When you are angry, you want the other person to know it — you want to shout, to confront, to make them feel the size of your fury in the moment — and every one of those wants works against you.

It warns your opponent.

It shows your hand.

It converts a strong position into a scene, and a scene is a thing that can be spun, denied, blamed on your temper.

Amber had counted on my anger.

The whole glue prank was built to produce it: an old woman humiliated, a family scene, a father shouting at a wedding and looking, for his trouble, like the unstable one.

Had I stormed over and confronted them at the chair, I would have handed them exactly the story they wanted — bitter father ruins the happy day.