Purpose: Breast cancer (BC) survivors and their intimate partners face several adverse consequences from the cancer experience, including sleep disturbance, which is a common side effect of BC and its treatment. Sleep has been conceptualized and examined as an individual phenomenon despite most adults sharing a bed/room with a partner. Limited research has examined the associations between daily relationship processes and sleep in couples coping with cancer. Using an intensive longitudinal design, the present study examined the daily, within-person links between attempted and perceived partner responsiveness and subjective sleep.
Methods: Immediately following adjuvant treatment, 72 early-stage BC survivors and their intimate partners (144 paired individuals) reported on daily attempted and perceived partner responsiveness each evening and subjective sleep each morning for 21 consecutive days.
Results: Survivor and partner reports of partner responsiveness were associated with their own subjective sleep, such that greater attempted and perceived partner responsiveness were associated with improvements in one's own subjective sleep. Effects of one participant's partner responsiveness on their partner's sleep were not observed.
Conclusions: Findings suggest that among couples coping with early-stage BC, increased partner responsiveness is associated with subsequent improvements in subjective sleep.
Implications for cancer survivors: Sleep disturbance is a serious concern for BC survivors and their intimate partners. Future research should assess intimacy processes as a potential method to improve BC survivor and partner sleep.
Keywords: Breast cancer; Intimacy; Sleep; Survivorship.
© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.