Reciprocal Pathways Between Intimate Partner Violence and Sleep in Men and Women

Toward explicating associations and directionality of effects between relationship processes and a fundamental facet of health, we examined cross-sectional and longitudinal associations between the perpetration of intimate partner violence (IPV) and men and women's sleep. During two assessments, a diverse community sample of couples reported on their perpetrated acts of psychological and physical IPV and their sleep quality. Cross-sectional associations between IPV and sleep were evident for both partners, in particular between psychological IPV and sleep. A dyadic path analysis controlling for the autoregressive effects and within-time correlations revealed longitudinal links between men's perpetration of IPV and their sleep quality. Even though high levels of stability in all IPV and sleep measures were observed over time, results indicated that sleep problems predicted increases in the perpetration of psychological IPV over time for both men and women. Cross-partner effects emerged for men, revealing that men's sleep problems were strongly affected by their partner's earlier perpetration of IPV and sleep difficulties. Findings illustrate the significance of contemporaneous, dyadic assessments of relationship processes and sleep for a better understanding of both facets of adaptation, and have implications for those wishing to understand the etiology and consequences of the perpetration of IPV for both men and women.