Half the men in Seattle are never-married singles, census data shows

Anecdotally, among the people I know in Seattle, many people who have happily been in the same relationship for decades are not married. People are not avoiding long-term relationships, they are avoiding the baggage and fairly rigid assumptions that comes with state intervention in their relationships. There is zero social pressure to be “officially” married so people have no reason to do it for the sake of social conformity. Both men and women are subscribing to this.

I think some of this is a side-effect of many people planning to never have children.

One thing to be mindful of is that this limits your ability to help your partner as you age. State intervention can play both ways.

That’s unfortunate. And it’s a uniquely American mindset. Long-term relationships in Europe for example do not require marriage in the same way that Americans do. People get married in the states because of the law, people get married in other countries because they just want to get married for emotional or spiritual reasons.

I'm pretty sure that people here in the US get married for emotional and spiritual reasons far more than they do for legal reasons.

While I do get your point, marriage is so deeply ingrained into the legal and financial systems of the U.S. that I think many can't help but subconsciously attach these things that really should be independent.

Marriage unlocks a wide range of legal and financial benefits: access to a spouse’s health insurance, favorable tax treatment (like joint filing and estate tax breaks), and legal protections such as hospital visitation rights, inheritance without a will, and immigration sponsorship. It also affects Social Security, parental rights, and eligibility for things like pensions and veterans’ benefits. I mean, if you get married, in the States stuff is just all worked out automatically.

In many other countries, marriage is not attached to these things.