Marriage takes work as well as romance.

The British still believe in marriage, it seems. Despite the impression one may get from the mass media, 85 per cent of people get married, and surveys show that most believe adultery to be wrong.

Yet 40 per cent of British marriages fail. Each day more than 500 children go through the heartache of seeing their parents divorce. Not only is a failed marriage damaging to those most closely involved, it adds to the cost that society as a whole pays. It is estimated that the government spends [pounds sterling] 4-6 million per day picking up the pieces of broken marriages.

So any initiative to save marriages is welcome.

Peter and Barbie Reynolds, who started Rapport in 1991, say that marriage is left too much to chance. No-one would expect the pilot of a piston-engine plane to fly a jetplane without any retraining, they point out. The changing roles and expectations of men and women over the last 50 years mean that their traditional roles within marriage have gone for ever, yet society offers newlyweds no training, just a sumptuous wedding and a `good luck, you'll manage'. Rapport, now part of Care for the Family, offers skills training to couples so that they can strengthen their relationships and deal with problems before they reach crisis-point.

The Reynolds want to see a change in public attitudes so that there is no more stigma in going to a marriage-enhancing course than in having one's car serviced. `I'd like us to reach the point where people say, "What, you're getting married and you haven't been on a marriage skills course? How irresponsible!"' Barbie Reynolds told a recent forum arranged by this magazine. `Public attitudes have changed on drink-driving and wearing seat-belts, so why not on this issue, too.'

Marriage, writes Melanie Phillips in The Tablet, `is fragile, and if it is to thrive it must be buttressed through a concerted and conscious effort by law, economics and culture'. And by individuals taking more responsibility for their own relationships, the Reynolds would add.