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Science has proved that you should never go to bed angry with your partner

It is perhaps a bit of an old wive’s tale but now science has found evidence to show that you should never go to bed angry.

The established thinking is that any bad feelings you might have after an argument with your partner will fester into resentment unless they are resolved before you go to sleep.

Now a study, published in the Nature Communications journal, has seemingly proved that negative emotions are reorganised by the brain during sleep – making any associations they have harder to suppress in the future.

Lead researcher Yunzhe Liu from the Beijing Normal University said: “In our opinion, yes, there is certain merit in this age-old advice.

Bad vibes: Scientists advise settling arguments before going to sleep (Getty/posed by models)
Bad vibes: Scientists advise settling arguments before going to sleep (Getty/posed by models)

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“We would suggest to first resolve argument before going to bed; don’t sleep on your anger.”

The study tested how men reacted to unsettling images after being encouraged to either think of the pictures or actively avoid thinking about them before and after a night’s sleep.

MRI scans showed that the men who slept before recalling the images had a harder time recalling them and unpicking them – meaning they had become more distributed across the brain.

The authors are hoping that the findings could help treat people who suffer from conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder.

Top pic: Getty/posed by models