Does the love of your life wake you up in the middle of the night to warm food or is he/she under the weather? Well, your partner’s personality, habits and state of his or her health can have surprising effects on your own well-being
- Being woken up affects your restorative sleep
Sleep is an important part of health and well-being, but many people don’t get enough or recognise how essential it really is. One has to sleep well for a solid four to six hours for a growth hormone to be released and for the body to start repairing itself. So, waking up all the time doesn’t help one at all.
If you’re consistently being woken up by your partner moving around, getting up early, or climbing into bed late at night, you might not be getting enough restorative sleep, which, over time, can take a toll on your health.
- Caring for a sick partner can take a toll on your health
At some point over the course of your relationship, you’ll likely need to provide support and care to your partner due to an injury, illness, or other health condition. This kind of disruption can be emotionally horrible and physically gruelling.
You may have to lift the person, assist them with going to the bathroom, help them eat or dress or just get outside for some fresh air. Coordinating appointments along with home and relationship responsibilities can also put stress and some strain on the partner taking all of this on.
- One’s sex life impacts on the spouse
Anything in one partner’s life that affects sex certainly affects both partners. For example, one such issue that is characteristic of both menopause and postpartum life is vaginal dryness. Vaginal dryness can cause painful sex, which often leads a steep decrease in sexual intimacy.
Additionally, if one partner doesn’t feel comfortable having sex often, that can affect a couple’s sex life, as well. Not only that, but some medications can affect one partner’s libido, which, of course, can affect intimacy between the two of them. Birth control pills, antidepressants, and some antihypertensive medications can all negatively affect libido.
- A pregnant wife, an expectant man
While, typically, only one partner becomes pregnant, the experience affects the other partner’s health too. A lot of men report they gain weight, especially when their expectant partner start eating more and often. Also, men feel a little left out, stressed or worried if there’s a problem in the pregnancy or are just concerned about the future of the family.
Additionally, sometimes there are things that a pregnant partner would no longer be able to do, which the other partner would have to take on for the duration of the pregnancy and perhaps also during that “fourth” postpartum trimester.
- Smoking one too many dangers
If you both smoke, but one of you is trying to quit, the fact that the other smokes might make it more difficult for you to successfully quit. Smoking exposes one to second-hand smoke. So even if you think your health will be completely unaffected because you are not doing the smoking, there still might be enough smoke around to seriously impact your health.
- Drinking is a family burden
Whether it’s due to the side effects of their addiction or because you’ve picked up the habit as well, your partner’s drinking or addiction to drugs all impact you too.
- On a strict diet? Watch your partner
If your wife is on a gluten-free diet and you two always eat dinner together, chances are most of your dinners will be gluten free as well.
If your partner isn’t cohesive with you in terms of eating habits, especially when you feel a little bit off and you have junk food around the house, you’re just much more likely to kind of break down and eat a bunch of junk.
Is it that person’s fault? Of course not, but if they’re not keeping up with your strict diet rules, you might feel like you can give yourself a little bit more leeway from time to time as well.
- Shared infections
Whether it’s sexually transmitted infections, a cold or flu virus, stomach flu, pneumonia or cold sores, any contagious infection that your partner comes down with can ultimately affect your health as well.
- Exercise strains
Whether you work out with your partner or not, they can still have a significant effect on your exercise regime. For instance, if you prefer to work out in the morning and your partner is kind of grumpy with you getting up early and don’t like being disturbed, that’s going to affect your schedule, as well.
Plus, if you wake them up when you get out of bed for an early-morning workout, you affect their sleep, which can negatively affect their health.
- Stress awakens your spouse’s fight hormone
If you are dealing with a partner’s stress issues, this can stress you as well. When you’re stressed, your body releases cortisol, a fight or flight hormone. It causes your blood sugar to spike so that you can spring into action.
Short term, it’s an important survival mechanism, but if you’re stressed for an extended period of time, your blood sugar will be continually elevated. Say you eat relatively healthy yet your body releases a huge amount of stress hormones, the result would be as if you ate candy all the time because the blood sugar would be through the roof.