Like so many of us, Rose Armitage, a 20-year-old from Las Vegas, is a crier during arguments.

It doesn’t matter how well-reasoned her points are or how much of the moral high ground she has, when she and her boyfriend start arguing, the waterworks begin.

“I can’t remember an argument in which I haven’t cried, but then I’m generally a crier,” she told HuffPost. “I cried this morning about a hard math equation. For me, I find that in a fight with my partner, I cry because I care. And sometimes because I don’t feel heard.”

Charles Darwin once declared emotional tears “purposeless,” but as Armitage’s example shows, tears aren’t just cathartic, they serve a purpose, communicating when our words fail. We might cry out of empathy for our partner, shock at hearing about something we’d been oblivious to or anger if another’s argument comes across as accusatory.

As Time magazine science writer Mandy Oaklander put it, “Tears are a signal that others can see.”

It’s a natural response to high-stress moments, but tears can be a pesky thing when they come mid-argument, especially if your partner sees them as a sign of weakness.

“Many partners grow resentful of the crier and feel that it’s a conditioned manipulation to gain control of the disagreement,” Carder Stout, a Los Angeles-area psychotherapist told HuffPost. “The crier also may be judged as emotionally unstable: ‘Why do you always cry? Get it together!’”