No 26.

Why won’t you talk to me?
You never talk to me.
What are you thinking?
What are you feeling?
Song: Keep Talking
Album: The Division Bell

Personal relationships, whether we are talking about between friends, family, colleagues or lovers can be based on many things; a shared love of football, great sex, the bond of brother- (or sister) hood etc. An equally great number of things can sustain such relationships but if there’s one thing that will eat away at a relationship and eventually break it down completely it’s a lack of good communication.

If you don’t talk about the things that affect the relationship then pretty soon you’ll find that you’re getting more and more irritated about little things. You know, like the way your girlfriend cooks your sprouts or the fact that your husband never changes the loo roll. It won't be long before you enter the realms of not saying anything at all rather than something you know you’ll regret. Carry on not talking and you’ll quickly be on the road to Break-up City. When you get there it will be messy divorces, the painful dividing of the CD collection and a one-way ticket to Singleville.

Surely, if you’d known at the beginning that just by telling her then that you like your sprouts mushy you would not only have avoided all that heartache and pain but probably also have improved the quality of the relationship as well, you’d have done it without a second thought.

So take it from me, it’s far better to talk about something early on, despite how difficult it may seem at the time, than to leave it to fester and allow it to do some real damage. Who knows, you may even improve the relationship by doing so.