I think marriages linger longer than non-marital relationships because of the legal aspect. I also think people tend to stick out marriages a little longer because of the whole wedding thing. A lot of weddings are a big fuccking deal, costly, and it takes a long time to plan them. Women file for divorce much more frequently than men, so you being a filer of the divorce was statistically less common.
I've been in a marriage before and you have not and I disagree. It's not the legal aspect, it's the children, if there is any. I didn't have any children in my short marriage. We had a gigantic wedding with over 200 guests and over $ 20,000 was spent collectively on the wedding. (My share was a smaller amount as I had less guests as my family/social circle was smaller), and yes, it took allot of planning and preparation. We took lots of pictures and videos and I rented a Limousine to take us from the church and it was a large event. There was also allot of investment on pre-marriage counselling where I drove a considerable distance to pick her up and bring her to a church at least a number of times so a pastor can get us prepared for a life of marriage.
After all of that, the marriage itself lasted about two/three months. There were no children with her or any tie-ins such as actually living together. Women don't have to file for divorce as they can request it and keep harassing you for it. The separation itself just felt like nothing in terms of legal arrangements, we basically stopped talking to each other, a divorce was filed and served by mail for free, and the thing ended on the anniversary of the wedding date. Going to divorce court was festive since the court office was near a movie theater where I would watch a nice movie afterwards or walk around town, or buy some tea from the Teavana store. I knew the circumstances of the separation was too toxic to fix and made the best of a very nasty situation.
However, money, planning, investment, means nothing at all or even the marriage vows. A disaster is just a disaster and there is no other way to put that. You just want to get out alive and move-on.
This one experience may doom me to at least a closet MGTOW for life, whether I'm incel or not, since she didn't present herself in a way that there would be any problems of the level I experienced with her.