Marriage used to be the starting point. Two people would come together with almost nothing to their name, but each other, and then they would build everything side by side. This process of building led to bonding, it built loyalty, it required tremendous sacrifice and most of all it taught interdependence. But now we are told the opposite. We are told instead that we need to have it all before we marry. We need a good career, a home, a bunch of money in the bank, your entire identity discovered and solidified, a passport filled with stamps, a degree and much dating experience. The problem with this is that by the time two people finally decide to join one another, well they have spent most of their lives learning how to do life alone. So it is not wonder then that building a life with someone else, suddenly feels so much harder. Marriage used to be a beginning, not it is an after thought to an already built life. Two already self-sufficient and self-reliant people do not easily merge and mesh. It is hard to go from the perspective of “mine”, to “ours”, when individualism is all we have ever known. And this is why individualism has become the death of marriage.