Recently I read an article featuring a new phrase in the world of marriage and the family: So many 20- and 30-somethings are getting married and within only a few years divorced, the people who track their numbers call them “starter marriages.”

I’m familiar with starter cars, starter homes, starter jobs. But starter marriages? What’s next, starter kids? As in, these are the kids we practice parenting on, and later we raise some kids to adulthood.

How to create a successful marriage is a crucial thing we need to learn but one rarely taught in school. So the question becomes, what do we need to know before we get married in order to have a successful marriage?

Here are some suggestions:

• Choose well. It’s often easier said than done. Love can make you blind. It can make you temporarily stupid, too. One way to choose well is to be aware of your own relationship radar – how you go about becoming attracted to certain people. If this radar is faulty, you likely will be attracted to someone who may not be good for you.

• Pre-marital counseling. It’s a great way to identify and work out some bugs early on. Whether you see a minister or therapist, you can discover areas that might be challenging for your relationship and learn skills and techniques for handling them. Believing problem areas will automatically get better after marriage is a cruel myth. Without learning methods for managing differences, they almost are guaranteed to get worse, not better.

• Have a teachable spirit. Being teachable is a hallmark of success. Many people enter into marriage thinking they know how to do it right. I know I did. I even had a license and degree on my wall that said I was a marriage and family expert. Fortunately, I was blessed to have someone who was willing to hang around while I learned.

So, learn all you can about marriage, relationships, communication, etc.

Read books, go to seminars, get good coaching when and even before you need it. You also need to learn from each other. Teach each other how to be each other’s own unique partner.

• Become a good heart-tender. When we get married, we become the caretaker of someone else’s heart. We can break it, ignore it, or take great care of it.

Jeff Herring is a licensed marriage and family therapist.