There are lots of good ideas above (honesty and communication are good things), but I find it interesting that nobody has talked about values.

My wife and I have been married for almost 15 years. She is a bit of a book geek, while I am a math/tech geek. We are opposites in many ways, but we share core values that keep us in sync. Neither of us is particularly religious, but we still have shared values help us keep things in perspective.

Some of our friends are divorced. For years, they seemed to be great play mates, but ultimately inconsistent values sank their relationships. Beware: if your values are out of sync, then having kids can shine a light on your core differences. For my wife and I, having kids has been great because they help to shine a light on the ways we are consistent. For several of our friends, having kids has shined a harsh light on their differences.

Anyway, good luck. Focus on values. Communicate. Be honest.

--p

"Nothing is impossible. Some things are just less likely than others." - Jonathan Winters

my search for "reston master plan"(without any quotes) yielded 0 results at cuil, while Google found 99,200 results for the identical search. what gives? maybe cuil's huge list of indexed sites are all the ones Google thinks are useless. it doesn't seem to be a superset.