In Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Ivan married his sweetheart. Tolstoy wrote, “The preparations for marriage and the first period of married life, with its conjugal caresses, new furniture, new dishes, new linen – the period of his wife’s pregnancy – went very well…”

But then, things began to change. It seemed to Ivan that his wife became moody and irritable. This frustrated Ivan who didn’t enjoy her as much as before. He began to find ways to stay away from home. He found happiness at work. Tolstoy wrote, “To the degree that his wife became more irritable and demanding, Ivan Ilyich increasingly made work the center of his life. He grew more attached to his work and more ambitious than ever. Very soon, within a year after his wedding, Ivan Ilyich realized that married life, though it offered certain conveniences, was in fact a very complex and difficult business…”

Tolstoy wrote an interesting paragraph. “Of married life, Ivan demanded only the conveniences id could provide – dinners at home, a well-run household, a partner in bed, and above all, a veneer of respectability which the public required. As for the rest, he tried to find enjoyment in family life, and if he succeeded, was very grateful, but, if he met with resistance and quarrelsomeness, he immediately withdrew into his separate, entrenched world of work and found pleasure there… Finally all they had left were the rare periods of love in their bed, but those moments did not last long. They were merely little islands at which the couple anchored for a while before setting out again on a sea of veiled hostility.”

The missing link in their marriage, according to Tolstoy, was communication. Ivan and his wife did not sit down and talk through things. When they ran into stress, they drew apart.

As a boy, I used to watch my mother sew. She would take a needle from a pin cushion, cut off a piece of thread, wet an end, roll it in her finger and then tread it through the eye of the needle. She’d stitch two separate pieces of cloth together with that needle and thread until she had a shirt or pair of pants. Communication is the thread and needle of marriages. Without it we are only two separate pieces of cloth – maybe living in the same home, but rarely touching each other. Each meaningful conversation is like a stitch holding us together. This week, let’s talk to each other.

None of us are perfect as individuals – nor are our marriages perfect.  As we work together to maintain our love and a strong marriage, our homes will be a good environment for growing and happy children.