Your partner may wake you up six times a night – but does it matter?

Sleeping with a partner results in more nighttime awakenings than sleeping alone. Often these disruptions are brief and forgotten in the morning, but there are strategies to address them if they become problematic.

“Research reveals that subjectively, people think they sleep better together than when they sleep apart, but when you measure it objectively, there is more sleep disruption when they sleep together,” says Sean Drummond of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.

To explore the effects of bed sharing on couples’ sleep, Lionel Rayward of the Queensland University of Technology in Australia and colleagues conducted a systematic review of existing research. All studies reviewed found partner disturbances during shared sleep, with 30 to 46% of couples’ movements being shared. In other words, when one person pulled on the blankets, turned over, kicked, or made other movements, their partner moved as well.

One study conducted in a sleep laboratory, for example, recorded an average of 51 leg movements per night in individuals when they slept alone, but 62 when they slept with their partner. This resulted in two additional awakenings per night, determined by scalp electrodes monitoring the individuals’ brain electrical activity.

The review also included a study by Drummond’s team that asked couples to wear motion-detecting smartwatches while they slept in their shared bed at home. On average, participants were awakened six times a night by their partner’s movements. However, on average, they only remembered one of them the next day, suggesting that most partner disruptions are minor and have a minimal effect on overall sleep quality, Drummond says. “When both partners are sleeping healthy, these awakenings are probably not a problem, they just roll over and go back to sleep,” he says.

Major sleep problems are more likely to occur when a partner snores or suffers from insomnia, according to the latest study. “A person with insomnia is more likely to toss and turn, or even if they’re lying there and trying to be quiet, it’s hard for them to stay perfectly still when they’re awake, so there’s more activity and more chance of disturbing their partner,” says Drummond.

These problems can sometimes lead to “sleep divorce,” where partners sleep in separate beds or rooms to avoid disturbing each other. “There’s nothing inherently unhealthy about sleeping apart, but some couples see it as defeating their relationship, and personally I think it’s a much better idea to try to resolve the sleep issue,” says Drummond.

If one member of the couple suffers from insomnia, for example, Drummond and her team have found that cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can be beneficial, particularly when partners attend sessions together. After treatment, both partners tend to sleep better, he says.

When the problem lies in hogging blankets or different temperature preferences, Rayward and colleagues recommend trying the “Scandinavian method,” which involves sharing the same bed but using separate blankets.

Treatments for snoring include continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machines that keep the airway open and “mandibular advancement devices,” mouthguard-like devices made by dentists that pull the lower jaw forward. “This moves the tongue forward and creates more space at the back of the throat, making it easier to breathe in and out and reducing snoring,” says Amal Osman of Flinders University in Australia. Some people only snore when lying on their back, which can sometimes be remedied by wearing a backpack to bed to encourage side sleeping, says Osman.

About 80 to 90 percent of couples in the United Kingdom and the United States sleep in the same bed, compared to 63 percent in Japan, where mothers often sleep with their children in one room while fathers sleep in another.

Co-sleeping is believed to have been the most common form of sleep throughout human history because it provides warmth and a sense of security. Some of the oldest mattresses ever discovered – including 77,000-year-old plant mattresses discovered in South Africa – are large enough to accommodate entire families.

Pre-industrial societies also generally slept communally. For example, the Hadza of Tanzania sleep side by side in family groups in small huts. Research has shown that Hadza adults wake up regularly and that around 40% of them tend to be awake or slightly drowsy at all times of the night, perhaps to ensure that someone is always alert for danger. Despite these regular disturbances, however, they report no sleep problems.

This suggests that we shouldn’t worry too much about strange sleep disruptions caused by others, says Drummond. “The reality is that everyone wakes up several times each night – no one sleeps 100% of the time. »