunity for sleep at night. Then the nap is really a band-aid for the fact that you're sleep restricting on a regular basis and you probably should start prioritizing sleep at night.

You've also said, one of your famous quotes is, great sleep is the new great sex. Is that something that you truly believe? Do you stand by that? Well, I don't think it's a replacement for great sex, but that in our sort of society

psyche and in our culture. So we need to be thinking about great sleep as a vital component of our healthy relationships, just as we think of great sex as being a vital component, not the only component, but a vital one of a healthy relationship.

But the thing about that quote, which originally is not my quote, actually, it was by a journalist a number of years ago, I saw it. And what I love about it is that it not only speaks to what I would agree with that, you know, sleep is a vital part of our relationship health. If

Someone is listening and they are either in a newish relationship or they're about to move in together or something like that. So they're, they're about to combine for the first time and really start a practice of sleeping together. What can they do to set themselves up for success? What are the like rituals or routines that, that they should initiate now before they have any bad habits?

That's a really great question because it's so neglected in kind of the life course of relationships. You know, even if you think about sort of premarital counseling, there's a lot that's being done to, I think, support couples, you know, as they start a committed union. But

we're primarily focused on the two-thirds of our lives we spend awake and neglecting that third of our lives that is a really critical part of our coupled existence. And I think it's important to acknowledge that there is going to be an adjustment period. And when you think about sleep from an evolutionary perspective, it's a vulnerable state to be in.

And that's in part why some of us do benefit from sleeping with a partner because a partner can help to make one feel psychologically safe and secure. But at the beginning of a relationship, there's still some anxiety and getting used to even a very healthy one, the newness of it, that's part of the excitement, but that can also be

cause some sleep disruption. So recognizing that sometimes it takes an adjustment period to get used to the partner. And if you're feeling a little anxious at night, that's sort of normal because as you adjust to a new environment, that's partly your, you know, brain signal saying, oh, this is not very familiar. I don't feel

particularly secure or safe right now. So I think that you can sort of acknowledge that, you know, some adjustment is necessary. I think having some conversations about your sleep habits and patterns is a really good idea at this, you know, start of, you know, maybe not the first date, of course, but, you know, if you're moving in together or whatnot, you know, talking about these issues that occupy such a major portion of our coupled existence is so important.

Well, I'm having to stop myself from asking you 400 more questions because I could genuinely talk to you for like four days straight and that would not be good for either of our sleep routines. So last question, what is one way in which you right now are trying to be a better human? I am trying to practice patience. It is not a skill I come by naturally. I'm trying to practice patience with myself and

with my children, with my coworkers and other family members, and really recognize that sort of being willing to engage and participate in the process, whatever that process might be, and not rushing to the outcome. I tend to be sort of very much, you know, task oriented and let's get it done and, you

focus on efficiency in sort of all things in life, but recognizing that sometimes just letting things be and letting things sort of transpire as they do somewhat organically is necessary. And you learn things by, you know,

practicing such patience. And it also teaches you tolerance for other people. And that's really important. Well, Wendy Troxell, thank you so much for being on the show. You've given me so many deep, profound things to think over and also really practical things that I am going to put into practice in my life starting tomorrow morning. So thank you so much. It was a real pleasure. Oh, me as well. I really enjoyed myself. Thank you.

That is our episode for today. This has been How to Be a Better Human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy, and I learned so much about sleep today. I hope you did too. Thank you to our guest, Wendy Troxell. On the TED side, this show is produced by Abhimanyu Das, who never snores.

Daniela Bolarezo, who wakes up at the same time every day. Frederica Elizabeth Yosefov, who never brings a phone into the bedroom. And Cara Newman, who is power napping right now. And from PRX Productions, How to Be a Better Human is brought to you by Jocelyn Gonzalez, who knows 68 degrees is the perfect sleep temperature. And Sandra Lopez-Monsalve, who would never even think about doom scrolling after dark. Thank you all for listening and sleep well tonight.

Support for the show comes from Brooks Running. I'm so excited because I have been a runner, gosh, my entire adult life. And for as long as I can remember, I have run with Brooks Running shoes. Now I'm running with a pair of Ghost 16s from Brooks.

incredibly lightweight shoes that have really soft cushioning. It feels just right when I'm hitting my running trail that's just out behind my house. You now can take your daily run in the Better Than Ever Go 16. You can visit brookscrunning.com to learn more. PR.