They point, for example, to a growing emphasis on the primacy of individual fulfillment in any relationship, and to an all-pervasive consumer culture that stresses immediate gratification over satisfaction reached through hard work and commitment. Although I hate to make sweeping generalizations, we seem to be more and more comfortable over time with impermanence. If something doesn't contribute to our individual growth, then we leave it. Our threshold has somehow changed. Ms. Smock and others also point out that for young couples today, marriage can be a terrifying prospect.
Many young adults are the products of marriages that ended in divorce.
And in a society that has undergone such dramatic changes in attitudes about marriage and divorce, there's often little encouragement for young people trying to understand lifelong commitments. Marriage changes you, and you change together, and you need skills to do that. Skills, he adds, that society is failing to impart. I think there is a myth about marriage that says this person should complete me. Marriage is not about finding the right person.