> repair your marriage instead of finding a new partner.

There are two ways to think about this.

The first is that once your car gets too broken to repair, you should just ditch it and get a new one.

The other is that once your arm/ankle/hip/liver has problems, you should just transplant a new one instead of doing physical therapy/exercise/eating healthier/drinking less.

In my experience, marriage is much closer to the latter situation than the former.

If you're curious what those "fixes" are for the latter, see https://www.gottman.com/product/the-seven-principles-for-mak....

Doesn't matter which situation is closer, they're both nothing like a marriage. There are more than 2 ways to think about it. If marriages are like a car, then there's also the option to ditch it and not get a new one. If it's like a critical body part, someone is way too dependent. Also, those relationship advice books focus on minor issues, not one where someone isn't willing to change, and certainly not willing to read a book like that, and instead demands the other just "love them for who they are".

> If it's like a critical body part, someone is way too dependent

This is unhelpfully extending the metaphor into a straw man. It's simple enough to see the point.

What about a situation where one party wants to make it work and the other doesn't?

In your example, your ankle is under your control - if you want to exercise it, you can. Your ankle doesn't actively sabotage your body (or if it does spread infection/etc, amputation is often used).

A marriage depends on two people working together to build a life together. If one person is not willing to put in that effort, the marriage fails.

Yes, it's a two-way street. That is why both partners say the vows.

This analogy would work better if organ transplants, prosthetics, etc. weren't a real thing and the medically right answer in many cases. If your hip needs replacement, no amount of eating healthier will cause it to no longer need replacement.

There are, of course, many situations where divorce is not the right answer for that situation, just like there are many situations for which a hip replacement is not the right answer. But it is within the set of potential right answers across all situations. There's no sense in trying to replace what is easily repairable, and there's also no sense in spending your life trying to repair what needs to be replaced.

And it's totally possible to go through life where neither you nor anyone you know ought to get a divorce - just like it's totally possible to go through life knowing nobody who needs a hip replacement, but that is hardly evidence that the procedure is the wrong answer for everyone!

The analogy works even better because organ transplants are sometimes necessary and sometimes not. Although GP started off defining a binary, I don't think they are thinking in black and white. A charitable reading of the GP implies the nuances you express.

I like this metaphor because it fits with the generation of my parents!

That's also the generation of people who don't go to the hospital because anything hurts. They go to the hospital 5 years later for something unrelated, when it's discovered it's 4 years too late to do anything about it.

> it’s a sunk cost fallacy to think you should always repair your marriage

I guess if you discount the "for better and for worse" part of the vows you take to one another....

> Why not?

Because marriage is intended as an act of lifetime committent to what is seen as a positive relationship, and so failing this original intent can never be a measure of success.. Preferable to 'failing' in the sense of staying in a 'failed marriage' (where the 'positive relationship' is no more positive) perhaps, but both of these are 'failures'.

> Because marriage is intended as an act of lifetime committent

For most of history marriage was property transfer, let's not pretend it's something more romantic than it is.

> For most of history marriage was property transfer,

Failing to see how this debunks either 'lifetime committment' or 'positive relationship' which are the only logical assertions I made - I did not attempt to qualify how to ascertain 'positive'; financial benefit can also be construed as 'positive'.

That's the fairy tale definition. For many, it's just a legal term.

Referring to a "lifetime committ[m]ent to what is seen as a positive relationship" as a fairy tale is pretty ridiculous.

The oaths made in a typical marriage are impossible, dangerous ideals that, once made, can guilt people into sticking to bad situations.

Bad people don't tend to go around being bad unless they think they can get away with it. Once someone has pinky swore to dedicate their life to them, no matter what they might do, the true colors come out. I've seen it too many times, the idea does more harm than good.

Life-long good marriages exists, I hope to achieve one myself, but the silly oath doesn't help them in any way, and it makes the bad ones worse.

> The oaths made in a typical marriage are impossible

> Life-long good marriages exists

I'm sure you have this reconciled somehow, but it sounds contradictory to me.

Impossible was a poor word choice. I meant like no one could honestly make the promises, because no one can predict how people and situations will change over a life time.

Maybe if the oaths contained an "unless you become an asshole" clause, they'd be more valuable.

hence the second statment:

"Preferable to 'failing' in the sense of staying in a 'failed marriage' (where the 'positive relationship' is no more positive) perhaps, but both of these are 'failures'. "

Thanks - I specifically worded this as generically as possible precisely to avoid getting into 'fairy tale' definitions, but yet, people are happy to reverse-project their own values onto a neutral statement to attack the some strawman in their heads.

sigh.

>> Sometimes things just don’t work out

If you're married to someone you don't want to be married to, sure sometimes things just don't work out.

If you're a kid and your parents failed marriage is destroying your life, I don't think "sometimes things just don't work out" is the answer.