Most people are excited about their wedding day. However, the wedding day itself isn’t nearly as important as the years of marriage to follow. If you’re truly committed to being married “for better or for worse,” you need to learn how to communicate appropriately with your significant other. About 20 percent of marriages end in divorce within the first five years of the marriage, and most of these marriages fail because of communications issues. Although financial problems, problems with relatives, and problems in the bedroom are among the top reasons for divorce, the real issue usually has to do with the way the couple communicate about these problems. In my experience as a coach-in-training, people are often afraid to talk about problems because they don’t want to mess up the relationship. I’ve struggled with this as well, and I’ve found that every time I swallow anger, sadness or other negative feelings, I get depressed. Eventually, the feelings come out in a negative or destructive way, leaving me feeling embarrassed and causing unnecessary hurt to people I love. I’ve learned that honesty draws me closer to my significant other as well as allowing me to avoid that entire pattern. In any case, failure to communicate can cause tiny problems to become dealbreakers. For example, if you don’t say anything about your partner’s tendency to leave dishes in the sink, your partner may continue to leave the dishes undone and when you can’t stand it anymore, you might fire off a list of accusations that quickly become an argument. Lack of communication can also lead to partners feeling defensive or picked on if criticized by the other partner, and 93 percent of couples who fight unfairly or attack one another verbally will get divorced within 10 years of marriage. You’ll need to tone up your communication skills to help deal with bigger issues, too. The addition of a new baby into a family, a child going off to college, or a marriage partner changing jobs can cause both partners to become stressed out and then not deal with one another appropriately. Communication is even more important when a couple faces these types of situations; without communication, marriage partners will blow off steam by complaining to other people about one another or get buried in work so that they don’t have to speak to each other. Poor communication causes marriage partners to feel undervalued and unloved, and this in turn can cause partners to forget that they love one another in the first place. Once this shift occurs, partners begin to see one another as enemies and begin fighting each other out of a misplaced sense that their worth as human beings is being threatened. Once the marriage has been derailed in this manner, it’s difficult to get it back on track. Marriages that have deteriorated to this point require intervention from a counselor trained in teaching couples communication skills in order to stop the progression towards divorce. Whether you’re newly married or have been married for a while, you can learn to communicate better with your partner and resolve common problems. As communication skills increase, so will your emotional intimacy. The strength of your bond will keep the marriage from becoming another divorce statistic, regardless of what problems you have to face together.