What is fascinating about marriage is why anyone wants to get married.

De Botton’s line treats marriage less as a romantic inevitability than as a puzzling social choice. It implies that, given the compromises, disappointments, and long-term work involved, the truly interesting question is not why marriages fail but why people still voluntarily enter them. The remark fits his broader project of applying philosophical skepticism to everyday ideals: it punctures the cultural script that marriage is the natural culmination of love and invites a more realistic inventory of motives—security, status, companionship, fear of loneliness, hope for personal growth. The fascination, then, lies in the gap between the institution’s demands and our persistent longing for it.