Over time, many thinkers have proposed arguments against marriage for varied reasons, including financial risk when measured against the divorce rate, and questioning of the necessity to have their relationship sanctioned by government or religious authorities.

The bachelor's argument

The bachelor's argument as described by Dan Moller in his paper 'An Argument against Marriage': (a) most of us view the prospect of being married in the absence of mutual love with something like horror or at least great antipathy; (b) the mutual love between us and our spouse existing at the inception of our marriage may very well fail to persist; and hence (c) when we marry we are putting ourselves in the position of quite possibly ending up in a loveless marriage of the sort we acknowledge to be undesirable, and this is a mistake.

Arguments from social planning

Plato's Republic

A famous early critique of marriage can be found in Plato's Republic, which recommends of group marriage. Commentators have often been critical of individual local practices and traditions, often leading to changes. Examples include the early Catholic Church's efforts to eliminate concubinage and temporary marriage, the Protestant acceptance of divorce, the abolition in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries of laws against inter-faith and inter-race marriages in western countries, etc.