What You Must Talk About Before You Get Married
A lot of the conflict people experience in marriage could have been preempted by good premarital counseling, or even just good premarital communication. People spend too much time and money on their weddings and not enough time and money preparing to be and stay married.
If you're not going to invest in premarital counseling, at the very least, you need to have conversations about the major deal-breakers before you tie the knot.
They say love is blind, but don't let love blind you to reality. The easiest way to avoid a divorce because of incompatibility is to discover the incompatibility before the marriage and either resolve it or determine that it would be unwise to get married.
Don't just assume that because you're "in love," your future spouse will agree with your ideals regarding how many children to have, how to raise them, whether one spouse should forgo a career to stay at home with them, how to spend and save money, how to relate to your families of origin after marriage, and so on. The key to marital success is communication. Talk early and talk often.
(Image credit: "Tulliana chat" by M.Umut Pulat - Licensed under GPL via Wikimedia Commons)