When two young people enter into marriage, they do so with the illusion of loving each other and uniting their lives forever. However, official figures show alarmingly that many couples abandon that dream somewhere along the way: the issue number of marital breakups is growing steadily every year.

According to the high school National Statistics Office, 162,554 marriages were celebrated in Spain in 2014. In the same year there were 105,893 annulment, separation and divorce judgments, which was a ratio of 2.3 per 1,000 inhabitants. This is 5.4% higher than what was recorded in 2013.

The figures are worrying because divorce not only has a negative impact on the couple - according to programs of study, divorced people suffer more health-related problems - but also on their children and society in general.

Numerous experts indicate that marital stability and marital satisfaction are among the most important factors in people's happiness and that this extends to children and family. Therefore, helping people to forge a stable and happy marriage not only benefits them but also their immediate environment and society.

But is success in marriage merely a matter of luck, or are there ingredients that contribute to success or failure? And if there are, is there anything that can be done to help young people learn from the experience of others? Given the relevance of these questions, several programs of study have been conducted in many parts of the world to shed light on possible answers.

Obviously, there are some variables that are core topic but cannot be intervened on, such as family background, a person's history... But there are many other factors that affect marital cohabitation and on which it is possible to act: communication skills, the way of facing the novelties that arise in everyday life, the vision of marriage...

In general, programs of study agreement agrees that there are two main categories of situations that can lead to marital disruption.

On the one hand, there are the crisis circumstances of development, which are universal and can be foreseen. They are those that arise when adapting to the different stages that any marriage goes through: the beginning of cohabitation, the birth of children, how the work is organized (outside and inside the home), the process of learning motherhood and fatherhood....

Secondly, unforeseeable events can be pointed out. Their unexpected nature demands from each member of the couple an effort, a capacity for sacrifice and a level of maturity to match this new status.

It is worth noting a project developed since 1980 by the University of Denver's programs of study Center on Marriage and Family. The team has followed 135 couples for more than three decades and has identified a number of issues associated with marital satisfaction, including the tendency to sacrifice for each other, the ability to communicate and solve problems together, and not having lived together before marriage.

On the other side, that of divorces, the conclusions of John Gottman, from the University of Washington, who has conducted a study with couples over 14 years, are revealing. According to them, the most relevant variables that can lead to a marital breakup have to do with the way of interacting during conflicts and the history of the relationship itself.

It seems elementary to think that negative situations, such as a layoff, a transfer of city, an illness, a death... can end up generating a problem. But this can also be caused by circumstances that are initially positive or pleasant, such as a vacation or the purchase of a new home, which can bring to light tensions or differences that were hidden.

The teaching is that if approached properly, every change in the routine - in the prosperous and the adverse - can be taken as an opportunity for improvement to strengthen the couple.

These and other programs of study have shown promising results in resolving the needs detected in so many young people who are embarking on the adventure of marriage. In order to deepen in some of the lines marked by them and to advance in the research, the project 'Education ' of affectivity and human sexuality', belonging to the Institute for Culture and Society of the University of Navarra, has launched a new line called AMAR (Antecedents of Marital Adjustment Research).

Its goal consists of finding scientific evidence on the variables, characteristics and circumstances of the people who are going to get married that later affect the marital cohabitation, also taking into account other variables and possibly modifying events during the marriage. The project has the hypothesis that it is possible to learn from the successes and mistakes of other people, thus studied, to improve the relationship and increase the probabilities of success of that project of life that, sometimes, seems difficult to keep along the way.

This is a large-scale international study that aims to count on the testimony of thousands and thousands of young people. So far, people from countries such as Spain, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Peru have shown interest in participating on a voluntary basis.

For the design of this project we have chosen the model of a prospective cohort study, which is very common in other areas of the research, especially in medicine. Couples join the project before marriage and are followed up during the marriage through questionnaires, which each member of the couple fills out separately to guarantee confidentiality and anonymity.

The initial questionnaire is very complete: it includes aspects such as the history staff of each one, the family background, the Education received, their personality, their way of seeing the couple, marriage and love... It also alludes to questions about the couple in particular: their history, how they communicate, how they relate, if they have talked about the future (children, Economics domestic...). In this way, the participants themselves can question themselves and analyze key aspects of their daily lives. This reflection allows them to recognize their own strengths and areas in which they can improve in order to forge a happy marriage.

After the wedding, they are sent shorter questionnaires every two years asking them if they are still married and if they are happy, and also what factors make them successful (they are still together and satisfied with their marriage) or unsuccessful (they have separated or divorced, or they are still together but with a low marital satisfaction Degree ).

What is relevant and novel about the study is that the conclusions do not come from theories, from intuitions spread in society or from the experience of a few exceptions, but will be based on a large number of data collected from all over the world. This scientific rigor will ensure that the conclusions can be very close to reality and therefore be of great use to the young married couples of tomorrow.

It is obvious that the guarantee of success is in the hands of the couples, but there is no doubt that they will find in the results of AMAR a compass to mark the north of their vital project and manage to take it to a good port.