I highly suggest consuming the full piece here (11 min. read time)

“Marriage education has been for hundreds of years aimed at women. It was considered their responsibility to keep the marriage going.” — Stephanie Coontz (co-chairwoman of the Council on Contemporary Families/author of Marriage: A History)

Self-understanding is the first step to having a good relationship: “Our focus is on whether you are the right person…we think the best thing to do at this stage in the game, rather than look for the right partner, is do the work they need to understand who they are, where they are, where they came from, so they can then invite in a compatible, suitable partner.” — Alexandra Solomon (professor/family therapist)

You can’t avoid marital conflict, but you can learn how to handle it better: “…blaming, oversimplifying, and seeing themselves as victims are all common traits of unhappy couples and failed marriages.” — Christine Gross-Loh

A good marriage takes skill: “One of our more beloved cultural myths about marriage is that it should be easy. The reality is that most of us don’t have adequate communication skills going into marriage.” — Christine Gross-Loh

You and your partner need a similar worldview: “For people to be happy in their marriage, they must be able to understand not just what their partner is saying, but the experience behind the words…[if not] they cannot understand what it’s like to be their partner—to understand their partner empathically—and the best communication in the world won’t help.” — Sam R. Hamburg (author)