I can feel the bitter just bleeding through.
You realize the decision to get married is not a logical one, yes? Well, at least it shouldn't be.
You don't have an argument.
If you enter into a legal contract for a non logical reason, then you can't complain like the OP if something like that happens to you.
What bleeds through is logic and frustration, in the face of outright stupidity. The fact that you have no argument and have to resort to innuendo is why it is frustrating.
Think about it this way.
-Present logical argument to someone
-They say "umadbro?"
-You say, well, I want to explain it further.
-They say, "You are just bitter"
Those are not arguments or legitimate responses. You can assign random attributes to people over the internet and think that that gives you some sort of argument. It doesn't. It shows that you have none, otherwise you would simply debate on the merits.
I was extremely, extremely lucky. I was with someone for 3 years, 2.5 of which was living together. Then, since I had no assets at the time, I decided to try marriage. We were married for 6.5 years. It was 9/28 years of my entire life when she completely mentally fell apart. I had one of the luckiest divorces in history. It took 2 weeks from start to finish, we wrote up our own agreement, and cost 1500 dollars. We decided on 50/50 custody of my son. 8 months later, she voluntarily signed over full custody of my son to me and moved out of the state. 2 years later, she reduced visitation with her son to one night a month and moved 3 states away. In the divorce, I kept 100% of my pensions, all my accounts, and got to keep the house, giving her her down payment half back. I was worth serious money by the time of the divorce and I dodged a bigger bullet than you would ever imagine.
People change. Having a child wasn't a life that was for her. She couldn't handle it and became a miserable person. It had nothing to do with bank accounts or anything. We had an incredible relationship, that changed when a child came. What kind of person/mother would voluntarily give up custody of their child and move multiple states away? What kind of person/mother gives up every other weekend visitation down to one night a month? The same person that was in the most amazing relationship of my life with me?
Life isn't some fairy tale. people change. Life is all about grey areas. Don't give me nonsense about romanticized fantasies about what marriages are. A relationship is a relationship. If you have any wealth and want to risk it all, be my guest. I still think that, being as insanely lucky as I was, that I should speak towards people protecting themselves, so they won't regret it later.
Would you recover so easily from not only a long term relationship falling apart, but also losing 100s of thousands of dollars from your retirement, in addition to the possibility of losing your kids, paying alimony, etc? What if you could protect at least one of these things? Are you the kind of person to knowingly put yourself at risk and hope that you are lucky? Some people are gamblers. Gambling and winning doesn't mean that you took the right course of action. It means that you drove without a seat belt and didn't crash. Congrats. I will still advise people to wear their seat belt.