Little annoyances had begun to feel like a life sentence, and the differences that had once challenged us to be flexible and open-minded now seemed unbearable. He'd walk three blocks for an overpriced cup of Starbucks, while I preferred coffee from the corner deli. I'd end up in tears whenever he neglected to recycle a can of Diet Coke, wishing I had Al Gore by my side so that Eric would take my pleas to protect the planet more seriously. And where I had once admired his ambition, nights of crawling into bed alone when he was still toiling at the office left me questioning his ability to balance his professional and personal responsibilities—I feared that down the road, I'd practically be a single mom.

"It's like Prince said, 'It means forever and that’s a mighty long time,'" says Ann Stein*, a graphic designer who's been married for nine years, happily for about eight of them. "Anyone with half a brain will question the idea of 'forever' with one person and wonder, Is he right for me? After you come back from a romantic honeymoon, the reality hits that you’ll never experience that feeling of falling in love again, and all you can see is the day-to-day forever-ness."

Jillian Straus has given a lot of thought to her own generation's fear of the ultimate commitment, but the author of Unhooked Generation: The Truth About Why We're Still Single was still unable to avoid trepidation about settling down herself. "Maybe you think that when you actually tie the knot, the endless second-guessing about if you’re ready will stop," says Straus, who got married last year. The writer has also found marriage to be extremely isolating. "My single friends stopped confiding in me about their dates because I'm not one of 'them' anymore," says the 34-year old. "At the same time, I'm going through new things, but it’s taboo to complain about the everyday stresses of married life. You don't want to betray your spouse, and even if you could talk about it, people would think you have a bad marriage. It's very lonely."

This code of silence is just one of the reasons why Rabbi Sherre Zwelling Hirsch in Los Angeles requires all the couples she marries to meet with her six weeks after the wedding and again at the six-month mark. "Six weeks, because that's when the party's over; and after all the excitement of the wedding, there's nowhere else to go but down," she explains. "At six months, couples are usually in a funk. A good percentage of their fantasies have been killed, relationships with friends are shifting, and they're thinking, ‘This is not what I pictured it would be.'"