Elton John’s Husband David Furnish Reveals Their Marriage Rule After 31 Years Together (Exclusive)

Elton John and his husband David Furnish are “still standing” together for a good reason.

In an exclusive interview with PEOPLE at the Toronto International Film Festival, the filmmaker — who co-directed the documentary about his husband’s life Elton John: Never Too Late alongside R.J. Cutler — opened up about their marriage rule after 31 years together.

“Elton and I’ve never been dishonest with each other,” Furnish, 61, said. “We’ve always talked very openly about our feelings and when we’ve had challenges and things we have to overcome, we always talk it out.”

He added that the longtime couple also “never go to bed on an argument.”

“We always make sure that before we turn in at night, if there’s any kind of hostility in the air or, ‘I’m not speaking to you. Really pissed me off,’ we don’t go to sleep on it,” Furnish explained. “We don’t carry it over the next day.”

That means sometimes staying up until 3 a.m. if they need to “talk it out.”

“I just think that’s all about respecting the relationship,” he said.

John and Furnish initially met in 1993 at a dinner party thrown by a mutual friend where they immediately hit it off. The following day, they went on their very first date.

In December 2005, the couple entered a civil partnership and officially tied the knot nine years later once same-sex marriage became legal in the U.K. They share two children, sons Zachary, 13, and Elijah, 11.

“If you’d had said to me 10 years ago I’d be sitting on your show married to the man I love and have two beautiful children I would have said, ‘You put acid in my drink.’ But life throws you challenges and life throws you curveballs — great curveballs,” the “Tiny Dancer” hitmaker said on The Ellen Degeneres Show in 2016.

In Elton John: Never Too Late, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) on Friday, Sept. 6., John, 77, opened up about how his sons have feared for his death.

“They think about my mortality. They worry about my mortality,” he said in the film,

Added John, “Not so much David, but me.”

According to the “Candle in the Wind” artist, his two sons love him “so they want me to be around forever, [and] I would love to be around forever.”

But John is realistic that he might not be around for every special moment.

“I want to see them have children and get married. I don’t think I’m going to be around for that. Who knows?” John says. “You never know.”

That’s why the music icon considers their “time together” to be “so wonderful and so precious.”

 Elton John: Never Too Late debuts on Disney+ on Dec. 13.