Brody,
Lack of/poor sleep/insomnia can pretty much wreck every part of one's life--certainly human relationships. Some basic anatomy/functional explanation of the effects of sleep loss go something like this:
Believe it or not, despite running literally *thousands* of tests, the only human function that suffers from lack of sleep is the ability to focus or concentrate*. I put a little asterisk at the end of the sentence, because the ability to concentrate then affects virtually every other human function and therefore lack of sleep worsens virtually every human function but in a slightly indirect way.
With regards to mood/cognition/emotions/etc., our frontal lobe (especially the prefrontal cortex) serves in part as a sort of switchboard that automatically bats down emotional impulses. For instance, if you were told to *NOT* hit the person directly next to you, then the very first thought that enters your mind is "Hit the person next to me." Of course, that is a bad idea and the frontal lobe immediately shuts off that impulse, you just sit there and the person next to you is none the wiser that momentarily you were thinking about hitting them.
But when we are sleep deprived, our frontal lobes don't do this job so well or automatically. We can still shut down the impulse, but it takes a more concentrated effort, and sometimes when we are concentrating on shutting down one impulse, another might slip through. With regards to mood and emotion, our frontal lobes are constantly shutting off impulses that are situationally inappropriate. If we are happy and some angry impulse enters our mind (hit the person next to you), we shut that off and we keep being happy. But when we have to constantly *WORK* to shut these off, other impulses slip through. What others perceive is that we are moody, we snap easily, lose tempers and get emotionally impulsive.
So good for you that you found the mold and the two of you are getting better sleep!
Eric
