Evan Evans writes the books he wishes someone had handed him.

I moved in with the woman who became my first wife without asking many of the questions I now believe couples should ask before they build a life together. At the beginning, she was a student and I was working. Then life progressed. She began her career, I was running my own business, we married, we had children, and the pressures around us became bigger than either of us had understood at the start.

I was not prepared for the underlying stressors that came with that progression. Money, work, parenting, ambition, responsibility, identity and expectations all entered the relationship. I often did what I knew how to do: if money could remove a pressure, I threw money at the pressure. If something needed fixing, I tried to fix it. But some problems were not practical problems. They were conversations we had never had, expectations we had never made explicit, and changes in both of us that we had never properly prepared for.

That marriage eventually ended in divorce. By then there were two children, which meant the consequences did not disappear when the marriage ended. A relationship can finish on paper while the effects of the decisions made inside it continue through parenting, responsibility and the rebuilding of two separate lives.

I then lived alone for roughly two or three years. Looking back, I do not believe I used that time to properly reconcile my own shortcomings or to examine what I had contributed to the failure of the marriage. Living alone is not the same thing as doing the work.

Then I met someone else, and eventually we moved in together. Once again, we did what many couples do. We assumed. We assumed we understood each other. We assumed the important things would somehow work themselves out. We assumed love, time and familiarity would fill in the conversations we had never actually had. Years passed, and that long relationship eventually ended too. We never married.

After that, I went into another relationship on the rebound and got married again. By then the larger truth had become impossible for me to ignore. The problem was not simply that I had once chosen the wrong person. I had repeatedly made enormous relationship decisions without having enough of the right conversations before those decisions were made.

I did not turn that relationship history into advice. I turned it into a reason to study. I read deeply and studied relationship dynamics, communication, behaviour, decision-making, money, expectations, conflict, identity and the patterns people carry from one relationship into the next. That study took me further into personal development and coaching, and I went on to train as a Tony Robbins coach.

Coaching gave me another perspective. I was no longer only asking what had happened in my own life. I was learning to look at how people form beliefs, make decisions, repeat patterns, avoid difficult conversations and sometimes know what is wrong long before they are willing to confront it. I stopped asking only, “Why did my relationships fail?” and started asking, “What would we have needed to know, discuss and understand before those decisions were made?”

That question became the foundation of Things I Wish Someone Told Me. Moving in together. Marriage. Money. Children. Careers. Roles. Expectations. Conflict. Independence. Family. Sex. Trust. Commitment. What happens when one person changes. What happens when success comes. What happens when money disappears. What happens when children arrive. These are not side issues. They are the relationship.

My experience gave me the questions. Study gave me context. Coaching gave me frameworks. Hindsight showed me where all three should have been used much earlier.

That is why I care so much about what happens before the commitment. Before moving in. Before marriage. Before combining money. Before children. Before giving somebody another chance. Before staying because leaving feels too difficult. Before years pass. The purpose of this work is not to tell people whom to love or what decision to make. It is to help them ask the questions that love, chemistry and optimism can make very easy to avoid.