Well, early education for soon-to-be husbands and wives. More and more engaged couples are going for premarital lessons. Hey, what do you have to lose? They should learn more because maybe they can avoid a divorce. Debra Mandel is the author of "Your Boss is not Your Mother". Oh that's a relief. She's given a lot of couples advice too on how to stay together. How are you, Debra?

I'm great. How are you doing?

Good. I, I like this, cause I think you can never be too prepared. I'm married a very, very long time and that first year is tough for any couple, so what do you think you can learn if you go for somebody's courses? In, in the Catholic religion, you have to, but for people who wanna do it anyway, what can you learn?

Well, I'm always so excited when people come to me, it, for couples' counseling before they've already tied the knots, so that we can really help them understand a lot of the pitfalls that people get into. For one, people assume that once they're married, everything is gonna be just nice and rosy and you don't have to do anything anymore and not understanding that when that honeymoon period wears off, it could really be devastating for people if they don't have realistic expectations (I hope) about actual marriage.

Yep, hoping that it never wears off that honeymoon phase. I thought this was interesting the Journal of Family Psychology says that if couples receive premarital education, they will have a 31% lower chance of divorce, do you believe that?

Oh, absolutely, because when people get information, information is very helpful for people, cause too often people think that things are just gonna be magical, you don't have to do anything, but really and truly for having a great relationship, you have to put a lot of time and energy into nurturing the whole concept of a couple, you know, we need to look at ourselves as, now, we are two people joining together and every decision we make is going to affect our partner, so we need to be really aware of everything about our person that we're gonna be with. (And that's one of the...) in advance.

One of the tips that you have, the other ones I saw, assess the quality of communications. Obviously, communication is key and I thought this one was great too, Debra, one of your tips. Understand your partner's family dynamics. Is this (yeah) what they say you actually marry his mother or vice versa, I guess?

Yes, as, as a matter of fact, what we need to understand is whenever we're marrying a partner, we are marrying their entire family, because they have had relationships with their family all the way since they were born and so those people are usually going to have an impact on how your partner behaves and thinks and their ideas and their values. You need to be comfortable with your partner's family and if you are not comfortable with certain members of that family, you need to make peace with that and talk that through and that's why communication is so important cause people need to be able to understand their differences, to communicate with empathy, with compassion for each other and really be able to listen to each other and not talk over each other.

Debra Mandel, author of "Your Boss is not Your Mother". Great advice. Thanks so much.

Thank you so much. (That's so easy, just do whatever your like at once )

Sounds easy.

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