[cachemiss]

Correct, there's relatively easy ways to de-risk things. My wife and I dated for 3.5 years and lived together for 2 before we got married. We are in a high income bracket, and both of us thought quite a bit about the person we wanted to married, and made sure we had good conflict resolution skills, respect for each other. We agreed on kids, religion , money and sex (make sure you agree on these or you are going to have a bad time).

Chances of our marriage ending are very low according to the statistics. People always view marriage as this binary thing where you are either being completely and utterly scientific about things, or you are just being naive and jumping in. I love/d my wife deeply when we got married, but I was also aware of her flaws and my own. If you don't have any empathy or like living your life for yourself, don't get married (and probably don't date), it won't end well for you.