And that's where it all began, right? Women were 100% dependent on their fathers and then their husbands. So it was designed to help the lower earner, that the system dictated would always be the woman. With women working now, the systems are all antiquated and need to be dismantled.
I know I remarried because I was raised with the ideal of marriage. I was married at 18 to a man who abused my kids and me. Got divorced at 20. Figured it was bad luck.
At 24 I married again because my daughter was sick and I wanted to stay home with her until she died (spoiler - she didn't end up dying). I feel a little bad about that because he loved me, but I did not marry either time for love.
I married because I was young and dumb and needed financial help. I married because that's what everyone around me did. I was promised great things about marriage. None of which came to fruition. I finally left my second husband after my kids were older because he literally played video games 10-12 hours a day and it was either leave or kill him.
I did eventually marry for love when I was 39, but I had been independent far too long by that point and couldn't abide him telling me what I could and could not do with my time (he didn't want me to finish my Master's degree or see my grandkids as much as I wanted to. Nor did he think I should have friends outside of him.)
In the end, I realized I was not the problem. The patriarchal society we live in and the institution of marriage are the problems. The odds of finding someone who you continue to love and grow with in your early 20's are ridiculously low. The purpose of life is literally to learn and grow. More likely than not, you will grow in different directions than your spouse.
So what if, instead, we used relationships for what they should be used for which is to learn and grow and then end them when they've outgrown their purpose?
Maybe you find someone you want to be with forever, maybe you don't. But either way, let's get the government and life-long commitments out of the equation.
