Communication is essential to the expression of love and indeed to life itself. Where there is love, there must be communication, because love can never be passive and inactive. Love inevitably expresses itself and moves out toward others. When communication breaks down, love is blocked and its energy will turn to resentment and hostility. One of the greatest of tragedies occurs when the partners of a relationship break off their communication with each other. Without communication, the possibilities for a relationship become hopeless, the resources of the partners for the relationship are no longer available, the means for healing the hurts that previous communication may have caused are no longer present; and each, when he recovers from his need to justify himself and hurt the other, will find himself in a bottomless pit of loneliness from which he cannot be pulled except by the ropes of communication, which may or may not be capable of pulling him out again because of their weakened condition. Many of us know what it means to be in a foreign country where we cannot speak the language, but the loneliness of that condition is as nothing compared to the loneliness that is the product of an alienation that has been produced by either irresponsible use of the means of communication or a willful refusal to employ them. If there is any one indispensable insight with which a young married couple should begin their life together, it is that they should try to keep open, at all cost, the lines of communication between them. Everyone needs and should have premarital counseling, if only to help them to this all important insight. Here is a place where the church's ministry needs to be strengthened, since so many people turn to the church to have their marriages solemnized. Before each marriage is performed, the minister should meet with the couple and help them prepare for the relationship, and he should include in that preparation the guidance that will help them to understand how indispensably important to its preservation, and, therefore, to their life together, are all the means of communication between them. Fortunately, more and more ministers are assuming this responsibility; and fortunately, also, more and more seminaries are providing instructions that teach ministers how to minister helpfully at this strategically important time. But much more needs to be done. Many marital breakdowns due to failure of communication could be alleviated, if not prevented, by giving young couples assistance when they are beginning their life together.