One of the things few of my stepmom advice books told me before I got married is something every stepfamily needs to hear – put your marriage first and the kids second.

About 43% of all marriages are remarriages for at least one partner and 60% of all remarriages end in legal divorce. There’s no denying that marriage is complicated by having children and an ex-spouse in tow. Blended family couples need to be serious about making their marriages work from the start.

One way to keep your marriage front and center is to make deposits in your “love bank.” Described by Dr. Ron Deal in his book, The Smart Stepfamily: Seven Steps to a Healthy Stepfamily, a “love bank” is an emotional bank account for your marriage.

All of the deposits are positive things that you do for your marriage – fixing a special meal, running an errand for your spouse, going on a special trip, or a foot massage at the end of a long day. Withdrawals are the negative things in your marriage. You always want to have a positive balance in the account. Small daily investments of time and gratitude tend to produce longer-term investment returns than big expensive deposits, just like with a real bank account.

You can recognize and honor the uniqueness of the marriage relationship by keeping marriage stuff within your marriage. In a Jewish wedding, the sacred isolation of marriage is represented by the breaking of a wine glass by the groom. Both the bride and groom share wine from the glass during the ceremony before it is shattered. Just like in marriage, the glass held something the couple shared only between themselves, not with anyone else.

So keep the adult stuff with the adults. The kids don’t need to know our pet names for each other or the little secrets we share. And we try to iron out our differences and come up with standard policies together for our household that we both agree to support.

Keeping a united front with my husband also means that I avoid calling my mother and whining every time I am annoyed with my husband. Although I’m in love with him, my family isn’t, and they don’t forgive him and forget his transgressions nearly as easily as I do.

Communicating between spouses is especially important in a blended family with children because children will often try to play stepparents and bio-parents off each other. After experiencing the loss of one marriage – the kids are often pros at spotting (and exploiting) weaknesses in a marriage partnership.

Being affectionate with your partner is also important but can seem harder to do in a blended family. Seeing a few kisses and hand-holds between a newly-married couple can be tough for children when one of the spouses isn’t their parent. But the kids will adjust and that doesn’t mean that you need to have a no-PDA policy. Our rule of thumb – it’s ok to love on each other in front of the kids but don’t do anything you wouldn’t do in front of a kid that you wouldn’t do in front of your own mother.

One way to ensure some privacy for everyone – institute a blanket house rule that if a door is shut, you knock on it and don’t enter until you hear a reply. Children will value this respect for their privacy and return it to you if you enforce this rule consistently for everyone in the household.

Don’t feel guilty about carving out time to spend with your spouse. There is often a tendency in stepfamilies for a bio-parent to carry a terrorizing guilt load. Spend time with the kids and be supportive, but don’t allow guilt pangs to rob a new marriage partnership of the time it needs to grow.

Your marriage’s love bank will grow richer if you invest in it with time together, minus the kids. For some people, that means taking a weekly date night. Put it in your calendar or planner so you don’t miss it. Your date night can be as simple as having a cup of coffee together at a fast food joint, or as elaborate as dining at a swanky restaurant with dancing and cocktails. And while you are there – talk about yourselves, not the kids.

Dawn Miller writes a column on life in blended families at thestepfamilylife.com. 
Visit Dawn's blog for a daily dose of life in the blender.
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