Actual conservative sentiment would be, once you marry her, sleep with her. Worked for me!

Here's my reasoning. If you are expecting someone else to make you happy, you're in for disappointment. It's just human nature, one or both of you is going to disappoint the other. My apparently contrarian take on relationships is when you are ready to become selfless and start concerning yourself with making other people happy instead of yourself a) congratulations, you are now an adult human b) you can find someone that you can decide is worth the effort, and then stick to it.

And you may be surprised to find that selflessness and happiness are highly correlated. That's also human nature, IMO how we are hardwired to live as social beings. There's some great ancient literature on the subject, and I don't think it is a principle which changes much over time and culture.

That’s not conservative.... that’s just bad advice. She won’t be happy if you are just in it out of obligation and you won’t be happy either. If you have kids, they will be able to tell and I’ve never known kids that are happier in a house with two parents that don’t want to be there than one where the parents are separate and healthy.

It’s also not being a good role model for your kids to set the expectation for them to stay in a unhealthy relationship.

True, marriage should never be treated as disposable but if only one person is working on it, it’s timr to leave.

Out of interest, what makes this good advice vs. the advice in the article?

> Once you sleep with her, marry her. Sorry for being conservative here.

That's horrible advice for relationships...and makes the assumption that women will only sleep with a guy as trade for a wedding band.

I've heard rumors that women will actually sleep with someone they have no interest in having a long term relationship with for pure entertainment value -- think I was watching Nova or something, dunno?