An obvious question now arises as to whether a course that concentrates on the building of new positive skills, raising levels of "satisfaction", will also be effective at reducing the existing negative patterns of behaviour that influences "stability" or not.

In some cases, this is clearly not possible. It is not the positive that is important; rather it is the absence of the negative. For example, having divorced parents (negative) predicts a greater risk of instability. Having married parents (positive) predicts nothing. Likewise, a low level of commitment (negative) predicts greater risk of instability. A high level of commitment (positive) predicts nothing.

Yet some positive and negative factors do appear to overlap. Those couples who communicate poorly, for example, are more likely to be unstable. Those couples who communicate well are more likely to be satisfied. Much the same applies to the handling of disagreements. Educators might, therefore, assume that teaching positive communication and conflict resolution skills should have the twin benefits of both increasing satisfaction and reducing instability.

But this assumption is risky. The negative factors in question represent "old automatic" patterns of behaviour. These are subtle, persistent, natural interactions that may have been learnt and repeated - perhaps subconsciously - by a couple over months or years. When a new more positive interactive skill is learnt - such as active listening - the "new artificial" skill may be used consciously to good effect. With time and practice, the new skill may even become more automatic and subconscious.

Yet researchers contest this issue vigorously. For example, many programmes apply "active listening" skills as their central theme. Gottman and others dismiss such skills as rarely used in everyday life, predictive of nothing, ineffective in outcome studies, and hard to use when needed - i.e. when angry, tired or upset.

Therefore, we should be very cautious in assuming that teaching positive skills and satisfaction will have a corresponding impact by default on negative factors and stability. Positives and negatives are separate factors that may or may not be related.

The key distinction between stability and satisfaction is further complicated in everyday life because of a widespread belief that happy couples do stay together. In addition, almost all couples, when asked, rate their own marriage in terms of their ability to communicate. It turns out that happiness and communication are finely inseparable in research studies. A natural conclusion from these beliefs is that strengthening marriages can be achieved almost entirely through learning positive communication skills. Whilst this is undoubtedly important for improving marital satisfaction, it does not necessarily address the issue of stability

We can now look at the existing field of marriage education by being aware of two possible caveats.