There is no difficulty in walking out. You just walk out. Simple.
When my parents got divorced, it took all of five minutes.
When a couple good friends of mine got divorced, it took all of five minutes.
When my boyfriend got divorced, it only took a bit to draw up the paperwork.
Putting my (ex)wife out of the house took a few hours, mostly due to the packing after the yelling and screaming. Completing the divorce took another seven months, even though I had cause and the theoretical right to a 90-day divorce in my state, and even though we were able to come to an agreement on property and custody without arbitration. Non-cause divorces take a year minimum, here.
The walking out part might take five minutes, but if there's kids or property to be dealt with its going to take a lot longer to resolve that. Especially if one or both decide to be unreasonable.
A piece of paper isn't an incentive. They either want to be in the relationship, or they don't. They either want to make it work, or they don't. No piece of paper changes that. For the truly foolish, all the piece of paper does is give an incentive to hang around in an unhappy and thus unhealthy environment. No child is better off with both parents if both parents are miserable. And, if both parents are only hanging around because they signed some piece of paper, then they're idiots.
Hm...I agree with you in part. "Hanging in there" through a time of difficulty is one thing, being perpetually miserable is another thing. Nor do kids benefit from a household where the parents can't stand the sight of each other...one of the main reasons I finally decided on divorce. However....well, see below:
LOL Love isn't "augmented" by contracts.
No contract on this planet or even any that haven't been conceived of yet could help a relationship. IMO, if someone thinks some piece of paper can help their relationship, then they haven't been in love. The piece of paper is just that... a piece of paper. Emotions are entirely independent of and not reliant upon signatures on some paper.
Weeeeeeeell....I dunno. Emotions are funny things. The first year or two of marriage/relationship, its easy to be passionately, wildly in love. That's mostly infatuation though, and it fades eventually. Hopefully by then you've discovered that you actually have enough in common to love (and
like) each other anyway, and that your relationship wasn't merely infatuation and nothing more. (I think this goes with what I said about "unreasonable expectations" these days, too.)
I've known a number of people who were married for life (50+ yrs). I've heard some of them say that passion comes and goes, and that sometimes through a rough patch you may not even
feel "in love" for a time, but that staying together and working through these things was worth it. I regret to say this is outside my own experience, but sometimes I wish it had been otherwise.
Ideally, marriage is something like this: you tell each other that your love and committment are such that you wish to formalize that committment, binding yourselves together legally and financially, religiously and socially, as a sign of that committment. In a sense, it's saying that "even if I don't
feel in-love with you on Tuesday, I won't walk out the door without trying hard and long to fix things."
I know people who get divorced these days for no other reason than one saying to the other: "I love you, but I'm not
IN love with you anymore." I think that's really sad, and indicative of unreasonable expectations, lack of committment, or possibly getting married too quickly for shallow reasons in the first place. Very sad indeed when children are involved.
A parent isn't a parent because they're married. If two people are together and have children, being married doesn't make the custody issue any easier when they separate. Custody is entirely independent of marriage since it relies upon father or motherhood (or adoption), and not a marriage license. Women can get child support from the father regardless of if they married him or not. Men can get custody and visitation of a child regardless of if they married the mother.
I agree with your first sentence: being a real parent is a lifelong committment of love and care, not merely a matter of biology. Your last sentence, I have my doubts. Men often get the short end of the stick in custody even if they
were married, and I expect not being married would not help that any.
Respects,
G.