Marriage never seemed like enough of a pay off for all the sacrifice it required.”

Robin Tillotson has spent all of her sixty two years unmarried and childfree. Though she dated throughout her younger days and enjoyed meaningful romantic relationships, none of those relationships meant more to Tillotson than the freedom to control her own finances, career trajectory, and overall movements throughout life. “It would have felt like prison”, she says, to trade in the privilege of single life for the confinements of compromising to meet a husband’s needs and sacrificing self to ensure an offspring’s healthy growth into adulthood.

Kerry Lee can relate to Tillotson’s analogy for marriage. She freed herself from her own matrimonial prison five years ago.

“I felt constrained when I was married,” the 43-year-old says. “It felt restricting, like a violation.”