Well marriage doesn't function in the way it used to in terms of deciding our fate but it's in our heads and it determines a lot of our actions. Like right now if you think about gay marriage - and they just started having the first gay marriages in New York - it shows what a potent idea marriage remains for people.
The older I get the more I see that there really aren't huge zeniths of happiness or a huge abyss of darkness as much as there used to be. I tend to walk a middle ground.