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Comment by graedus | Hacker News Reader

> Carrying a "get out of jail free card" would me make more reckless during arguments, this increase the chances of failure.

This is interesting. Does wearing a seat belt in a car equipped with airbags make you drive more recklessly? Does wearing a helmet make you bike more recklessly? This may be true for some people but not for me. None of those countermeasures claims to guarantee you'll walk away without a scratch if the worst happens - they are designed to mitigate damage.

I'm sure it's not a perfect analogy - none are - but what do you think?

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I honestly can't say. There are quite a few studies that suggest prenups make divorce more likely, but probably those more likely to get divorced are more likely to get prenups.

I would turn your question around. How much does your potential loss from an event affect how hard you try to prevent it from happening? My guess would be the greater your loss, the harder you'll try.

When in the midst of what feels like an irretrievable situation, knowing that you stand to lose economically can make you go back and work on it - and that's usually a good thing. That's my personal experience, but I'm sure it's not true of all people in all relationships at all times.

True - the greater the loss, generally the harder I'll try to prevent it. However, I'll make just two observations.

One: of course the potential loss from a divorce is often not equal for both partners, meaning on some level they may - to your own point - be unequally incentivized to prevent a break-up.

Two: In some unfortunate situations it may not matter if you try even harder to prevent a break-up if your partner has made up their mind. Or, if you stand to lose more, concessions can be squeezed out of you in an unfair way. Obviously you do your best to avoid a partner that would do anything like this, but in the end you can't be sure for a variety of reasons.

If I understand you correctly, you're saying that one party may do fairly well in the absence of a prenup, so is actually more likely to breakup rather than less.

That's a good point, and not something I'd thought about. Perhaps as I'm not very wealthy, these questions are so hypothetical that they sound a bit ridiculous to me. If I had a £200 million in the bank I might be more inclined to worry, no matter how in love I was. More money, more problems!

It's been shown that a biker wearing a helmet makes car drivers more reckless.

To clarify, did you mean riders of bicycles or motorcycles? I would expect the same effect applies to both, in any case.

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