The Case for Going to Bed Angry

In any batch of relationship advice, you’re bound to hear one thing consistently:

“Don’t go to bed angry.” 

But is it really the best practice?

As a little disclaimer: if you and your partner have an understanding and a practice around resolving things before bed, that’s awesome! Go you! Keep doing it. This post is not for you. 

So many people get stuck in trying to hash things out before they go to sleep in order to follow this relatively baseless rule. If this is you, here’s an alternative way to think about it.

Everything is worse at night, right? The things that keep us tossing and turning as we try to fall asleep often seem more manageable in daylight hours. For most of us, our energy is lower and our bandwidth more constrained at the end of the day. That doesn’t mean something’s wrong with you; it means you’re human. There’s also less we can actionably do at night, and most of the time, whatever it is can wait until morning. 

When we push ourselves to come to a place of understanding or resolution with a partner at night, we often make things worse because neither person is at their highest functioning. By striving to solve something instead of going to bed angry, we often get angrier because we aren’t getting what we need!

If you and your partner find you often get into conflicts at night and push to resolve them, leading to a bigger mess and more painful feelings:

-Try setting a time during the day or earlier in the evening to talk through whatever is leading to the conflict. You’ll have better access to your tools and much more patience.

-Try committing to going to bed “angry, but loving”. Many times anger feels scary because it feels disconnecting. You can say, “I love you and I’m angry with you, and we will talk about this in the morning.”

-Try each person sitting and writing down individually how you’re feeling so that it isn’t occupying your thoughts as you try to fall asleep. You can read it back in the morning and decide how much of it is still relevant and worth sharing.

If you really hate falling asleep while angry, try some self-soothing, like taking deep breaths or a cold shower. We don’t have control over which emotions arise, but we can take action to try and influence how our emotions move through us.

But trying to work through something before bed just because it’s popular advice? Take the pressure off of yourselves and get a good night’s rest.