Even though many marriages don't make it til 'death do us part,' I wish we'd change our conceptions of marriage anyway. As a society, we're big on getting married very young because it looks better and on dreaming the big fairy-tale story. Neither scenario is a recipe for success.

We not only allow but encourage our young people, especially women, to over-focus on the Queen for a Day, stress-filled, blowout party but don't ask them to pay any attention the fact that they are entering into a contract. Whether they like it or not, this contract will mix finances, possessions, and children.

Di's original comments are correct: what about the children? What about caring for each other? How many women do we still see who thought that getting married would take care of everything, only to discover that through divorce, widowhood, or illness that their role in the family would change?

We act like marriage is out major step into adulthood but enter into it like children watching a Disney movie. In many other cultures, you owe financial support to your original family regardless of whether you divorce and remarry. Abandoning your first and subsequent families would be unthinkable. I think we distract women with the wedding dress and parties so they fail to grasp that this is business as well. (Men, too). Seriously, it ought to be harder to both get married and divorced, but I don't think that's going to happen. We're too invested in the idea that love will somehow conquer all, which it cannot and does not.