"Now that we don't march lockstep into marriage anymore and now that women don't require men for economic support, the reasons for marrying..."

"— for a lot of people — are never going to mount up to the point where they justify giving up the status quo of singlehood."

The last sentence of a post of mine from August 2006, which I read today as a consequence of monitoring comments newly added to old posts.

The new comment was a bit of grammar comedy (from Invisible Rope):

Men don't marry because women can't properly use the reflexive tense in their writing.

See the post title to get the joke.

Rereading the old post was an eerie experience, given my recent history. Am I piling up the reasons for marrying and for maintaining "the status quo of singlehood" to see which pile "mounts up" the highest? No, no, it doesn't feel like that at all. That sentence was obviously written by someone who was solidly single and justifying it. Faced with a choice, how rational are we?