This touches on why I have grown to think that the institution of marriage is doomed. The best excuse for its continued existence that I have heard is that fa

This touches on why I have grown to think that the institution of marriage is doomed. The best excuse for its continued existence that I have heard is that family, friends, and community gather to "witness" the commitment - presumably lending it some sort of strength. But most of the above evaporate at the other end of the relationship: everybody wants to come to the wedding; nobody wants to come to the divorce. When it dissolves, "these things happen", "water under the bridge", yadda yadda yadda. The community that witnesses a wedding has no teeth during the relationship either. It's no longer possible to shame people into keeping their vows. The population is too dense, and it's too easy to dispose of one set of friends who may disapprove of your behavior and reinvent yourself without necessarily even needing to move to another town. One of the underlying principles of Game (as in 'pickup artistry') is that there's no reason to feel fear or embarassment on approach because you'll likely never encounter the 'target' again. And speaking of Game, Roissy has a 2x2 matrix of shame in a post he wrote about the Tiger Woods scandal. Worth reading if the death of shame is interesting to you. http://roissy.wordpress.com/2010/01/21/the-medicalization-of-maleness/ http://roissy.wordpress.com/2010/01/21/the-medicalization-of...