>Also, are we just going to ignore the entire industry trying to fix marriages? eg. marriage counselors, self help books. Sure, they might be of questionable us

>Also, are we just going to ignore the entire industry trying to fix marriages? eg. marriage counselors, self help books. Sure, they might be of questionable usefulness, but solving relationship problems is hard. I'd hardly characterize it as "solving for symptoms, not root problems". What about all the lawyers that get to charge huge rates for providing services in these cases? Is that really "productive"? In the grand scheme of things, I don't think so. It shows up as GDP, but it's really a tax (or leach) on society, sort of like tax-prep services and healthcare insurers. In a way, I think OP might be right: the root problem isn't being solved. The root problem, however, is a source of huge disagreement I'm sure. Personally, I think one of the roots is people getting into bad relationships in the first place. They could avoid most of this trouble and expense by simply not getting married to Mr./Ms. Wrong. Society pushing people to get married is part of the problem here, though the other part is now society actually allows people to get divorced, instead of pressuring (or forcing) them to stay together miserably, even with abusive and/or violent partners. Of course, this is changing: people really are getting married less, which the divorce lawyers probably aren't happy about. The other root problem, IMO, is that I think marriage as a social model has probably largely outlived its usefulness, and society needs to come up with some other model for relationships. But I'm probably 20-100 years ahead of my time with this thinking.