While heâs not entirely wrong, the stat he usesâthat 50% of marriages end in divorceâis misleading. It accounts for every marriage, including second, third, and fourth attempts. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, only about 30% to 35% of first marriages end in divorce. Second marriages? Around 60%. And third? A dramatic 73%. So the issue isnât that marriage doesnât work, itâs that we keep doing it the same way and expecting a different outcome.
In that light, the idea of a renewable marriage contract doesnât sound so far-fetched. Divorce is hard, financially, emotionally, logistically. Women often lose income, take on the bulk of caregiving, and carry the invisible labor of rebuilding a life, while men complain of the long-tail financial consequences of alimony, support payments, and assets split down the middle. A model built around regular check-ins sounds, at the very least, more intentional than waiting for a breaking point.
And beneath the neatly packaged logic of a four-year contract is a quieter truth: We are all terrified of permanence. Of heartbreak. Of the slow, unsexy work of loving someone even in the worst times. We donât always do the work it takes to sustain the real thing. The moment commitment gets reflective, inconvenient, or emotionally complex, people start scanning for the opt-out clause. Maybe the four-year marriage contract is a way to look serious while keeping one foot out the door, just in case.
But even when thereâs no drama, divorce is rarely clean. Heidi Tallentire, a partner in matrimonial and divorce law at Krauss Shakness Tallentire & Messeri, whoâs seen these dynamics up close, tells me that an uncontested divorce can still drag on for over a year. âThe support system is so understaffed that they donât even have someone to click the button to send it to the judge,â she says. A literal button. Just sitting there. Unclicked.
And while the NBA metaphor is clever, it glosses over how gender plays out in these fantasies. As Tallentire says, âWhen you start saying there needs to be some sort of equal input into the marriage annually, what that ignores is the mental load of a parent and the emotional and indirect contributions that courts actually do account for, like raising children, but your four-year contract wonât.â
Bizuneh puts it another way: âOf course divorce rates are up. Women donât have to stay in something terrible just to eat anymore.â Heâs not wrong. Marriage, as it was originally designed, wasnât built for longevity, it was built for survival. And the freedom that divorce can bring is recent. No-fault divorce wasnât legal in all 50 states until 2010. Before that, leaving a marriage required proof of abuse, infidelity, or abandonment. So when people point fingers at âdivorce culture,â theyâre not seeing the bigger picture. Itâs not that women are leaving more, itâs that weâre finally allowed to.
With all that in mind, the four-year pitch seems less of a solution and more like a reflection of the problem. Weâve been treating connection like content: swipe, spark, stall, ghost. We soft-launch love like itâs still in beta and back out the moment things get hard. Accountability, discomfort, long distance, anything inconvenient, and weâre out. We donât practice staying, so weâre not equipped to. Slapping a contract on top of that isnât progress; itâs avoidant attachment dressed up in good branding.