That was the worst of these Americans! Always getting divorced and causing unpleasantness

She choked. His lordship, a young man with a shrinking horror of the deeper emotions, whether exhibited in woman or man, writhed silently. That was the worst of these Americans! Always getting divorced and causing unpleasantness. How was a fellow to know?

P. G. Wodehouse, The little nugget (1913), 10

College-educated women ... have a 78 per cent chance of their first marriage lasting at least 20 years, while women with a high-school education have only about half that chance

In our more individualized times, where we are less connected to extended families, affluent nuclear families can buy support that helps keep families together, from childcare to couples counselling. Less well-off families are on their own, and the impact is startling: in the US, college-educated women aged between 22 and 44 have a 78 per cent chance of their first marriage lasting at least 20 years, while women with a high-school education have only about half that chance.

...

But in the end, stability matters, and it tends to be greater in married households, despite claims that long-term cohabitation is equivalent. Children in France, for example, are 66 per cent more likely to see their parents break up if they are cohabiting rather than married.

B. Duffy, The Generation Divide (2023), loc. 2,517 & 2,528

No young women, no matter how clever, could break her way out of a dress like that

Every day she wore a dress of black-and-red-checked imitation wool, so big it was baggy on her, and a pair of homemade, grey cloth shoes,. She had a lot of siblings, so she wouldn't get any pretty clothes until she had a likely match - but since she didn't have anything pretty to wear, she couldn't get a match. she was trapped in a vicious circle, doomed to spend her blooming years in wishful longing: no young women, no matter how clever, could break her way out of a dress like that.

E. Chang, 'In the waiting room' tr. K.S. Kingsbury, Lust, Caution and other stories (1979), 43

It's like abroad: no one would want to go there if they hadn't been told it existed

'The three reasons for it [marriage] given in the Prayer-book have always seemed to me quite inadequate,' agreed Mr Prendergast. 'I have never had the smallest difficulty about the avoidance of fornication, and the other two advantages seem to me nothing short of disastrous.'

...

'It has always been a mystery to me why people marry,' said Mr Prendergast. 'I can't see the smallest reason for it. Quite happy, normal people. Now I can understand it in Grimes' case. He has everything to gain by the arrangement, but what does Flossie expect to gain? And yet she seems more enthusiastic about it than Grimes. It has been the tragedy of my life that whenever I start thinking about any quite simple subject I invariably feel myself confronted by some flat contradiction of this sort. Have you ever thought about marriage—in the abstract, I mean, of course?'

'Not very much, I'm afraid.'

'I don't believe,' said Mr Prendergast, 'that people would ever fall in love or want to be married if they hadn't been told about it. It's like abroad: no one would want to go there if they hadn't been told it existed. Don't you agree?'

E. Waugh (1928), 101-3

I did not marry you under the regime of the Inquisition

Mitterrand was more than difficult as a husband: he was often impossible. He demanded absolute freedom and found the slightest constraint impossible. Not long after the wedding, [Danielle] asked him brightly, when he came home one evening, 'How did your day go, darling?' The reply drew blood: 'I did not marry you under the regime of the Inquisition.'

P. Short, Mitterrand: a study in ambiguity (2013), 115

Marriage is memory, marriage is time

This will not be a story in which the death of the husband or wife becomes what amounts to the credit sequence for a new life, a catalyst for the discovery that (a point typically introduced in such accounts by the precocious child of the bereaved) “you can love more than one person.” Of course you can, but marriage is something different. Marriage is memory, marriage is time. “She didn’t know the songs,” I recall being told that a friend of a friend had said after an attempt to repeat the experience. Marriage is not only time: it is also, paradoxically, the denial of time. For forty years I saw myself through John’s eyes. I did not age. This year for the first time since I was twenty-nine I saw myself through the eyes of others. This year for the first time since I was twenty-nine I realized that my image of myself was of someone significantly younger. 

J. Didion, The year of magical thinking (2005), 197

You’ve seen people live perfectly happily within their less than perfect unions

Wouldn’t your unhappiness be just the same as here? No, it wouldn’t. It would exist within the claustrophobia of no choice, rather than the agoraphobia of open options. It would have different dimensions, different weight. But surely an incompatible marriage is unacceptable. An American notion. A universal notion. Women in Bengal rebel against bad marriages, for God’s sake. Women in Bengal don’t rebel against emotional incompatibility. They wouldn’t understand what you mean. But I’m not in Bengal! If you were in Poland, you’d be making a sensible accommodation to your situation. You’ve seen people live perfectly happily within their less than perfect unions.

E. Hoffman, Lost in Translation (1989), 230

Fidelity, in my youth, was largely a question of bad roads and poor bus services

Fidelity, in my youth, was largely a question of bad roads and poor bus services - the crack-up began when we began to move about. Now mobility and overcrowding offer so many alternative choices and proliferation of loves that faithfulness to one person almost suggests dim-wittedness.

L.Lee, 'Notes on marriage' Village Christmas and other notes on the English year (2015), 122