How to Stay Together Forever: Advice from Couples Who Split Up.

Most of this I can say is true. As someone who has failed in marriage. Communication is so very important. After we split up, I realized so many things were missing from our relationship that would have brought satisfaction and fulfillment and these things were missing simply due to a lack of communication. Mostly on my part really. I was unhappy in many aspects but couldn’t vocalize it. So I avoided it and how I felt and eventually just started avoiding my husband all together. It wasn’t until after we split that a light bulb went off in my head and I realized that we were missing not only a physical/sexual connection, but and emotional and intellectually stimulating one as well. All due essentially to a lack of communicating our wants and needs, happiness or unhappiness, feelings. You name it, we didn’t talk about it. Our conversations revolved around running the household, managing his business and our children. That was it. For years.

So unknowingly, I sought these connections out from other sources. I honestly didn’t realize at the time I was missing so many things from my marriage. It took becoming friends with two people at work to make me see this. One was a female coworker who was also having marriage issues. We bonded emotionally over our situations and talked constantly, daily. Inside and outside of work. The other was a young male coworker. We actually had the same birthday and became fast friends because we enjoyed similar music and were on the same level intellectually. Actually, he was smarter than I, he was the smartest man I have ever met. Also the most selfish, emotionally inept and most difficult to communicate with. So I developed my intellectual connection with him, but on an another level he made me feel passionate emotions I hadn’t felt in a long time. And not in the manner you may think….he made me so mad and frustrated sometimes. Because he was so smart he would challenge me on work decisions I made, over and over. And we never agreed on anything and it was overly frustrating. Sometimes he said things that angered me, and vice versa. I hadn’t felt anger or frustration on that level for so long, as my husband and I never ever fought. Like I said, total lack of communication, yes I know, on both our parts.

So, there came a point where I communicated how I felt to my husband. But, it was too late, the damage was done. I pushed him away too far, ignored him too long, went too long without saying how I felt, what I wanted. We were broken. Right at this same time, he met someone else. I truly believe that had he not met this woman, well we would have at least further opened the lines of communication and if not tried to fix our marriage, at least would have gone through the emotions of separating together and finalized things in some way. Instead, the lines of communication closed back up again. They opened a crack, for a short while.