![\"Illustration](\"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2025\/09\/bed-angry-2.jpg\")
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In Ephesians 4:26, the Apostle Paul advises his readers: \u201cBe ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath.\u201d<\/p>\n
The advice that people drew out of this verse \u2014 that you should never go to bed angry \u2014 became a tenet in the West. The idea wasn\u2019t that anger itself is always sinful (there\u2019s such a thing as righteous anger), but holding onto it \u2014 nursing grudges, letting it harden into bitterness \u2014 is destructive, particularly to the harmony of a spiritual community. Conflicts needed to be resolved quickly, before they took root and caused lasting division.<\/p>\n
The Rule of St. Benedict, a 6th-century guide for monastic life, included the instruction: \u201cmake peace with one\u2019s adversary before sundown.\u201d When the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer founded an underground, monastic-inspired seminary in Nazi Germany<\/a>, he adopted this rule, explaining \u201cthat every dissension that the day has brought must be healed in the evening. It is perilous for the Christian to lie down to sleep with an unreconciled heart. Therefore, it is well that there be a special place for the prayer of brotherly forgiveness in every evening’s devotion, that reconciliation be made and fellowship established anew.\u201d<\/p>\n The admonition to not go to bed angry not only found a place in Christian communities, but also appeared in 19th-century conduct manuals and was frequently offered to married couples. The advice was thought to serve the same purpose in households as in larger fellowships: the preservation of harmony.<\/p>\n These days, couples are often given the opposite advice: don\u2019t feel like you need to iron out a disagreement before retiring for the night; sleep on it, and then continue the discussion in the morning. Given the long history of the \u201cdon\u2019t let the sun set on your wrath\u201d maxim, this approach is often presented as contrarian counsel, but it has actually become the predominate recommendation.<\/p>\n It certainly makes sense: at night, your capacity for emotional self-regulation is tired-out and you\u2019re more prone to losing your cool; in such a state, arguments are more apt to get heated and destructively divisive. In the morning, your mind feels recalibrated and potentially better primed for a peaceable dialogue about the issue at hand.<\/p>\n So what approach is most wise to follow \u2014 the old tradition or the new norm?<\/p>\n Research<\/a> shows that resolving disagreements before sleep significantly reduces the negative emotional \u201cresidue\u201d people carry into the next day, which has a positive effect on overall health and well-being. These studies conclude that it\u2019s better to reconcile sooner rather than later. While what supports your individual well-being isn\u2019t necessarily what benefits your relationship, other studies<\/a> have shown that unresolved tension disrupts sleep, and that poor sleep in turn undermines a couple\u2019s ability to work through conflict. So while it may seem you\u2019ll be in a better place to handle a disagreement the next day, that isn\u2019t necessarily the case. It is in fact often best to wrap up your disputes before you hit the hay.<\/p>\n Of course, if you\u2019re having a particularly intense argument, pushing too hard to resolve it right then and there can lead to hurtful, relationship-damaging outbursts. In such cases, it may indeed be best to take a nocturnal time-out and revisit the issue later. Even if you remain at loggerheads about something, however, try to affirm your overall love and respect for each other before you turn in. Research<\/a> shows that this can go a long way toward getting the kind of restful sleep that will help you interact with a clearer and calmer head in the morning. For example, Kate\u2019s grandparents, no matter how peeved they were feeling when they got into bed, would touch feet under the covers as a sign they still loved each other.<\/p>\n You don\u2019t always have to resolve every disagreement before lights out. Sometimes emotions run too hot, or the issue\u2019s too tangled to tease apart in the haze of fatigue. But ancient tradition and modern research agree: when reconciliation is within reach, it\u2019s better to clear the air before you turn in. You\u2019ll sleep better, not have to wake up alongside your wrath, and get to begin the next day with a harmonious heart.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In Ephesians 4:26, the Apostle Paul advises his readers: \u201cBe ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath.\u201d The advice that people drew out of this verse \u2014 that you should never go to bed angry \u2014 became a tenet in the West. The idea wasn\u2019t that anger itself […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":190709,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[502,42269],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-190653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-character","category-self-improvement"],"featured_image_urls":{"large":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2025\/09\/bed-angry-2-blank-538x280.jpg","aom":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2025\/09\/bed-angry-2-blank-372x230.jpg","reactor-320":"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2025\/09\/bed-angry-2-blank-320x197.jpg"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190653"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":192167,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190653\/revisions\/192167"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190653"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/app-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=190653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}