Some couples are blessed with eternal happiness and an amazing relationship that gets stronger day by day, year by year. But others are just not so lucky, for any of hundreds of possible reasons.

Even though their relationship can start out great, they slowly start arguing and often grow apart until they’re downright miserable being together. Counseling can frequently help them mend their differences, but sometimes even that fails. Yet they stay together in an unhappy relationship because no one wants to think about break up and divorce; because to many, that means they’ve failed.

Often times, these unhappy people meet other unhappy people in a similar situation, and start an extramarital relationship, a.k.a. an affair. And no, it’s not always just about sex. Many times, an affair serves to fill an empty emotional void.

I don’t know if you’ve kept up with the news surrounding the mass murder of a family over the weekend in Delaware Wisconsin, it turns out that this was a murder suicide. The local police are suspecting the father was jealously enraged and shot his wife, his 6 month old twin boys, his sister-in-law and a friend. They also found a 2 year old girl in the family’s minivan with a gunshot to her chest.

Can you imagine? Almost a whole family just gone because some stupid dodo decides to kill everyone over a jealous rage. What is this world coming to? With so much violence around us, wouldn’t you think that a parent’s instinct should be to try to protect their children from the big bad wolf? This person who did this is so selfish, he can’t see beyond his ass. That there are other people in this world that matters and that it is not always about him.

Some women have a knack for bouncing back from a bad breakup. It seems they give themselves a day or two to mourn the loss of the relationship before hitting the dating scene with gusto. Then they never look back. Their motto: Nothing helps you get over the last guy like the next guy.

Unfortunately, many women can’t shake a lost love because they’re unwilling to accept that the relationship is over. They replay old conversations in their heads. They obsess over what they should have done to avoid the breakup. They arrange to bump into the guy and convince him he’s made a mistake. They fantasize about him constantly. They believe that he’s “the one,” and that the relationship was “meant to be.” They fear that if they let go emotionally, they’ll have thrown away their shot at true love.