SGB I'm going to try to answer the exact questions you are posing.
You ask: "If you yourself are in a wonderful marriage and like to talk about it and recommend the institution to other women, do you think you might have some responsibility towards those who naively think that love&marriage will solve all their problems and thereby end up in awful abusive relationships?"
Well first of all, I think ours is a wonderful marriage, but I cannot think of a single occasion when I have recommended the institution to anyone. That would be incredibly presumptious of me. I can't for the life of me see how anyone would conclude that because our marriage is good, marriage itself must be good, because within every marriage or relationship, there will be two individuals who will be very different to my H and I - and therefore each relationship will be different.
You personally have stated that you know of lots of happy monogamous relationships, but it didn't lead you to conclude that monogamy was best for you personally. In the same way, reading your account of polyamorous relationships doesn't lead me to think that just because you're happy, polyamory would suit me. But then, neither of us were ever naive enough to think that one lifestyle would solve all our problems.
As for our responsibility towards those who are naive enough to think that marriage will solve all their problems, I'm presuming you mean our responsibility to people who are known to us, since offering an opinion on this to strangers would be rather odd, unless you are a writer, speech maker or someone in a role-model position who is regularly quoted in the press.
With people I know, I can think of numerous occasions when I have tried to deter people (male and female) from having a relationship/marrying/staying in a relationship with total dickhead, but these warnings have been about the individuals they have become entangled with. I can also remember advising someone very close to me to think hard about marrying, because I thought that this person lacked the commitment herself and was marrying because of her age and her desire to have children, rather than love for her partner. My warnings have therefore been about the individuals and not the concept of being married.
With our teenage DCs, we are at pains to discuss the many ways of living their lives, and that marriage is just one of those options.
Bringing other aspects of this thread into the equation, particularly that oft quoted survey about married women being among the unhappiest in society, as ever, I think it makes sense to go behind the statistics and question them. I wonder whether the majority of those unhappy women are in marriages that more closely represent the "legalised prostitution" mentioned by Grace? The sort of marriage where sex is bartered for financial security/keeping the peace, where child-care is perceived to be less valuable than paid work and where domestic chores are seen to be women's responsibility?
And whether this is why none of that resonates with women like AF and I, who have built egalitarian relationships with men who want nothing less?
In summary then, I don't think that marriage itself causes misery, just marriages between unsuitable/unsuited people.
However, you say that this question arose from the sex worker thread. The main arguments on that thread seem to be that sex workers should/shouldn't feel responsibility for collateral hurt caused by their work, either to deceived partners or to workers who are forced to engage in this labour.
So, if a happily married person feels no responsibility to society at large to point out that marriages bring unhappiness to many, why should happy sex workers feel responsible for their work, when it brings unhappiness to so many?
Having established that I don't think that marriage itself brings misery to people, what about sex work?
Yes, I do think the concept of selling sex for money brings misery to people. I have a political objection to anyone feeling entitled to pay for the use of another's body. Since the majority of prostitutes are women and the majority of pimps and punters are men, I object to the notion that it is acceptable to objectify women for sex.
My argument is that this industry always brings misery to someone - women in general, if male users think it?s acceptable to reduce women to the sum of their bodies or to classify women into saint/sinner groups, the majority of the workers, or the women who have the misfortune to be married to a man who secretly uses prostitutes. I can?t think of a single woman who benefits from prostitution. Even the high-earning ?choice? sex workers on that thread suffer in ways that perhaps they won?t acknowledge, because they live in a society that tolerates women being objectified and places less value on a woman?s brain than her sexuality. As long as people think it?s okay to do this and buy women for sex and not their brainpower, that sexism will exist.
If we accept that the women involved in this trade by choice and/or are paid well are in the minority, the trade itself does enormous physical and mental harm to the majority of those on the "shop floor". If it were a regulated industry that was liable to a Health and Safety Inspection, the majority of the workplaces would be closed down overnight because of the harm to the workers and there would be an equal pay challenge between the sex workers (female) and the pimps (male) All that would be left therefore would be regulated brothels and high-end "escort work" where no pimps were involved.
As we saw on that thread, even the well-paid "choice" sex workers, concede that if their clients' partners knew about these transactions, it would bring misery.
So it depends on your beliefs, doesn?t it? I disagree that marriage as a construct causes unhappiness to women, but that their choice of partner and choice of role within it can cause huge misery. I agree that prostitution does causes misery to women and therefore those within it have a responsibility to stop it and deter other women from selling their bodies for money.