I'm gonna have to advise you before reading the rest of this post that you may find some of what I write herein to be triggering and upsetting. Some of the points I will discuss might come across as an attack on women. Some of what I discuss below will be about frustration and downright anger. Please understand that I'm making some observations and sharing some encounters. I will be as objective as one can be while processing subjective experiences. Again, this is something that will be difficult for me to share as well as difficult for some of you to digest. If you're very sensitive to things like PTSD, relationship issues and emotional turmoil, turn back now. If you proceed, do so with an open mind and heart.

Side note - I wanted to make a post about this on social media but I am worried that some of my real life friends may take it far too personal. Which is one reason why I love using Hive since I know most of my friends don't follow me here. It may be hypocritical of me to want to discuss something so important and not share it directly to some of the people whom I am complaining about but I sometimes feel it is better to bite your tongue and maintain friendships.

The first point I want to bring up is communication. First let's take a look at what this word means. The root word is communicate. The main definition in the English dictionary is to impart knowledge of or make known. Which basically means to share information you have with another or others. It is not just information we share however. We can transmit our moods and feelings even without using spoken language. We can detect ones energy via body language, facial expression and, when using verbal language, we also utilize tonality and inflection to denote how we are feeling. Without saying it explicitly, we can show we are happy, sad, angry, afraid, confused, inquisitive, playful, flirty, annoyed, aggravated, elated and any other emotion I have not thought of. Communication is perhaps the most crucial aspect of our interaction with others. We cannot expect anyone to read our minds. And while we engage in nonverbal communication, we also cannot expect that everyone around us will automatically comprehend our thoughts simply by displaying our emotions. The two things often go hand in hand.

Now comes the complaint that might lead some of you to believe I have taken issue with the opposite sex. Of course, most of us will agree there has been a battle of the sexes raging for a long time. Many movies and books have addressed the issue. We can find hundreds, perhaps thousands, of magazine articles on the subject. There may be at least one television show per day on the matter. And, while we can see it as a modern day societal construct and believe it is artificially created and exacerbated by our circumstances and conditions, there must be something to it. And I will say this, I have friends engaged in same-sex relationships who seem to have similar issues as the heterosexual couples I've observed. So maybe it's nothing to do with biological sex. I really don't know. All I can relate to is my own experiences and observations.

One of the biggest problems my wife and I have had in recent years is our living arrangements. When we became unable to afford our apartment in NJ several years ago we wound up moving in with another couple with kids around the same age as ours. The husband was a friend of mine for many years. He reached out to me when he heard about our situation and suggested we might want to become roommates since he and his wife were moving to a large property to start a homestead and cannabis farm. To make a long story short, we lived with them for just under a year. Besides the fact that his business savvy was greatly lacking, there were other issues my wife and I had with his lifestyle. He was very messy, disorganized and downright dirty. This wasn't the biggest problem however.

Something else became quite painfully evident. He had ZERO communication with his wife. We had an agreement with him to share a property, a house, responsibilities and run a business together. He had asked us to teach him some of the sustainable practices we were implementing in our lives such as zero waste and consuming a healthy diet. He made it seem as though his wife was interested in participating in this endeavor from soup to nuts. After a short while we began to understand that she had no desire to play along. Not only did she not want to partake in our endeavors, she was not even aware of any such arrangements. Her husband had no included her in our conversations and had not clued her into our ideas and plans. I do not believe it was something he did with deliberate malicious intent, it seemed they just did not communicate openly as a couple. We had no way of knowing this until we immersed ourselves in their daily lives and them in ours.

This caused a tremendous amount of turmoil for us, needless to say. We were able to see first hand how a married couple can live under the same roof, raise children together, share every meal, share a budget and expenses, yet have absolutely no idea what the other is thinking, felling or desires. There was never an open dialogue about their individual dreams, wishes, hopes or even fears for that matter. Everyday was just wake up, go to work, pay the bills, eat dinner, go to bed, repeat. It's as if their daily routines were on autopilot and there was never any moments of collaboration or cooperation. He mowed the grass, she washed the dishes, he smoked weed, she watched TV, he had friends over, she went out. My wife and I had never understood what the conventional marriage was like until then. That's not to say that we believe every couple behaves this way, there must be exceptions to the rule; the thing is, we haven't seen much else.

Since then, we have been hyper aware every time we share space and time with other couples, married or not, with or without kids. We love our friends and we enjoy engaging in fun activities with them, but it's quite disturbing to see how little they communicate and just how little the actually have in common and how little the have open dialogue. My wife and I talk about this a lot. It's very troublesome, especially when their lack of communication winds up having an impact on our lives. This has cost us heartache, headaches, time and money. It's really too much to get into every situation which has arose in detail for one blog post. I will, at a later date, revisit this and share several other experiences we've had with other couples which have taken their emotional toll on us.

The biggest thing we've noted and hae not been able to wrap our head around is how it seems to be, in these situations, the husband or boyfriend will want to do something, for example, have us as guests for a weekend. But he would not exactly communicate what his and our plans were to his wife or girlfriend. We would get there on a Friday with plans to stay for the weekend. Then Saturday night the wife/gf wonder why the hell we haven't left yet. There we are stuck in the middle of a dispute which ultimately has nothing to do with us but causes us to have to observe and experience their upheaval as they bicker, argue and fight due to a lack of communication on the part of the husband/bf, or so we are forced to assume. Maybe he did communicate and she forgot, or wasn't listening. We really aren't sure. Of course, this is a hypothetical scenario but not far off from things which have occurred.

None of this is to say that my wife and I have the perfect relationship with no faults. We often have our own communication breakdowns. However, we make a concerted effort to keep each other in the know and make our plans together. We're also very careful to not allow our mishaps to impact others in any serious manner. We believe our problems should be ours alone. We may reach out for help if/when we need to, which allows people to decide for themselves whether or not they want o involve themselves in our situations on a case by case basis. As I stated above, these are our subjective experiences and observations. It's not a judgement, although it is a complaint. It is perhaps a criticism, although we understand that we can only lead by example. And we may not be the best example at all times. I just felt the need to express something that we often find aggravating and upsetting. We've had to do a lot of work to maintain our relationship over the years. We would love to see other couples make an effort to communicate better.