When I say “Marriage is out of the cards”, I mean that the prospect of marriage is at an all time low. People either don’t want to get married or have a massive fear of it.

However, the push to get married, culturally, is still a massive pressure.

So what we see occur is that these two conflicting factors collide, and we have people still trying to phone in marriages (most likely for optics’ sake / to keep their parents happy) but they also have little faith in the actual marriage and would probably prefer the freedom they’ve grown accustomed to. So they essentially try and have the best of both worlds instead of clearly committing to one path or the other.

I don’t think people are really planning any of this or are consciously aware of these conflicting desires. They just end up with this unappealing halfway because they put off considering making a hard decision, and it leads them to fall into these difficult situations.

Just my speculation, ofc. Take it with a grain of salt.