Bidirectional links between sleep and relationship quality: findings from an 8-year longitudinal study of older...

The Model of Dynamic Association Between Relationship Functioning and Sleep positions sleep as a fundamentally dyadic and reciprocal process, underscoring the need to study sleep within its relational context and highlighting the value of longitudinal, dyadic research to better understand interconnected pathways between sleep and close relationships. In this present study, we investigate longitudinal and bidirectional within- and between-person associations between sleep and relationship quality in couples aged 50+ using dyadic data.

Using dyadic random intercept cross-lagged panel models (RI-CLPMs), we tested associations between subjective sleep quality and relationship quality (i.e., support and strain) over three waves of data spanning eight years in a nationally representative sample of 2,343 couples aged 50 and over (mean age = 63.12) in the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing.

At the between-person level, individuals' sleep and spousal support were positively correlated; sleep quality was negatively associated with spousal strain for men only. At the within-person level, women who reported increases in spousal strain at one wave subsequently reported decreases in subjective sleep quality at the next time point. Women's increases in perceptions of spousal support predicted men's later improvements in subjective sleep quality. Contrary to expectations, we detected neither actor effects between spousal support and subjective sleep quality, nor partner effects between spousal strain and subjective sleep quality.

Taken together, these findings highlight the importance of considering gendered processes and interpersonal dynamics when examining the links between sleep and relationship functioning across time.