Why staying up seems right

Before I argue with the old rule, I want to be fair to it, because it was said to you by people who loved each other and it isn't stupid.

The old rule. Never go to bed on an argument. It's been said in kitchens for a century, and the people who said it usually stayed married, and it feels like the accumulated wisdom of couples who knew something.

Leaving it feels like abandoning it. Getting up mid-row and going upstairs feels like walking out. The argument is a thing the two of you are in together, and one of you leaving it is one of you leaving.

It'll fester. Unfinished things grow. A row left overnight is a row that's had eight hours to set, and the morning will be worse.

The morning's busy. Alarm, children, work. There's no time at eight for a conversation like this. The night is the only time you've got.

You can't sleep anyway. Lying there furious, next to someone furious, isn't sleep. You may as well be downstairs finishing it.

It shows you care. A person who goes to bed in the middle of a row is a person for whom the row doesn't matter. Staying up is the proof that it does.

And resolution is the goal. The whole point of an argument is to get to the other side of it, and the other side is where you're trying to get, and you're nearly there, at half past twelve, if they'd just admit the thing.

There are needs under all of this. To be at peace with the person you share a bed with. Not to leave things broken. To show the row matters. To sleep. Those are good needs and the method later in the book meets every one of them better than the sofa at one does. What I'll show is that the old rule assumes a settlement is available at midnight, and that it isn't, because the two people trying to reach it aren't the two people who could.