Why do people get married? Seems a pretty empty tradition nowadays.
Yeah, it seems like the main thing the institution of marriage does these days is provide a very good living to lawyers who specialize in divorce. Most of my friends have been married and divorced, some more than once. One of my college roommates is already on his third marriage and he is not even 40.
For men (at least here in the US) marriage is a raw deal. It might be ok if you don't own anything but with people marrying later and later in life many have accumulated significant assets that they are putting at risk by entering into a marriage contract with someone they they may not know that well.
If You marry a woman and then decide you can't stand living with her and want a divorce you have to give her half of your assets. Same deal if she decides to leave you. If you have kids together you may as well kiss the house goodbye because no judge is going to put a mother and her children out on the street even if she is a cheating whore who has been having an affair with the teenage pool boy. If the divorce settlement doesn't go your way (and in most cases the husband gets the shaft) could find yourself out on the street and the teenage pool boy living in YOUR house, sleeping in YOUR bed, and fucking YOUR now ex-wife (this actually happened to one of my friends)
For the life of me I cannot understand why gay men in the US are fighting so hard for the right to get married when straight men are abandoning the institution in droves. If you simply cohabit with someone it is much easier (and cheaper) to dissolve the relationship a decade or so from now when you decide that you can't fucking stand to be around each other anymore. Instead of calling in a high priced lawyer, the partner whose name is not on the deed or the lease to the house simply moves out gets a new place and takes the furnishings and housewares that belong to him or her with them.