Modern Marriage, Part 3: Things That Ruin Marriages

I feel as though the perfect follow-up to our last entry in this series, Part 2: What Men Think Marriage Will Be Like, is an article exploring all the bad things that happen when your relationship doesn't turn out quite as perfect as you thought it would and the whole thing starts to go haywire.

Also, if you're just jumping in here, see Part 1, where we explain in detail reasons why guys get married in the first place.

Usually it's not any one little thing that will sour the grapes, but rather a combination of a handful of different problems that really does a relationship in.

As a married couple, you are going to constantly face life situations head-on together, and while many of these can be avoided completely and others just come with the territory, all of these that we'll talk about in this article can end up being cause for divorce and should have the kibosh put on them as soon as you observe them.

In Chase's recent article The Key to Nipping Girlfriend Drama in the Bud in LTRs, we found that you can't be non-reactive and turn a blind eye to certain issues like you would early on in relationships. As explained in the article, the landscape changes significantly in a long-term relationship, and at times you actually need to be quite dogged in going about actually getting her to tell you about her concerns or problems in the first place.

Conflict resolution is important. However, conflict prevention is preferred, right? Though at some point there will be situations that either can't or just don't get prevented, so you end up having to deal with them.

As a final note before we get started: There's one really ginormous, obvious problem that I'm not even going to tear into here - and only because it is fairly cut and dry and I think most guys get this - and that is physical abuse. I just do not feel that it is a subject that warrants a copious amount of commentary. It is basically the lowest possible low that can happen in a relationship, far worse even than anything that follows.