About a year ago in San Francisco, I was having my car checked out in an automobile diagnostic laboratory. As I watched it exposed to numerous tests, I marveled at the speed with which their instruments could assess its strong and weak points. After an hour of tests, a specialist went over the chart with me and showed me exactly what needed to be done to bring the car up to optimal condition. On the way home, it occurred to me that this might be something a lot of marriages could use. I had counseled many couples in the throes of conflict. How often I had wished that they could have had far sooner the help and information that marriage counseling brings to stressful situations. Too frequently, the practice in communication styles, the handling of anger, the imparting of needs concerning sex and intimacy came too late-like waiting until after a few accidents to teach someone how to drive. It was this musing that led to MARDILAB, short for Marriage Diagnostic Laboratory.
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Edward V. Stein (1975) studied this question.