Hi, Lee. I appreciate your response and the way you’re trying to find a “middle way” here, but I think it’s important to make my actual point clear.

Marriage is a bad idea. Period.

I’m not saying it can’t or doesn’t work because for some, it clearly does. Those people would have a good relationship whether married or not. But marriage for most becomes a proxy for the relationship, which is dangerous and ultimately toxic.

Most of all, it is entirely unnecessary, the point I led with and the point that your response ignores altogether.

My five reasons that people get married explain why people continue to take this dangerous, toxic, and completely unnecessary risk … over and over and over, despite all the obvious resulting carnage.