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A recent study has revealed that relationships are likely to suffer and end in divorce if women have a poor night’s rest. The same is not true for men, however. Research conducted at the University Of Pittsburgh’s School Of Medicine, showed that wives who had not slept well the night before reported decreased social harmony the following day, with their husbands reporting identical results. If the husband experienced a poor night’s sleep then there appeared to be not adverse effect to the ‘functionality’ of the marriage, though. Dr Wendy Troxell, the school’s professor, studied the nocturnal activities of thirty five healthy married couples over ten nights with a device known as an actigraph used to record how long it took each individual to fall asleep and how long they slept for. The couples were then asked to note positive marital interactions, such as being praised or supported, and negative interactions, such as being unnecessarily criticised or ignored, in personal diaries. Results not only showed that couples were more likely to experience negative events in their marriages the day after a poor night’s rest, but that these negative events had little effect on the quality of sleep enjoyed that night and that husbands tended to get less sleep after having reported more positive interactions during the day. Prior research conducted by Dr Troxell had found that women who consistently shared their bed with a partner slept better than their single counterparts.