Relationships are fragile and, once broken, extremely hard to repair. This book has been written to help you to nurture your relationship at all times, to treat it with respect and to value it so that you give it the best chance of lasting. With nearly one in two marriages ending in divorce, anything that can be done to improve the quality of your relationship is worth its weight in gold.

Ironically, the biological imperative to pair off happens at a time in your life when you have the poorest tools to sustain it. During your 20â€™s and early 30â€™s your life experience is short and your â€˜emotional intelligenceâ€™ is limited. Recognising early the factors that may indicate the risk of relationship breakdown, and addressing them, can help to preserve a healthy relationship. Very few couples naturally possess these tools, but many others can learn to use them to the benefit of their relationship. We aim to help you to acquire these tools, and to remind you to use the ones you already have!

Between us we, the authors, have over 30 yearsâ€™ experience of marriage and raising children and a further 20 years of life as single parents coping with separation and divorce. We have been lucky enough to find a new relationship together. As a result of what we have been through we realise how precious that is and we are determined to look after it to the best of our ability. We would like to share with you what we have learned in the hope that it may be of some help to you in enhancing your own relationship. If we could sum up in one sentence the goal that this book is intended to achieve, it would be â€˜an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cureâ€™.

Key Features:

â€¢ How to anticipate problems before they occur, so that you can take positive action to help avoid your relationship getting into trouble

â€¢ Stories based on real situations illustrating the points we make

â€¢ â€˜Top tipsâ€™ at the end of sections, summarising the key points to remember