More time is spent teaching kids to drive than to prepare for M life later. What to teach? Try starting with Mars-Venus type issues. We communicate differently. We think differently. We hear differently. We visualize differently. Even in high school. Kids need to become aware and in tune to this sooner.
One premise of that whole series of books is "What your mother couldn't tell you, and your father didn't know" Oh wait ... that is actually a title to one of the books.
Maybe the optional classes some schools have on Family Life should be required for a Drivers License. Kids need to have some incentive to attend and listen. Of course these days, they don't even need a driver's license to get each other pregnant.
Still, someone needs to explain old metaphors to them. "Marriage is a lot of work" apparently didn't just mean one of you has to have a job and one of you has to raise kids and decorate, and cook, and probably work too! I think it needs explaining, maybe even to some of us, that the "work" begins with a lot of effective communicating. Sometimes the most effective communicating is just hugging, and holding hands on a walk. Stop the whole world if you can, and gaze into each other's eyes a while before saying ILY. Then say why. Not cuz I want your britches on the floor!
What is that makes the other person special. Do we know? Do we tell them? Do they hear us? Our kids need to learn the new life skills required to succeed in a R or M. They may be easier to discuss than to execute. Does our MLC experience leave us wondering if we will ever succeed in execution? Or do we live in fear of failing to do so, resulting in causing someone else pain like we have lived?
