Huffington Post

I feel bad for marital communication because it gets blamed for everything. For generations, in survey after survey, couples have rated marital communication as the number one problem in marriage. It’s not.

Marital communication is getting a bad rap. It’s like the kid who fights back on the playground. The playground supervisors hear a commotion and turn their heads just in time to see his retaliation. He didn’t create the problem; he was reacting to the problem. But he’s the one who gets caught, so he’s sent off to the principal’s office. Or, in the case of marital communication, the therapist’s office.

I feel bad for marital communication, because everyone gangs upon him, when the truth is, on the playground of marriage, he’s just reacting to one of the other troublemakers who started the fight:

1. We marry people because we like who they are.

2. Marriage doesn’t take away our loneliness.

3. Shame baggage.

4. Ego wins.

5. Life is messy and marriage is life.

6. Empathy is hard.

7. We care more about our children than about the one who helped us make them.

8. The hidden power struggle.

9. We don’t know how to maintain interest in one thing or one person anymore.

The full article is more than thought-provoking — read it.

But, #7 above is likely the leader of them all — followed at a distant second by #2.

The good news is that more and more authors and thinkers are waking and realizing that we truly have replaced the faiths of our fathers with a religion of parenthood.