1. When you are taken you will be very attractive to others. Learn to keep boundaries.

2. Every marriage has its challenges, the secret is to use those challenges to grow together.

3. You may be ready for marriage but if you marry someone who is not, you will be greatly frustrated. Don't be loving the wrong person the right way.

4. There is more to life than marriage, pursue your individual purpose even as you do life as a team.

5. When you see you two as one, you will not see each other as competition.

6. Find activities to do together as a couple. Love is built on activity

7. Be careful who you listen to.

Some people are not happy to be in their marriage or in their singlehood and don't want you to be happy in your marriage.

8. Marriage has different seasons.

The together season, the conflict season where you both try to find your space in it and conflicts often arise, the trial season where you two will face reasons to quit and the stronger together season where you two emerge closer than ever before through joint victory. Know which season you are in

9. If you don't prepare for children, children will come and diminish the love and focus you two had for each other. Many marriages suffer when parenting begins.

10. Someone is watching your marriage and learning from you. What are you teaching them?

11. All the issues in your life that you did not deal with in singlehood, will bring issues in your marriage. Work on yourself.

12. Just because your parent's marriage failed, doesn't mean yours will too. Just because your parent's marriage flourished, doesn't mean yours will either. Take personal responsibility.

13. Do not give your spouse so much power that he/she makes you lose your values, lose your sleep, live a miserable life and kills your dreams. Insulate yourself from your spouse when he/she turns negative.

14. Any marriage can survive any fall as long as the two are willing to forgive, change, work on making sure love is perceived, rise and move past the fall.

15. When you start to focus on the weaknesses and shortcomings of your spouse, you will be swayed by temporary distractions.

16. Money, disagreements, decisions are easy to deal with when you two have friendship as the core of your marriage.

17. Intimacy is more than having sex. Connect deeper beyond the orgasms through touch, hugs, cuddles, kisses and great conversations.

18. Your parents might mean well but they might ruin your marriage when they act or say based on their bias, prejudice, favouritism, tribalism, backwardness, bitterness, chauvinism, past hurt or misinformation. They had their life, you build yours. Discern what advice to take or not.