Pulling the sheets off anger

You kiss your wife good night, and she rolls over to the far side of the bed, bunches the pillow under her head, pulls the covers up, and doesn’t move. Is she asleep, or is she sending you a message?

Your husband climbs into bed, and you softly scratch his back. He falls asleep instantly with a smile playing across his lips. Your lower arm has gone numb beneath you. You roll over to get comfortable and accidentally awaken him. “What’s wrong, honey?” he asks. Your “nothing” is so mumbled, he grills you for 20 minutes about why you are upset.

I once heard about a physician who wrote that a couple’s sleeping habits and positioning can reveal a lot about them and their relationship. Of course, any of us might say that when our spouse takes all the covers in the middle of the night, it most certainly reveals a lot about the relationship.

There is no right or wrong way to sleep. The way a couple sleeps may not be indicative of what is going on in the marriage, but then again, it may. A couple may sleep back-to-back or hug the edge of the bed when nothing is wrong at all. However, a back-to-back posture could indicate a lack of closeness or a power struggle. The reverse is true as well: a couple could sleep entwined all night because one is stressed or worried about the lack of intimacy in the relationship. But of all the sleeping positions, there is one that is always “not good”: back-to-back, arms-folded, deep-sighs, angry. Many married couples have singled out anger as the one factor that seriously affects their sleeping positions.

You have heard that it is not good to go to bed angry. Your parents have mentioned it a time or two; your preacher has preached it a time or two. And with good reason. Marriage experts agree that unresolved anger is a killer of relationships. It stands to reason that if a couple goes to bed angry, they will wake up angry and cause unnecessary barking at the dog, children and co-workers. And when anger is kept day after day, it can turn into contempt and erode the marriage relationship.

Gary Smalley said anger is never buried dead; it is always buried alive. So when two people try to ignore or “stuff” their anger by pulling the covers over their heads and sleeping on it, they are setting themselves up for serious damage. While everyone knows they should not go to bed angry, most will admit they still do at times.

What to do? Try this in order to avoid the unhealthy kind of smoldering under the sheets: Make an agreement with your partner.

It is difficult to prevent bedtime anger if only one of you is committed to resolving the conflict. However, the time to discuss or to make your agreement about not going to bed angry is when you are not angry and not about to go to bed. Talk about it now so that later, when you are angry and it is bedtime, the path has already been decided. If you are the only one who wants to agree not to go to bed