[leafygreene]

Get married. Doesn't work out? Divorced. Buried in debt for a decade or more, house gone, credit ruined, alimony indefinitely, child support forever, visitation up to a court. As a function of bad credit, impossible to ever get decent job, home loan, etc. ever again. All your insurance premiums get jacked. I could go on, and on and on.

They speak of advantages? At 50% failure rate in the US, with seemingly three disadvantages for every advantage, only the insane need apply.

Welcome to America.

* Student loans might almost be worse. You can dissolve a marriage.

[danielvf]

Actually, the US currently has 37% as many divorces as marriages per year, and that ratio been going down for the past 40 years.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/marriage-divorce.htm

Even that stat is a bit misleading, since first marriages have been almost twice a likely to last as subsequent marriages.

And even that is still misleading about marriage odds. Low income, teen or near teen women have a much higher rate of divorce than the rest of the population.

[mbg721]

Many marriage stats are more measures of how marriage is defined by society than measures of how married relationships are going. People who would have gotten married just for show 50 years ago aren't getting married at all now, because various stigmas are gone. Same-sex marriages are counted now but weren't before. The average marriage in Utah is very different from the average marriage in Massachusetts, and neither one of them is your marriage.

[satvikpendem]

Is that not because fewer people are getting married overall? I'd like to see those stats, number of people getting married vs divorcing.

[danielvf]

Here you go: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/national-marriage-divorce-...

[UncleMeat]

Why would divorce bury you in debt, take your house, and ruin your credit? You pay child support if you are married too, it just is called "parenthood" rather than child support. If you are paying alimony indefinitely, it indicates that you didn't damage your career when getting married, so the concerns about being buried in debt seem odd. And again, you pay alimony if you are married too. It is just called "supporting my stay-at-home spouse".

And divorce is not some random outcome with a fixed distribution. It is a specific outcome that involves you and another person. You can make decisions that control your future. You aren't flipping a coin.

[Viliam1234]

> It is a specific outcome that involves you and another person.

That means a half of it is beyond my control. I can try to be a great partner. And I can find someone who seems like they would be a reliable partner. But no one can perfectly predict other people; sometimes people change. And if my partner happens to meet someone more attractive and decides to upgrade... there is not much I can do about it. I have seen people who seemed like happy couples, then one of them met someone else and decided they no longer felt happy in the existing relationship.

> You pay child support if you are married too, it just is called "parenthood" rather than child support. [...] And again, you pay alimony if you are married too. It is just called "supporting my stay-at-home spouse".

You are right that a married man contributes financially to his family. But he is also involved in the decisions. At the very least, after the children grow up, he can encourage his wife to take a part-time job again, and maybe a full-time job later. If instead, depending on the specific laws at given state, he is legally required to pay his ex-wife indefinitely, she has no reason to change the situation.

Also, it is cheaper to live together, and more expensive to live apart. Two houses are usually more expensive than one, even if they are small ones. You can save a lot of money by cooking together, sharing household appliances, maybe sharing a car, etc. So the divorce naturally increases the total costs of living of the people involved. Paying half of the increased costs is more expensive than paying half of the original costs.

Then there is also the fact that in marriage the man gets something in return. Like, he brings home the salary, but his wife cooks for them both. After divorce, he keeps paying, but now he is getting nothing in return.

tl;dr - divorce is more expensive than marriage, and it is partially out of your control whether it happens

[UncleMeat]

People can change, but you might be underestimating the amount of control you have not only in choosing a person but building a relationship. It is very different than two independent people experiencing independent lives and changes therein.

> You are right that a married man contributes financially to his family.

I very deliberately left gender out of my post. I don't think it makes sense to bring it back in. A of the rest of your post is gender stereotypes and an unfortunately transactional view of marriages. This just reads as tremendously cynical and bounded view of what marriage actually is and doesn't reflect my experience as a married person whatsoever. In my marriage I want to give to my spouse because it makes me feel good to share love with my spouse. Not for any transactional reason. Not because I expect something in return. But because I love them.

Feel free to choose not to get married. It isn't for everybody. But I think you'll be a happier person by reorienting your view of the world here.

[ncpa-cpl]

I'm not sure about the U.S, but in some countries, like mine, some of the legal disadvantages of marriage start automatically after cohabiting for a period of time.

[leafygreene]

Yes. These are called common law marriages. 7 states have them.

https://www.ncsl.org/research/human-services/common-law-marr...