I get why we tend to be afraid of marriage. After all, we develop our fears from the things we haven’t ever experienced, and thanks to our parents, a good majority of us haven’t ever see what it’s like for it not to fall to pieces. But I don’t think that means we should succumb to the fear because that will end up creating what Carol Costello of CNN calls the “marriage apocalypse,” which won’t help a thing.

Costello chatted with a handful of journalism students at Kent State University, her alma mater, about her career and journalistic type things, but also about marriage and their thoughts on the subject. I really hated the answers the students gave, not because I know their story or how they feel about marriage exactly, but because of how easy it was for them to toss it to the side. One student in particular claimed that she can’t imagine spending thousands on a wedding when she could instead go to Europe. I don’t think I could ever even put the two on the same plane. Traveling is all fine and good, but I wouldn’t trade a few days of vacation for a lifetime of memories with my husband and children.

I’m a divorce kid, and I won’t sugar coat it — it sucks. My parents have done the best they can to make things easy for my sister and me but regardless, my world was completely flipped on its axis and it won’t ever flip back. It’s just learned to turn in a new topsy-turvy way. I won’t bore you with the Oprah worthy dramatic details of my realization, but my parents’ divorce also changed the way I saw relationships. Watching something that once seemed so completely solid and permanent break to bits was a sobering realization that nothing in this world is guaranteed.

This story probably sounds familiar to a lot of you, given that just about 50 percent of marriages in the United States ends in divorce. It is all too common these days, some may even say it’s normal or to be expected, but I don’t think it should be.

The whole point of Costello’s piece was to say that based on other countries around the world and the way our generation sees marriage, she could easily see it becoming obsolete — she could see the United States becoming a marriage-less society. Apparently she isn’t alone because in a Pew Research study 50 percent of those surveyed think people are as well off putting other things above marriage and having a family that puts settling down above all else. I strongly disagree with that, despite my own personal fear of getting married and having it not work out.

By this point I’m guessing there are a few of you reading this that are making the argument that marriage doesn’t make you love someone any more or any less than you would if you were simply living together or spending your lives in tandem without a ring. To that I say, you’re right. Marriage isn’t like leveling up in a video game, but instead a way of ensuring you’re both all in. I think marriage is about acknowledging a commitment — yes, the legal aspect is very important — and saying you want to watch your lives evolve together as your love does the same.

Marriage is also important economically. When you’re married, you live in a two income household and your money runs together. Statistically speaking, married couples bring in more finances than non-married or cohabitating couples. Perhaps even more prevalent than that are the benefits it brings to children created by the union. It provides mental, social, physical and educational stability for the child, which is essential. Additionally, to be frank, marriage makes it a lot harder for one of the parents to up and leave their kid(s) to get out of their own relationship than it would be for a cohabitating individual.

Costello says at the end of her piece that she can see the benefits of abandoning the concept of marriage entirely, which she calls the marriage apocalypse. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think anything with the word apocalypse in it can result in anything positive.