OREGON CITY, Ore. – From their first date, LeAnn Seward and Doug White discovered a torrent of things to talk about.

He loved that other people came to her for comfort. That she was stable, beautiful and warm. She loved that he was so open about his past. And that he was a Christian man who wasn’t a geek.

But fight? They did, and badly. Disagreements always seemed to end with her furious, him frustrated and someone stomping out. Seward resorted to filling White’s voicemail just to finish what she needed to say.

How, she wondered, could they marry?

What, he wondered, do other couples do?

Well, said Tom and Liz Dressel, facing Seward and White in the Dressels’ Oregon City living room recently: “We save it until Thursday.

“We found that if we save conflict for one meeting, we can have fun the rest of the week,” Liz Dressel said. They also practice a well-researched technique of taking turns talking, keeping statements brief and stopping to let the listener paraphrase.

Their coaching, over slices of Liz’s lemon pie, places White and Seward amid a national marriage movement. After decades of treating marriage as a private matter, government, churches and industry have joined to help those adults who choose to be married have the best shot at succeeding.

Seminars, classes and conferences on strengthening marriage are available. The Bush administration’s $200 million Marriage Initiative poured money into nonprofit programs to strengthen relationships. Churches have pledged to require four months of premarital counseling. Corporate sponsors are paying for marriage research as good for worker productivity.

The U.S. Health and Human Services Department says couples who undergo just eight hours of premarital counseling divorce at a rate 30 percent lower than others.

“If you look at what happens when people are not in a healthy relationship and children are raised in those environments, you see that it costs a lot of money, and a lot of lives are hurt and damaged,” says Rose Fuller, executive director of Northwest Family Services, which offers the program “Lasting Relationships” through a federal grant.

Couples are responding. “Engaged Encounter,” a premarital retreat sponsored by the Catholic Church, is registering more couples of all ages and backgrounds, many of whom have no religious training or may not even profess to believe in God.

“The trend is that people are seeking out marriage preparation, recognizing that they should take a workshop before they get married,” says Nancy Fisher, an elementary school teacher who helps conduct weekend retreats with her husband, Michael.

Ordinary couples are becoming lay mentors, experts at communicating and modeling healthy relationships.

But can another couple save a marriage?

“Yes,” says Liz Dressel. “Because we give hope.”

By any measure, White and Seward trained for their marriage vows as they would a marathon.

Neither had married before. Both came from divorced families. White, 42, is raising a 15-year-old son, Sheldon. But the sheet-metal mechanic had undergone years of counseling on his own to confront anger and abandonment issues that had ended other relationships. He saw premarital counseling as a means to self-confidence and security as a couple.

At 36, Seward, an assistant to an insurance executive, knew she wanted to be as emotionally whole as possible, and scheduled individual sessions with a professional counselor.

“Honestly, we love to volunteer and want to reach out to others and if you’re not healthy you can’t do that,” she said. “This wasn’t just for Doug and me, it was for his son, the neighbors, everybody.”

Both also met with their pastor to launch their marriage in the faith that introduced them. And finally, because their Oregon City Evangelical Church is one of 170 Clackamas County churches that had pledged to strengthen marriage, they enrolled in mandatory premarital education with a mentor couple.

They were assigned to the Dressels. After 42 years, the Oregon City couple have been married longer than the younger couple has been alive. Tom Dressel is a retired mechanical engineer; Liz is a semi-retired registered nurse and educator.

During six weekly meetings in the Dressels’ home, the couple talked through a 156-question inventory developed at Creighton University to raise issues they might not have addressed on their own, including how their parents fought; how they manage money (“To have a habitual latte, it’s not how I grew up,” White says); and what commitment means (“It means that he is going to back me up, be on my side, even if I screw up,” Seward says).

The couple was thrilled to learn they had already talked about a great many things. And they also quickly tried suggestions such as the speaker-listening technique.

Seward and White married Oct. 13.

They plan to see the Dressels four times in the coming year. Throughout their evenings together so far, Tom Dressel has reminded them that unlike Hollywood marriages, real unions ebb and flow, but that closeness returns even stronger.

“Seeing you gives me hope,” White says.

“The biggest relief is just knowing that we are not doomed,” Seward says. “It doesn’t have to end. People actually work through things and are OK.”