Posting on my throwaway because I don't want to risk this getting found by my SO.

A little backstory which may or may not be relevant to your judgment.  Every single member of my extended family (grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc) has had at least one divorce.  My own mother married three times, each marriage lasting no longer than a few years.  We had to uproot our lives each time a marriage went sour and move to a new school district.  I'm a little disenchanted (and bitter) with the idea of marriage.  From my perspective, marriage just represents the beginning of the long drawn out process of death of a relationship, and potentially the ruin of lives.

See, my mom and my dad were perfectly happy before getting married, from the stories I've heard it was the best time of either one's lives.  Then they got married, had me, and split.  I don't know the full story of why this happened, and I don't really want to know, it's not my business. I was still a baby when they broke it off, so I never even got to develop the memory of a happy, whole family.  My earliest memories are of being handed off for visitation with my dad once every two weekends. After the divorce, my father was a broken man.  He was never truly happy again.  He remarried and stayed in that marriage for around 20 years but was never actually happy with his life.  Eventually he hit rock bottom, developed a meth habit, his wife left him, and he died penniless and a broken man.

Now I'm a grown man, I've been with my SO for about a decade.  She has been dropping heavy hints (read: basically demanding) that she wants to get married.  I can't really blame her.  In the time that we've been together, I know several couples who have met, gotten married, and had children.  Her parents are still together and she didn't have the bitter experience I did growing up, so the idea of marriage is still sacred and magical to her.  Her mom recently was diagnosed with leukemia, which is under control, but it has really kindled my SO's desire to get married, so her mom can be present at the wedding.  Despite this, I'm still dragging my feet because it feels like I now have a time limit to do something I really don't see the point of.  I mean, does our relationship really mean anything less than a married couple's, just because they got the state to recognize their union?  We've been together 10 years, many (most?) marriages last way less than that.

I haven't really opened up to her about how I feel about marriage, because I know it would probably break her heart to find out that I'm 100% apathetic to the idea.  So does this make me an asshole?