Mending Your Relationship When Snoring Rips You Apart

Snoring is a major cause of couple's unhappiness.

Although in this blog I generally discuss the health consequences of snoring, I’d like to bring to light another serious side effect, which is the devastation snoring can wreak on marriage. Often I meet with married couples in my practice who are at their wits end. Both partners are exhausted…the snorer because of the toll snoring takes on their body, and the spouse whose health is impacted dramatically from their partner’s snoring because of the daytime fatigue brought on by their inability to get a healthy full night’s sleep.

According to a new study by the British Lung Foundation (BLF)¹, loud snoring forces more than a third of couples to sleep in separate beds at night. The foundation polled more than 2,500 adults through an online survey in the United Kingdom this past Spring. Even more drastic for these couples is the fact of the 39% who admit they sleep apart, a full third (33%) claim it has become a permanent sleeping arrangement. Certainly sleeping apart from your significant other all the time can’t be healthy for the relationship. In addition to the noise of snoring creating distance between couples, snoring can also be a factor that leads to sexual dysfunction in men, according to a study² that was reported in The Journal of Sexual Medicine.

When couples feel that snoring is ripping their marriages apart, it is often because they are both tired, irritable and tense. If they have been sleeping separately, most likely their relationship has eroded, and their communication has faltered. Certainly the lack of intimacy—not just physically, but the relaxing interactions between companions such as pillow talk—has worn them down.

How intrusive is snoring in a marriage? In 2006, a study from the Rush University Medical Center in Illinois3 determined that couples have a high divorce rate when the husband snores due to sleep apnea. Sleep apnea is the most serious of the many causes of snoring because it causes the snorer to stop breathing multiple times throughout the night, which can lead to heart and lung issues, high blood pressure and stroke. For years many snorers were reluctant to seek treatment because some of the most common treatments involved cumbersome sleep masks or surgery. Thankfully, today there are a number non-invasive in-office techniques that successfully treat the varied types of snoring such as the Pillar® Procedure, Balloon Sinuplasty™, and more based on the individual cause of your snoring.

Although I’m not a marriage counselor or sex therapist, patients who come to the Manhattan Snoring and Sleep Center are taking a positive step to mend their relationship and hopefully will not become one of the statistics of divorce due to snoring. They are not only mending their relationship, but they are taking control of their health, leading to a more fulfilling life.

My marital advice to snorers? Seek treatment and enjoy getting close to your partner again.

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1. The British Lung Foundation, 14 June 2011, Survey of over UK 2,500 adults aged 16 and over through TNS between 28 April – 3 May 2011, completed online through an OnlineBus.
2. Hanak, V., Jacobson, D. J., McGree, M. E., Sauver, J. S., Lieber, M. M., Olson, E. J., Somers, V. K., Gades, N. M. and Jacobsen, S. J. (2008), ORIGINAL RESEARCH—MEN’S SEXUAL HEALTH: Snoring as a Risk Factor for Sexual Dysfunction in Community Men. The Journal of Sexual Medicine, 5: 898–908. doi: 10.1111/j.1743-6109.2007.00706.x
3. The Sleep Disorders Center at Rush University Medical Center, Illinois: The Married Couples Sleep Study, January 2006