Another important point in creating a successful marriage, or repairing one that has started to fall apart, is communication.

Communication is the foundation of marital success from which a strong marriage can grow. No communication is what will cause the destruction of a marriage.

To begin with, just choosing the right marriage partner can be very difficult. Without having any basic training in how to judge someone’s personality or ability to cook or raise a family, most people only use that thing called “love” to help them decide who to marry. And “love” can be tricky and difficult to understand.

It is not surprising that people so often pick the wrong partner.

But there are simple ways to not only select a marriage partner, but to also make certain that the marriage continues. They depend, always, upon communication.

There should be some similarity in intelligence and sanity between a husband and wife for them to have a successful marriage.

It is easy to find out the educational background of a possible marriage partner. It is not so easy to work out that person’s capability regarding sex or raising children. But what about judging the person’s sanity?

In the past, there have been many different types of tests to find out about a person’s sanity. Some were so complicated that you had to be a magician or use a special computer program to understand the results.

In Scientology, however, there is a test for sanity which is so simple that anyone can apply it: what is the “communication lag” of the person? Lag means the period of time between one thing happening and another thing happening. A communication lag is the length of time that passes between the asking of a question and the reply to that question by the person asked.

In other words, when asked a question, how long does it take the person to answer?

When someone can give a fast answer, it tells you that he has a fast and sane mind, providing he gives a sensible answer to the question. The slow answer tells you that he has less ability and sanity.

Marital partners who have the same communication lag will get along well together. But where one partner is fast and one is slow, the situation will become impossible to put up with to the fast partner and miserable to the slow one.

Marriage difficulties may also come about because someone else in the family is causing a break in the communication between the two partners. This could be caused by a relative, such as the mother-in-law.

Take, for example, a mother-in-law who comes to stay with the married couple. She complains to the wife about the husband and complains to the husband about the wife. The next thing you know, the husband and wife are arguing with each other every day and cannot get along. But they were getting along together just fine before the mother-in-law arrived.

The communication they were having between each other has been broken by the relative, upsetting each of the partners and causing them to now argue.

Another way communication can be cut—and the main reason marriages break up—is jealousy.

Jealousy comes about because of the jealous person’s lack of confidence. There may or may not even be a reason for the person to be jealous.

The jealous person is afraid of hidden communication lines.

A communication line is the route or passage along which communication travels from one person to another, such as by voice, letter, e-mail or phone.

The jealous person will do anything to try to uncover hidden communication lines.

For example, a jealous wife may secretly check all of her husband’s e-mails. And when he is not looking, she may take his phone and listen to his phone messages, trying to find out who is calling him.

This type of action makes the other partner feel that his communication lines are being cut, for he thinks he has a right to have open communication lines, but his marital partner insists that he close many of them.

The resulting arguments can be very upsetting.

Fortunately, a jealous person’s communication problems can be addressed with Scientology counseling.

There is a lot of information in Scientology on handling marriage, but here is the basic clue to a successful marriage: communicate!

By learning how to have good, clean communication between partners and how to keep that communication flowing, a marriage will be successful.