Daryl Lease is an editorial writer at the Herald-Tribune in Sarasota, Fla. His e-mail address is daryl.lease@herald-trib.com.

My wife informed me one recent evening that I am a lucky man to have her because no other woman would have married me. This was a conversation stopper. I had to agree with her first point, but the second one was lost on me. I smiled, squinted an eye closed, and arched an eyebrow. "Oh, reeeally?" I asked. "No one?"

Julie replied that, yes, there might be a few hard-up contenders. But if they saw how I really acted -- socks under the bed, crumbs on the floor after dinner, a honey-do list rivaling War and Peace in length -- they would think better of it and leave me at the altar picking lint from my rental tux. I reminded her that we lived together for several years before we got married. She had seen it all, the whole wide world of this blue-eyed, big-eared, foot-shuffling, slovenly sport. She knew the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat. I asked her why she married me. "Well," she said. "I really love you."

This was an irrefutable conclusion. An inside-out way of getting there, to be sure, but I had to concede her point (and do the laundry). My wife puts up with my bad habits, and I with hers. We seek to change what we can, and we try to be patient about what we can't. It works pretty well for us.

Saving marriages before the 'I dos'

Strong marriages are built on more than tolerance of one another's idiosyncrasies. But it certainly does not hurt to have a general idea of how to work on resolving these problems, as well as much larger ones, before they become wedges.

Will government suggested Marriage 101 curb the divorce rate?

As unlikely as the source may be, about a dozen state governments are now offering would-be husbands and wives quick primers on how to get along. The efforts -- call it Marriage 101 -- range from premarital counseling to hard-nosed marriage contracts that limit the options for divorce.

Florida, where my wife and I live, now has a three-day waiting period for marriage. If the prospective bride and groom agree to cool their heels that long, they can get a $32.50 break on their $88.50 marriage license. The same discount applies if they sign up for at least four hours of premarital counseling, where they can explore compatibility questions and get tips on resolving disputes over money and housekeeping, among other things.

Ordinarily, I am not fond of one-size-fits-all counseling programs, especially ones crafted by a committee of politicians, but there is clearly a need for action. As Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating, a Republican, notes, it's "easier to get out of a marriage with children than it is to get out of a Tupperware contract."

The nation's divorce rate has declined slightly in recent years, but it still hovers around 50%. The social costs for all of us are high, beginning with the children whose families split.

"There's so much money spent in what I call wipe up," Abbie Vianes, who runs Utah's marriage-counseling program, recently told The New York Times. "We spent over $33 million last year in just collecting unpaid child support. Welfare dollars are used on divorced moms. And there is a loss to business in worker productivity -- when home doesn't go right, work doesn't go right."

The reasons for breakups are complex and cannot be generalized easily. And some unions -- for the sake of all involved -- are better off not being salvaged. But voluntary programs that might improve the odds of keeping families together are worth a try, particularly in light of studies showing that young people are increasingly pessimistic about the odds of ever being happily hitched.

A need for guidance

About 40% of young adults who get married today were raised in a divorced household, according to a report by the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University. For them, the risk of divorce is two to three times greater than children who come from families with intact marriages.

The odds are reflected in their attitudes. The percentage of high-school seniors who say it is "very likely" that they will stay married to one person for life has dropped in the past 25 years, especially among girls, according to the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan. In 1995, 64% of girls said they expected to find lifelong partners, compared with 59% of boys.

Rutgers professor David Popenoe and journalist Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, who head the National Marriage Project, say their research has shown that young adults "desperately want to avoid marital failure [but] find little advice, support and guidance on marriage from the peer or popular culture, or from parents, clergy or others who have traditionally guided and supported the younger generation in matters of mating and marrying."

Marriage 101 programs have bipartisan support -- and bipartisan critics. Some detest the notion of government meddling in private relationships. Some question spending public money on programs with religious overtones.

Indeed, for these programs to work, a light touch is necessary. It is unlikely that couples will respond to advice that sounds intrusive and overbearing. And religious themes can be problematic in a nation of diverse faiths. Marriage Savers -- a private program that matches young couples with older mentors and is involved in Marriage 101 efforts in Oklahoma and Arkansas -- focuses heavily on moral doctrines like premarital chastity.

"Our church will not knowingly marry anyone who is living together," says Michael McManus, a syndicated columnist who heads the Marriage Savers group. That is his church's prerogative, but when such hard-and-fast rules are applied to public programs, many couples who have lived together -- as my wife and I did -- would be cut out of premarital counseling. Is that truly helping?

A worthy experiment -- for now

It is too early to gauge the success of Marriage 101, although one study at the University of Denver reported that couples who took part in such programs were half as likely to divorce within five years as couples who did not.

For now, there is mostly anecdotal evidence. In Florida communities, counselors tell stories of couples delaying marriages until they feel better prepared, or backing out all together. McManus says about one-tenth of the couples who participate in his group's programs decide to postpone or break engagements.

If the programs have no demonstrable effect on the divorce rate in a few years, lawmakers should curtail or scrap them and look for other solutions. For now, though, Marriage 101 seems a worthy experiment in helping young couples to avoid turning their lives inside out.