Your gut instinct is there for a reason. It's a hardwired sixth sense in your brain that tells you exactly when something isn't right. It's survival in its most primitive form.

And boy, have we ever evolved. We've learned to ignore that gut instinct, going against everything it whispers to us (and sometimes even what it screams at us), and we've even managed to talk it down, telling ourselves we're being silly.

Or stupid. Or nonsensical. Or whiny. Or melodramatic ... yeah, we're pretty good at tripping our own brains up.

I've read a few posts where the women here have said they can pinpoint that exact moment when they knew something was wrong or when they knew it wasn't going to work out.

And yet, from the stories they've shared, it took everyone a very long time to really realize what our gut instinct already knew. I've had those moments, too.

I knew three months into my first relationship that it wasn't going to be a winner. I stayed for 10 years before calling it what it was: over.

My second relationship was the same — three weeks to fall in love, three months to know it wouldn't last, 10 years to walk out the door.

I think three and 10 might be important numbers for me to keep in mind.

So why is it that we don't pay attention to that automatic gut instinct that is desperately trying to save us from ourselves? Why don't we listen more? Why don't we take a deep breath, look inwards and say, "Alright, buddy, shoot. What have you got to tell me?"

No, we distract ourselves from the reality. We shake it off, think of something else, tell ourselves we're just being silly.

Worse, we let our sixth sense whisper at us, wearing us down mentally while we smile and pretend on the outside. We do bugger-all to change anything about our situation.

I love fairytales. I want a fairytale. I want Prince Charming to find me, romance me with all he's got and propose — and trust me, I won't refuse. (Especially if he looks like a younger Brad Pitt or a gorgeous George Clooney.)

I believe that when you marry, it's forever. It's death do you part. I watched my mother uphold that vow for years while my father died slowly from Alzheimer's disease. And 20 years later, she's still faithful. She never even dated.

That, to me, is marriage.

I suppose that's why I never married in the first place, come to think of it. I didn't want to be stuck forever unless it was Brad Pitt. Make sense?

There's also the fact that in Quebec, about 70% of the population don't marry and live in common-law relationships. When a large group of people who share a culture don't believe in marriage, it's tough to be the outcast and convince your partner marriage is a good thing.

But I did dream about marriage. I wanted the ring. I wanted the white dress, and I wanted it from the beautiful tiny little wedding shop near Parliament Hills in Ottawa.

I'd walked past the store after closing time one evening, and the window had soft lighting on a beautiful, one-of-a-kind handmade medieval dress that had a circle of satin roses around the waist. It was $5,000. I fell in love.

I wanted a church wedding, because I was raised somewhat Catholic and thought that Catholic churches were gloriously magnificent and beautiful. (And because of that death-do-you-part thing I was talking about.)

Then I wanted a barbecue in my back yard. Cheap, easy, and fast. I wanted beer and music. I wanted to ditch the dress and have a party with people I liked.

End of story. That was it. No reception, no horse-drawn carriage, no petal-strewn walkways...just a ring, a dress, a church, and hamburgers. No marriage and no Brad Pitt, either. Oh well. I can still dream about it!

Living apart together... Living together apart.... There are all kinds of ways to make relationships work, whether they're relationships that involve love and affection or relationships built to sustain two people at lower costs than separate houses.

Here's a popular strategy that some couples use in Quebec: The kids get the house. The parents move out.

Of course, not at the same time, because that would leave small Wilbur and precious Joanie to tear up the family home in no time flat.

But what some couples who separate try in order to achieve the least amount of emotional trauma for children is a shared custody arrangement in which the parents are the ones to shift between houses, not the kids.

Here's how it works:

The parents shop for an apartment or second home that they feel they can afford. It has to be a location that both like and feel comfortable living in. They furnish the place and make it viable to live in. Each choose a room to be theirs and set up their personal effects.

Then, one week of two, one of the parents moves out of the main family home into this secondary location. The other parent stays in the family home with the kids. When the week is up, the parent that had moved out moves back into the family home, and the other parent gets a week-long break in the secondary home.

The exchange of household only requires that the parents pack a small bag of personal items. They already have a room set up in either home with clothes in both locations.

The benefits? The kids never have to leave the home they grew to love. They get to stay in one place without suffering an upheaval or leaving behind a house they feel good living in. The kids stay in one familiar location. There's no fear of the unknown, no leaving behind anything and no worries about the future.

My ex and I spend a lot of time talking about other people's relationships and relationships in general. I've noticed that we tend to skim over issues on our own relationship.

He was mentioning that a couple we know tries to create a good impression. In public, they fawn over each other, make eyes, and touch often. In private, there's nothing happening there. It's a sham.

"I'm glad that we're working on us," I smiled into the phone receiver. Lately, things have been quite nice between us.

He gave a manly grunted. "Mmph."

"What? Don't you think so?" I explained how we'd been happy, that we were getting along well and we seemed to be a stronger couple (if we can be a couple without living together).

"Ach, let things be." I could almost feel the brush off through the phone lines.

I know why he's upset. We both want the same thing: we want to be closer. He's said as much and so have I. We want to touch more; we want to be affectionate with each other. We want a deeper relationship.

And yet, we're so damned scared of each other, so damned worried that we'll get hurt that we tend to be overly cautious. I'm scared of giving too much and getting hurt when he goes cold. He's scared of letting himself feel emotion.

I have a feeling that we'll end up dancing around the root of the matter for years to come. Living together for so long, having a child and then separating permanently shook us both up badly. Creating the relationship we have now took some savvy navigation, too.

Throw it all to the wind and fall in love again? We'd probably both like to do that. But we're too scared because we've been there, done that and gotten badly hurt.

Find someone new and start over? Neither of us have interest in that. Sure, we want to know that at middle-age, we're desirable, but we don't want a new person in the mix.

No, next week was not better. Next week was far too long for a little girl missing her daddy. I pointed that out. 

"Aw, don't make me feel guilty. I really don't want to feel guilty about this. I need time to do my own things and..." 

When you separate and you have children, be prepared. Be prepared to be the one who has to explain, gently, why we can't go see Daddy. Or why Daddy doesn't come have supper more often. Or why daddy has to leave to go home. 

Despite being used to this, despite knowing all the right words and the proper how-tos, I still feel the pain of having to disappoint a child when Dad just doesn't want to be a dad. 

Does it make me mad? Sure. Sure it does. Fathers should be there for their kids — all the time. 

What makes this such a hot issue when a couple splits up, though? I know married couples that live together and the father works 70 hours a week. He barely sees his kids. I know mothers too wrapped up in their own lives to care for their kids. 

When a couple splits up, why do people suddenly get all upset if dad doesn't want the kids for a day or a week? What changed beyond the situation before? 

I don't begrudge my ex his need for time on his own. No one should have to have their weeks full of work and responsibilities with no spare time left to relax and do what they want.

There's compromise, too. My girl wants to see her dad. Dad wants to be alone for a while. "How about if we come at 3 and just stay for a few hours? You have time to do your stuff and she'll be happy to see you."

I cut my hair this week. Well, I didn't cut it — I had a hairdresser do the job.

I don't have very long hair. I used to, though. It hung to the middle of my back in all its curly glory. But the long shape of my face combined with the long, curly hair gave the impression of a cocker spaniel, floppy ears and all.

So I cut my hair short — very short. The two-inch brown stuff that was left looked funky and fun. Well, it would have, had I had the small, heart-shaped face required to pull off a pixie cut like that.

I ended up with a hairstyle somewhere in the middle, a length above my shoulders but below my jaw line.

"Short," I said firmly to the hairdresser this week. "Fun. Funky. Flou," I waved my hands about, trying to convey a messy yet charming hairstyle that would make me look young and wild.

And there's the catch: I want to look young and wild. I want to look like a free spirit full of confidence and sassy attitude. I want to have it goin' on, girlfriend.

I don't want to look middle-aged and run down. I don't want to look tired anymore. I want to find some way to attract attention and make myself look appealing.

I want men to look at me.

I don't even necessarily want a man. I have one. He's a little screwed up and we fight sometimes, but hey. I still have feelings for the guy and we have a history. We're working on it.

But I want to know that I'm still attractive, used goods and all. I want to know that my life isn't over, that I could still turn heads and get a man if I wanted one. I want to be desirable — not just to one man, but to many.

I think I want to know that I'm still worth a second glance and that if my ex and I do decide that we just can't make it work, that I won't be alone.

"You cut your hair." My ex examined the shorter, sassier mess of curls. "I liked it better longer."

I always wanted a ring. It didn't have to be fancy. It didn't have to have diamonds or cost a fortune. I just wanted the symbolic gift of something I could hold in my hand.

I did get a ring, once. My first ex proposed with a ring he'd bought on my credit card. Since I paid for the thing, I kept it, even after we split up. It'll make a nice memento for my daughter one day.

But I never got a ring from my second ex. I'd asked, too. Nothing. I wonder why that is. Did he fear the commitment a ring symbolized? Did a ring carry less meaning and thus was often forgotten?

I gave my ex a ring for his birthday last year. I'm not sure why I did; it clearly meant more to me than to him, but they say that the best gifts are those that come from the heart. It was a silver worry ring with an endless braid running around it.

He seemed to enjoy it. He wore it that weekend at a fishing trip, making sure to place his hand in the light to attempt drawing attention. When people didn't really notice, he made sure they did and proudly (and charmingly shyly) mentioned I'd given it to him.

But he didn't wear the ring all the time. His job involves a lot of dirt, and he'd take the ring off to keep it both clean and safe so that he didn't accidentally lose it.

Murphy's law. Sure enough...

"I can't find the ring you gave me," he mentioned this weekend. He'd looked everywhere. He didn't look frantic as he shared the news, though, just a little puzzled.

I have to admit that I was hurt. I guess that ring meant more to me than I realized. I did want to be married one day. I did want someone to commit to me forever. I did want someone to care about me that much that the person would take the steps to be a solid couple.

I wanted the Cinderella story. What I got was everyday real life. Oh well.

"It'll turn up somewhere," I said.

My ex and I went to see a show together recently. We do that. We date, we see each other, and then we each go to our respective homes. We had a great time, too.

While we were at the show, we met a friend of ours — and he had a new girlfriend with him. She couldn't have been more than 20, and he was in his late 30s. More power to him, I say.

The next day, though, my ex and I were discussing how young the girl was and how we felt about people who date younger people. I expressed a little bit of surprise at the difference in ages between our friend and his girlfriend. My ex pointed out there was 10 years' difference between us. Nothing wrong with that.

Then he said, "The problem isn't that people date younger people. The problem is that no one seems to be able to keep a girlfriend. Why is that?"

He was right. Men in our area who divorce do try to find new relationships. None of them stick. They find a woman and a few months later, they're with someone new. They can't seem to find a stable relationship that lasts.

"I admire us, you know," he went on thoughtfully. He said that despite our history, our breakup, and the fact that we don't live together any more, we're mature enough to work at keeping our relationship alive because we love each other.

We talk. We find ways around our differences. We're learning what works and what doesn't. We're each trying to find a way to be a couple, no matter how hard it is sometimes.

Being a couple is work. A relationship isn't a discardable commodity when people have differences. They find solutions if they want to be together. They work out their issues. They talk. They resolve the problems.

There's nothing wrong with playing the field, either. But to me, that just shows someone isn't serious about commitment or hasn't figured out what's important to them.

I wrote about a couple facing a breakup because of an affair, and it seems that affairs are hot topics on divorce sites — um, as they should be.

I don't think having an affair is a "right" thing to do. I think it is a surmountable obstacle and one that couples can overcome. I don't believe that an affair is a henchman's axe dropping down to sever relationships completely. An affair doesn't always mean that someone doesn't love you and wanted to hurt you.

I thought over how I felt about sex and love. I think the two are related, yes. When I love someone, I tend to have sex with that person. The act is enhanced by the feelings I have.

But I can have sex with someone I don't love. There is no hard and fast rule that says you must have sex with people you love or that sex is symbolic of the love you feel. I think that twining the emotion of love into the act of sex is the problem involved in how we feel about affairs.

I think that an affair is surmountable if you treat it for what it is: a physical act that truly doesn't mean anything unless you make it mean something.

People have sex all the time. People have sex with people they don't love (and sometimes even don't know) every day around the world. Having sex is just an action. It doesn't mean that you feel something for the person you're engaging with. You're just...having sex.

I agree that an affair breaches trust and damages confident that you feel toward the other person. I do think that a couple dealing with the issues of an affair have some serious questions to ask themselves about their relationship.

But I don't think that an affair is a deal-breaker. If you're facing the question of divorce because of an affair, I think that you should treat the affair as a symptom of a problem, not a problem in itself.

"Rake over there!" My ex pointed to a patch about 100 feet from where I'd decided to amuse myself with old leaves. I bristled almost immediately.

"I'll rake where I please," I answered, lifting my chin a little.

It's a backlash effect, a reaction to the way things used to be. There was no reason for me to be upset. My daughter and I had come to the country to have a nice day in the sun with Dad, and we were all in a good mood. My ex hadn't meant for it to sound like an order; he was just telling me which area needed raking the most.

But I can't stand being told what to do. The last eight years of our relationship were full of control and possession, and I'm afraid I wasn't the one running the show.

My ex was extremely controlling. He told me who I could see and when. He would time my outings down to the last minute and explode if I was home late — even when it was just a grocery run or I'd been held up by a slow tractor on the road.

I don't blame him. He operated out of fear of losing control. He knew things were rocky. He loved me, I loved him, but we were so mentally separated from each other that he felt he had no other way to hang onto me.

So he'd rule with an iron fist (thank god not literally) and I would comply to his every wish in the hopes of accomplishing peace and affection. I dropped all my friends. I did what he wanted. I went where he told me. After a while, it became too much trouble to even go out.

For a long time, I lived in fear. He scared me. I felt worn down and beaten. I was tired. I was afraid to leave and needed to leave like the desert needs rain. I thought if I told him I wanted out that he would hurt me.

But I did it and he didn't do it.

Now, we live apart and love together. We're a couple under two roofs. We have our bad times still, but we have good times more often — enough to make it worth it.