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Martin, I suspect that there is probably not a great deal between us in the principle of the wider issue here, but it was the specific of your inference that marriage should be capable of being ended at will, with which I took issue.
I do not subscribe to the adage of 'Marry in haste and repent at leisure', but I do think that couples who have chosen to marry, and thus give an expressed commitment to each other, should at least try to honour that commitment and persevere with the relationship rather than throw in the towel at the first sign of troubled waters as those oh! so influential 'celebrities' appear to do.
If one doesn't want to think of the relationship as being a permanent one, like Anon @ 17.00's wandering albatrosses, then just co-habit.
I would never advocate anyone being forced to remain in a marriage which no longer held any value for them; that was not my point.
Unfortunately, as perhaps we might both perceive, too many people obtain their values, opinions and standards [of behaviour, courtesy, and culture] from the fictional lives of soap opera, sitcom, and film characters and the almost equally fictional lives of a good proportion of those who perform them.