Marriage Is a Business

There’s a way marriage gets talked about that makes it sound like the peak of a love story, the moment where everything clicks into place and stays there. But strip away the aesthetics of white dresses and chapels and what you’re left with is a contract. Weddings alone can run into tens of thousands. After that comes the merging of accounts, shared expenses, long-term financial entanglement that is much harder to undo than it is to enter. One person’s debt can become the other’s problem. One person’s career choices can shape the other’s stability.

People lean into the idea that marriage is about commitment, about choosing each other every day, about building a life together. The truth is, the government doesn’t care about your love story. Marriage has always been about property, inheritance, and control over women’s labor and bodies.

Divorce makes the contractual nature obvious very quickly. Suddenly everything has to be divided, calculated, negotiated. The process is expensive, stressful, and often drawn out. The reason why divorce costs so much is because there is something real to untangle. You are dissolving a legal and financial structure, not just ending a feeling. Anyone can fall of love at any time. But actually extracting yourself from a legal agreement is not as simple.

Marriage functions like going into business with someone, which is why it actually makes sense to look at things people usually avoid in dating. Tax returns, debt, credit score, spending habits. All of that matters once your finances are tied together. But notice how uncomfortable that feels in a relationship before marriage. Asking those questions to a boyfriend can come off as invasive and strange. And yet those are exactly the things that become unavoidable once you’re married. If that level of transparency feels uncomfortable before marriage, it doesn’t suddenly become easier after.