But I think many of us can not do this. If keeping professional talking apart, I like to make things clear. In relationships other than you business, the person must keep transparency. It means if you know thing are not well, you should accept it. May be it's your fault? Making things clear with your friends, family and loved ones is the key which keeps your relations very neat and clean.
I have seen things which are not good for relationships. It hurts when it reaches at saturation point because every thing and every one has their own limits. Relations will get punished by yourself and because of your mistakes if you don't understand it properly and take actions to prevent it.
I don't what will happen to such a person if relations going to be broken. May be he will suffer from loneliness and feeling guilty for the whole life for the mistakes he has made!
Update - 23rd March, 2008: Jay has written a nice article "Never late to mend" after reading this post. He has shown a very common incident, may be happened with each of us. But what he has done after that, is so uncommon. And we all should remember this in life, not to forget to ask and give for forgiveness if you know your mistakes.