Want to keep your relationship on solid ground? Get enough sleep

When one or both partners are not well-rested, tiny quarrels may end up in major rifts. 

Sleep loss triggers the many relationship behaviors and communication styles we know are most toxic to relationships such as silent treatment or berating your partner.

The importance of sleep in relationships shows how severe our attitude gets when deprived of it and in order to have a healthy level of conflict, we must be well-rested enough to engage properly during the conflict.

When we are sleep deprived our empathic accuracy drops. The words we use to communicate are colored by our sleep or the lack thereof.

It's been proven by numerous studies that under sleep-deprived conditions, there is a significant decrease in the use of positive emotion words. Furthermore, the results also show that there is a lower positive emotional expression and higher negative emotional expression.

Having poor sleep heightens our feelings of loneliness which results in us wanting to steer away from people and a rise in anxiety levels.

In addition to that, having poor sleep amplifies the parts of the brain that signals our threat responses and fear.

Sleep-induced loneliness is contagious and may lead to a greater emotional distancing between partners, so if you want a solid relationship, get good sleep!