Me/alienation

There are a lot of aspects of the human experience with which I just don't connect and don't understand. I can't come up with a complete list off the top of my head, so I'll be adding things as they occur to me.

• Marriage: What is it for? I mean, our society has set it up to be personally beneficial in certain ways under certain circumstances, and I understand the authoritarian motives behind that, but why does it actually seem to work for a lot of people?
• Dating: how is this different from hanging out with someone to whom you feel close? Nobody seems to be able to explain this clearly.
• Parenting: There are people who actually want to raise kids, despite knowing how much work it is and how much of your life it can consume. This makes no sense to me. I especially don't understand people who actually want to procreate, given the generally deteriorating economic conditions into which most offspring will be born. The plutonomy tells us we're worthless; we should be making less of us, not more.
• Pet care: There are people who want to own pets and seem to accept the responsibility of primary lifetime care for a pet as unquestionably worthwhile, despite this being pretty much like childrearing only not quite as hard.
• Sports: Why does it matter who wins, especially if you aren't friends with any of the players?