How underrated is communication?

I learned with great sadness the other day that a dear friend and his wife have separated and are proceeding to divorce. What I heard about the problems and misunderstandings that precipitated this split indicated a total breakdown of communication. It breaks my heart.

Another friend, whose marriage broke up years ago, told me he didn't even know why his wife wanted out. He had never been able to understand her rationale.

That's just not right.

And yet I have to look at how I have perpetuated communication problems in my own marriage(s).

In my own defense, I grew up in a family that didn't talk. Birds and bees? My mother handed me a book. (She was a nurse and my daddy was a doctor—That's the best you can do? A book?) Relationships? Marriage? Manners? How to get along in the world? Nope. No communication. Politics? Not on your life!

We talked about cars and boats. We told anecdotes of things our friends had done and said. I think that's about all. In my family, on the rare occasions there were five of us around the dinner table, there were five conversations monologues taking place.

When I was in college and wanted to tell my parents something, I would write a letter to Daddy at the office and Mother at home.

It's no wonder I never learned to communicate.

I was so brutally unhappy in my first marriage, but it never occurred to me to say to my husband, "You can't treat me this way. You can't keep tearing me down. I am not the P.O.S. you're trying to convince me I am." When I finally left, after ten years of misery, all I could find to say to him to drive the nail into the coffin was, "I've never loved you."

Brilliant, huh? Nobody learns anything from a statement like that.

So my heart goes out to my friend, who is now separated from his two beautiful young daughters, who has had to turn his life upside down and try to find ground on which to stand again.

All because a man and a woman left meaningful words unsaid.