After interviewing almost 100 people in successful relationships, I’ve learned some superb insights into about how love really works – and it has to be said that most of these fly in the face of what the Hollywood screenwriters would have us believe. These lessons have totally changed my relationship with my wife.

The person you’re marrying DOES NOT THINK LIKE YOU. They don’t have the same values as you, they don’t have an identical worldview, and they certainly don’t want the exact same things out of love and marriage. You might want a partner to stand side by side through the challenges of life, you might be looking for the chance to develop a deeper connection within the wonderful feeling of concreteness marriage brings to a relationship. If you’re a bloke you might just ‘fancy the pants off someone and hadn’t really thought about it more deeply than that’. (Don’t laugh, this is a direct quote from a mate I spoke to on his wedding day.)

Believing you know what anyone is thinking is something that trips us up in every single aspect of life from love right down to the Middle East peace process. But, all you have to do is ask.

Everyone I spoke to for my book agreed that the biggest cause of break-ups is that most couples never take the time to acknowledge they want different things out of life, love and marriage then sit down and

1. find out what each other wants out of the relationship, and then

2. commit to giving the other person exactly what they want.

Of course, once you have got this right, you then have to add in the fact that you’re going to spend around 50 years together. When I interviewed author Allan Pease, he pointed out how our different biology can really get in the way here. He said ‘Every 10 years women undergo massive hormonal changes that alter their body and brain so they are literally another person. Men just get fatter and balder.’ So men, the woman you marry will not be the woman with whom you celebrate your 10th anniversary. And women, love your groom for how he is right now, today, because he is not your 'pet project' and you will not change him.

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See www.whatiwishiknew.com for the bestselling What I Wish I Knew series

Out now: What I Wish I Knew at Eighteen, What I Wish I Knew about Love and What I Wish I Knew about Health & Fitness

Coming soon: What I Wish I Knew about Motherhood and What I Wish I Knew about Cancer

Interviewing for: What I Wish I Knew about Fatherhood, What I Wish I Knew about Getting Married,

and What I Wish I Knew about Depression and Anxiety