A friend recently shared the transcript of a Stanford professor’s CS142 class lecture on maintaining relationships that resonated with me.

The gist of the lecture was that the ending of many relationships often can be traced back to a compendium of small slights (paper cuts, if you will) that seemingly add up over time (whether we think they do or not); the professor posits on how much better we could all do in maintaining long term relationships if we focused on communication.

I, being married for some 23 years, could not agree more. It’s rarely the big things that are the root cause of relationships ending, but a series of small slights which fester and brew and turn into an infection of unhappiness. And so it’s not until things boil over and we get into a direct conflict that forces communication, and depending on how well we manage emotion, we may not ever realize those scars which were underlying to cause the implosion.

In any case, I thought this was worth your time.

Link: https://gist.github.com/gtallen1187/27a585fcf36d6e657db2