What is the primary purpose of marriage? To start a family. If your idea of marriage is that it is solely for those butterfly feelings or so that you can have the wedding celebration, you are more likely to have the marriage fail.
Yes, you need love to make a marriage work too. But that love is not in the form of shallow attraction that many mistake for love. The kind of love you need is the "this person will stick it out with me even when we can barely get any sleep due to a crying baby".
And on the topic of marriage, I have said before, the primary purpose of sex is to make babies. Yes, sex feels great. That is because your body wants to create a baby. When you short circuit that primary purpose in favor of hedonistic pleasure, you will discover that like all other hedonistic pursuits, you will be left empty if you try to skirt around the primary purpose of sex.
Why do you think sluts are so unhappy? No, being happy in the moment does not count as actually being happy.
@houseoftolstoy a great deal of illness comes from the subversion/distortion of natural functions. Affluence leads to a carnival of addictions with the end being only gratification for its own sake, which exhausts the strength and faculties of the organism. Only discipline can solve this problem, either by the environment or by man's reason.
@houseoftolstoy Marriage is based on mistrust. That is why the man "proposes" and "vows" are exchanged (which females violate due to hypergamy) before she spreads her legs. Females do not trust the man will commit.
This does not mean both sides are not sacrificing.
@houseoftolstoy No real disagreement to your points. The difficulty is that most people do not have the mental capacity to live beyond the immediate moment or to not identify with their feelings.
The level of self restraint you describe isn't realistic for most people. Only via external restraint.