In my experience dealing with young men who are thinking about marriage, the number one fear is not marriage itself. It’s the fear of their spouses deciding that for one reason or another that their husbands are disposable.
And as one of them told me recently, he sees how his own father and his older brother were turned in Child-support/Alimony slaves to their ex’s. He fears that more than nearly everything else. His reaction so far is to just say “No” to the fair sex. He likes women but has a very hard time in trusting them.
“she has “accidentally stumbled upon a subculture” of men who say “in no uncertain terms, that they’re never getting married”
Subculture? It is THE CULTURE.
Men risk far too much (as you describe); if you ever want to talk a guy out of marriage, simply ask a man how he’ll feel ten years down the road when his kids are sleeping in the house he used to live in, with some strange guy sleeping in the bed he used to sleep in.
I’m married more than fifteen years, but she’s a foreigner from a traditional background.