The vast majority of married couples that I know personally are really happy in their marriages. I do not know couples in sexless marriages. Well I knew one. They already divorced.
My married friends? They are VERY married & VERY happy. So maybe the guys who only know miserable marrieds? Maybe they are miserable single people. I am a happy single person & I know tons of happy married people.
I have no idea how happy or how unhappy my married friends are. A lot of married people are good at being quiet if things are bad in their marriages. There were 3 marriages in my main local area social circle in 2017 and one in 2020. The 2017 marriages are coming up on 5 years with no divorce filings. One of the 3 is having is their first child in 2022. The guy is the 2020 marriage is very withdrawn lately.
There seem to be a few tangential couples I know who have either had a kid recently (since Jan. 1, 2020) or are currently expecting.
When both of my cousins got married, I thought both of their marriages were bad ideas.
With the older of the two, every family member was unimpressed with his bride selection. Prior to the marriage, I had only met her at one social event. I didn't have much of an impression of her. At one time before he proposed, my grandmother told him to never marry this woman. This woman overheard this private converstion and was livid. It created a wedge between that cousin and the grandmother for the remainder of her life. The divorce happened after my grandmother had died. This was only a 5 year long marriage with no children. When it was announced they divorced, I was surprised more by the timing of the divorce than the actual event of the divorce.
Marriages often take longer to fail than anyone expects that they will take to fail.
With the younger of two, the marriage was precipitated by an unintended pregnancy. The marriage lasted 9 years as they put forth a real effort to make it work for the sake of the children. They compounded their first unintended pregnancy with a second child that was more planned. When it was announced they divorced, I was surprised more by the timing of the divorce than the actual event of the divorce. Unlike the situation above, I disliked this woman. She posted some nasty comments on my Facebook Wall one time over something that wasn't a big deal.
One of my friends from college had a lousy, unstable marriage that lasted about 10 years. That one also lasted far longer than it needed to last. It was also precipitated by an unintended pregnancy.
When marriages fail, they often fail after years of subpar quality times. When non-marital relationships fail, they fail faster. Marriages have a way of trapping people in subpar relationships for longer periods of time.
@BeExcellent -- The friends you personally know may be outliers in terms of marital quality. Neither your social circle nor my social circle would constitute a representative sample of all married couples. As illustrated above, I know a mixed bag of people's marital outcomes. So far, there are fewer divorces in my social circle than I would expected. If you ask me again on January 1, 2030, my answer to that might be different.
