As my dear friend, Dr. Wendy Troxel often says, “Sleep is the new sex.” And she's right. A good night's sleep will do many things for the vibrancy, the intimacy, even the vitality of your relationship.
[Sleeping With Science]
First, when couples are not getting enough sleep, they have more conflicts the next day. And furthermore, they don't resolve those conflicts nearly as well, in part because of a loss of empathy between those two individuals.
Second, our reproductive hormones suffer, which we know are critical for healthy sexual relationship. For example, young men who are sleeping just five hours a night for one week will have a level of testosterone which is that of someone 10 years their senior. In other words, a lack of sleep will age a man by a decade when it comes to certain aspects of wellness and virility. And we see similar impairments in female reproductive health caused by a lack of sleep. Indeed, insufficient sleep has been associated with impairments in estrogen, in luteinizing hormone and also in follicle stimulating hormone, all of which are critical for female sexual health as well as fertility.
Third, we've discovered that for a woman, just one hour of extra sleep is associated with a 14 percent increased likelihood of her wanting to be physically intimate with her partner.
So that's the impact of sleep on sex. But it turns out that sex can also have an impact on sleep. We know that sex before bed, resulting in orgasm, is associated with significant improvements in subjective sleep quality. And we've even seen similar sleep associations with masturbation.
So what does all of this tell us then? Well, sleep and sex are powerful and playful bedfellows. Sleep is one of the very foundations of a happy, fulfilling and sexually vibrant relationship.
