I sincerely suspect that their reasons for being legally married differ from what many might consider to be the norm.
Empty conjecture isn't bolstered by
weasel-words.
Though not some end-all definitive, Wallerstein & Blakeslee's
The Good Marriage: How and Why Love Lasts mentions four forms of marriage:
- Traditional: "the husband is the breadwinner and the wife is the homebased homemaker."
- Companionate: "based on the spouses having mutual interests in their careers and children.
- Rescue: "central focus ... on being able to heal the damage of a dysfunctional childhood or earlier hurting and damaging relationships. It is often a marriage of the walking wounded."
- Romantic: "the initial romantic spark is essential and exciting and for them, sensuality continues through decades together."
Each has it's benefits & pitfalls. You described a
companionate, which evolved past Ben Lindsey's definition & was something of a social movement in the early 1930s.
UPSIDE: the authors call it "the most common form of marriage among younger couples ... it reflects the social changes of the last two decades. At its core is friendship, equality, and the value system of the women's movement, with its corollary that the male role, too, needs to change. A major factor ... is the attempt to balance the partners' serious emotional investment in the workplace with their emotional investment in the relationship and the children."
DOWNSIDE: "it may degenerate into a brother-and-sister relationship. Invested primarily in their respective careers, husband and wife see each other only fleetingly, sharing a bed with little or no sex or emotional intimacy."
If they're having problems, it's likely due to (per your description) NOT being very good at the prerequisites --
Both individuals in a companionate marriage need self-awareness and self-confidence in order for the marriage to be successful. Without trust, friendship, commitment, and shared values, a companionate marriage may be difficult to maintain.
It could also be typified as
a marriage of convenience. Here's an interesting little op/ed from
Psychology Today --
You probably know a marriage of convenience. Some of them are of the mildly depressed variety.... The partners don't appear to have much of a connection, and they've probably contemplated divorce, but decided to stay together, perhaps because of parental duty, or for the comforts of habit, or just because they can't sell their home or afford to divorce.
You continue to paint their marriage as both empty & unsalvageable, where one or both are living in minute-by-minute torment. If there's any fact in that, then
why are you proposing to help prolong the agony?
What they both NEED is a whopping big dose of self-esteem, confidence, & communication skills. A
friend would be actively working to help them gain those skills.