I have said before that men should get married only if they wholly commit to the Catholic sacrament of marriage, and are absolutely sure their intended does too. By that I mean the whole enchilada: no sex outside of (or prior to) marriage, no divorce (and in case of abuse/adultery, no remarriage after separation), and no contraception either. Otherwise, there is no compelling reason for a man to marry.
Non-Catholics (and some Catholics too) will undoubtedly have reservations about the above, but our culture is long overdue for a hard conversation about how our having progressively shed each of the assumptions above has brought about the decline of the family and created a culture disposed toward narcissism and familial abandonment. If family bonds are a thing that can be broken as well as created, then marriage becomes “legalized fornication” and a transactional, not a covenantal arrangement.
