There's a tradition in many societies to encourage selflessness and devotion to the needs of others before our own. It's a fine tradition and it beats selfishness hands-down. But it can go too far.

Many are the relationships where one partner gives far more than the other, or where each gives, but not in the way the other needs to receive. For some, this can be sustained year after year, almost forever, and 'I mustn't complain' becomes a habitual refrain - while all the time the urge to complain is contained inside, 'internalised'. 

It's like the build-up of pressure inside a volcano - invisible from the outside, with minor tremors being missed or ignored - until it just can't be contained any longer and the explosion, when it comes, seems out of all proportion; the devastation shocking and permanent.

Just as magma can't be forced back into the volcano, but lies all around as permanent evidence, so the resentment, once released, can't be ignored but is there for all to see. And it can be pretty ugly.  

So, how can we avoid these unhappy events in our own lives? 

Sometimes we can't, and it's a hard lesson painfully learned when our own explosion or our partner's wreaks its havoc and destruction upon our relationship and maybe our whole lives.  

It can be triggered by the smallest thing. But often, just as another seismic event may set off a volcano's outburst, so a similarly major event in our own lives may have consequences far beyond what one partner will think is reasonable.  

How many marriages end when the children leave home, for example? Or after the death of a loved one? There's more to it than the old adage of 'staying together for the kids'. In truth, it's more likely to be the quite reasonable outpouring of another emotion that unblocks the previously quiescent volcano of repressed resentment. 

And, in cases where such emotional release is never accomplished, it may be our bodies that break down instead. Stress is a major cause of heart disease, hypertension and lowered immune response. It can contribute to and exacerbate just about any physical disease you can name, and slow the recovery process after surgery or illness. 

Armed with that knowledge, though, whether gained through experience or observation, we can help ourselves, and our loved ones, just by acknowledging the minor resentments before they become major ones, and vent them before the pressure becomes uncontrollable and the outpouring unmanageable. 

We must talk, and listen, all the while accepting that what others perceive to be the truth is the truth for them. If our love for them isn't expressed in a way that they are able or happy to receive it we must find another way to tell them. And they must do the same for us. If the love is simply not there, we must acknowledge that, too.  

And if the explosion still seems inevitable, despite everything, it's always far better to permit a controlled explosion, with casualties kept to a minimum, than trying to keep an unsustainable lid on a volcano.