The end of a marriage (where both participants continue living) and a cancer death, are not comparable.
Your "if you're not going to stay in a bad marriage until you physically die, what's the point of marriage?" viewpoint where marriage is permanent xor utilitarian is a false dichotomy.
Divorce doesn't mean that the participants failed, or that they entered into the marriage simply out of utility.
But you wouldn't say "amputating a leg is a healthy end to having legs" because for most leg havers, there are better outcomes.
In the same vein, I'd say "divorce is a healthy end to a bad marriage" but not "divorce is a healthy end to marriages in general".
In other words, I think it’s reasonable to say that divorce is a healthy way to end a marriage, because if it ended in divorce, then by definition, at least one party thought it needed to, making it a bad marriage.
On the contrary, by their own measure, it is a failure. No one gets married anticipating or wanting a divorce. Everyone wants it to last forever.
That's why the comment you responded to suggested a time-bounded contract. Which no one wants.
Have you ever gone through a divorce? Mine was amicable, but even then it was the worst thing I've ever experienced.
I think the existence of reasonable precautions such as prenuptial agreements indicates that this statement is false: many people enter into a marriage with the full knowledge that it may end before the death of one of the partners (presumably contrary to their desire at the time). I think that counts as "anticipating".
Heinlein put it well: "We always marry strangers."
Only 5% of all married couples in the United States got married with a prenup. The fact that signing a prenup is so completely in everyone's interest and the fact that only 5% of marriages have them proves my point - no one is anticipating or looking forward to their own divorce.
Heinlein put it well: "We always marry strangers."
He was married 3 times. I'd be willing to bet he had 2 of those divorces behind him when he wrote that.
When my spouse and I got married, we had basically no assets of note. (Drafting and) Signing a prenup would have been in the interest of our lawyers, but not our interest.
That’s one in twenty.
Many enter marriages very optimistically and with a limited view of what it will become. People change, learn more about themselves and their partners, and kids are a powerful dynamic adding a lot of stress and needs. I don't think it's constructive to judge any divorce without having lived through that relationship first.
That's true but nobody was arguing that. The disagreement wasn't about whether they are failures (a description) but whether they failed (an action). I would say they definitely failed.