Working with a trained marriage therapist or counselor offers you and your partner a lifeline, not just in times of crisis, but also as a preventive measure to ensure your long-term marital success. When smart couples find their once brilliant love is tarnished, they recognize that a few sessions of focused marriage therapy can help restore it to its former glory. Successful in life, such couples know that fine-tuning their relationship pays enormous dividends. If there are children, these partners take their commitment to make the marriage work to an even higher level, and use therapy to sort out difficult family dynamics that can be confusing. To believe that a successful long-term marriage is free of sustained work and effort is unrealistic and even destructive.