"It's the only time we get together"

For people who live with a partner, the late stretch often isn't solitary. It's the two of you on the sofa after the house has gone quiet. All day you've passed each other with bags and children and lists. This is the only time you sit in the same room with nothing to do. Going to bed at ten can feel like giving up on the relationship in favour of sleep.

I take this one seriously, because time together is a real need too, and couples who get none drift. If the choice really were between a rested marriage with no contact and a tired one with some, I wouldn't be sure which to pick.

Look at what the time together consists of, though, the same way chapter 4 looked at time alone. For many couples it's the same programme watched from two ends of a sofa, each with a phone, both too tired to talk. That has some value. Being in a room with someone you love isn't nothing. But it's thin, and both of you are paying full price for it the next day. Two tired people are also shorter with each other. Some of the distance that the late evenings are meant to repair is caused by them.

There's a second pattern that's worth naming. One of you would go to bed at ten and stays up to keep the other company. Or one goes up and lies awake half listening for the other. Bedtimes in a couple are rarely independent. If one person is reading this book and the other isn't, the late stretch may be more the other person's habit than yours.

So this chapter's suggestion is a conversation, held at a sensible hour. It has two parts. The first is to say plainly what each of you wants from the evening. You may find that you both want more sleep and that each has been staying up for the other. The second is to move your time together earlier and make it better, as chapter 11 does for time alone. Half an hour at half past eight with the television off and the phones in another room is more contact than two hours of parallel scrolling. Eating together after the children are down, now and then, does more still. So does going up at the same time and talking for ten minutes in the dark.

You might say that your partner is a night owl and won't change. That may be so, and you can't go to bed for them. You can decide what you do. Going up at your own tired point, without resentment and without a lecture, is allowed. It helps to agree on it beforehand so it isn't read as a rejection. "I'm going to start going up when I'm tired. It isn't about you. Can we have the first half hour after the kids are down instead?" Many partners will be relieved.

The chosen late nights in chapter 13 fit well here. A Friday when you both stay up on purpose, with a film and something nice to eat, is a better evening together than five accidental midnights.