Almost all problems in human relationships come from 3rd parties.
Whether it is infidelity, fraud, drugs, fights, or any other vice, the seeds are planted by 3rd parties.
The timeless advice has always been, if your relationship is to remain sacred, exclude 3rd parties.
It is also the most difficult advice to follow, because when it gets difficult to communicate with your partner, you will try to satisfy the need to communicate, by sharing with a 3rd party. That is when conflicting words and emotions get planted.
Some people suggest therapy (an expensive 3rd party service) as a solution. It is hard to bash therapy, because it has helped so many people. My challenge is, how many people go on therapy and move on in life without therapy? In most cases, therapy becomes another addiction and the therapist does not mind, because that is the unwritten incentive for the profession – returning clients.
Please by all means, get help, if all communication fails between you and a partner. Whether that help is from a therapist, a priest, a sponsor, a mentor, a parent, a friend or a trusted confidant.
Get help if you can no longer communicate with your partner, but you do not want to let go of the relationship.
However, 3rd parties always bring and unearth more problems than solutions. Not all relationships need to remain till death. That is the truth. There is nothing wrong with ending a relationship, moving on or having a significant change in the type of relationship you are having.
Communication is a fantastic cue to help you see that it is time to let go and grow, sometimes painfully so.
Take teenagers for example, a cue for most teenagers to leave home and find independence is a breakdown in communication between them and their guardians. Love is not lost, but communication has become so fractured, that only moving out really helps to heal the relationship. Not in all cases, but quite often, bringing in a 3rd party only makes things worse.
In Organisations, when there is a breakdown in communication between co-founders, usually it is time for one of them to move on. Therapy and advisers just do not work most times. There are instances where the 3rd party in a major financier and they are able to broker temporary peace, but ultimately, a co-founder will have to go.
Even in music groups, the same thing plays out. I remember fondly, the protracted infighting before the total collapse of the partnership called P-Square. 3rd parties were central to their feud and Glo, their major sponsor, tried to broker peace for a while. Ultimately with a total breakdown in communication, they just had to split. They might come back again later, but at that time, being separated was best for their survival and growth.
Marriage is a little bit tricky, so I will leave that on the table for another day.
– Osasu Oviawe