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Relationships: one of the most ominous words in the human language. I say this because they are often set up to fail from the start. There are several reasons why a relationship might fail, none are more relevant than the others, it just happens. However, I feel the main reason relationships fail is the inability to communicate with each other. You wouldn't think that is possible these days, what with email and cell phones and text messaging. When it comes down to it, men and women just communicate differently. The trick is getting past that and learning to adapt to each other's communication patterns.

So what do I mean by this? I'll give you some examples.

Husband and wife get up in the morning. Wife is busy getting the kids up for school, making breakfast, packing lunches, and even possibly getting them self ready for work at the same time. Husband gets up in the morning, reads the paper, gets ready for work, eats breakfast and leaves. During breakfast, wife talks about the new person recently hired at her job, going on about this person's attitude, how they dress, their hair, etc etc. Husband nods and grunts and occasional "really?" or "mmm hmmm" from time to time. Husband then starts talking about his job, using technical words and explaining why some things are done the way they are, etc etc etc. Wife tries to follow along, but gets lost in the technical aspects from time to time, and usually interrupts to inquire about so and so they work with and how their new baby, mother, wife is.

Maybe that's a bit too stereotypical, as in todays society, there are many women doing jobs that even as little as 50 years ago would have been utterly unfounded. But the fact remains that women tend to focus on more details about people than men do. How many men do you hear compliment each other on the outfit they wore to work that day, or a new haircut their co-worker has gotten? Not many. For women, that's almost our bread and butter of conversation. Women pay attention to these things, where for men, it's just insignificant on so many levels.

How does this relate to why relationships fail? Because of their differences in how they think, communicate, and interact with others, there are gaps in communication between each other. These patterns tend to fall in with each other as well. A wife will tell her husband if she thinks a certain shirt looks better with a certain suit than the one their husband is wearing, while a man might not even notice what their wife is wearing at all. Relationships might not fail so much if women took less stock in what so and so is doing, saying, etc, and if a man would notice more.

Learn more about this author, Kelly Sandefur.
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