Most couples spend months planning the wedding and almost no time planning the marriage. The flowers, the venue, the seating chart, all of it gets careful attention. The actual partnership, the thing the wedding is meant to begin, often goes undiscussed until you're already living it.

If you ask people what a strong relationship looks like, a lot of them picture a couple who never fights. It's a nice image, and it's mostly wrong. Conflict isn't what ends relationships. Plenty of close, lasting couples argue, sometimes a lot. What sets them apart isn't the absence of friction. It's what they do with it, and what they do in all the ordinary moments in between.