[livi]

Originally Posted by Porsche-O-Phile

Spot-on.

I also believe that it's pointless to be part of an institution that purports to be based on trust, mutual understanding, love, etc. and then need such a thing. If a pre-nup is required to protect onesself from the other person then it calls those founding tenets into question. Basically the whole rationale for marriage gets undermined so as I've said before, why bother? What does it really accomplish? What's the point?

Our societal values are totally incompatible with the classical notion of what marriage is or should be, which is probably why so many fail and those that don't result in mere tolerance on the part of the participants (really, how many people are together for no reason other than convenience or because they don't want to bother going through a potentially bitter, contentious and expensive divorce?)

It's outlived its usefulness in the context of our society, or perhaps our society is totally wrong (another discussion). Regardless, it isn't compatible with the way we live in this day, age and place.

Agreed. Problem is that marriage is fundamentally and first of all a priority for women. Hence women tend to have a profound ache to get married and dodging that bullet is more than most men can handle in the long run.