"Even if I got rid of all my problems, I'd just go out and get new ones..."

Thoughts on marriage
7:51 a.m. on 2004-10-08

Bob Geldof is presenting a documentary on Channel Four about the erosion of marriage.

Hmm. My feelings for Bob Geldof aside (miserable bugger, getting his honorary degree from Dundee with such a sour puss expression), the ad for the documentary raised an interesting question.

Since when has marriage been all that great?

In Sri Lanka, in the city of Kandy, there is a lake, and on this lake sits a small, man-made island. This island was used, during the colonial period, by the British as a weapons store, but it's original purpose was as a location for the king of Sri Lanka's harem.

Because a thousand years ago, if you were the king of somewhere like Ceylon, one way you would demonstrate your social status is by having a harem. A really big harem. And putting them on an island all of their own.

As I'm warming to this idea, I started to wonder: maybe divorce, the creation and prolification of divorce, has actually made "Marriage" into a stronger concept than it ever has been. Maybe the high divorce rate should be praised by those relationship idealists, and not criticised.

Think about it. In the past, why did people get married? Social status? Desire for sons? Prior arrangement? Money? Check for all of the above. But love? Rarely came into it.

And don't think that when two people got married, that marriage had a greater chance of success that it does now.

In the past, I've always thought that one of the reasons for today's high divorce rate is that people are living longer, and two human beings are simply not supposed to spend fifty years of their life with only one another.

And I was right, I think, but this only is one reason. Another is the simple fact that more people have access to divorce than ever before.

Go back to the past. Did husbands truly spend their entire lives with only one woman? Heck no. If you were rich and powerful, you could prove your worth in how many wives - or concubines - you had. If you were poor, you went to the whorehouse. If you were a woman, you could be abused by your husband, enslaved by your husband, cheated on and emotionally and physically abandoned. You could also sleep with someone else, and bring a bastard child into the world, but even then, divorce was unlikely.

Now things have changed. Now, when a marriage falls apart, the two people in it can go to a lawyer and have that marriage officially ended. The two parties can say their goodbyes and move on with their lives.

The number of marriages who have truly lived up to the ideal of "love this person and only this person, til death do you part" has always been in the minority. It's just, it's only recently that the majority have had a way out.

I know I'm repeating myself, but maybe the creation of divorce really has strengthened "marriage" as a concept. It's always been around, in many different religions, in different cultures and time periods, across the globe. But the participation of 'love' in the whole affair is a relatively modern idea.

Plenty of people do believe in marriage as just this, as the union of two people in love. Which is fine. Personally I don't believe that I will ever need the label of "marriage" to confirm the strength of my relationship to someone. But that's just me.

However, when people like Bob Geldof, and all those conservative idealists start to preach about the destruction of marriage by whatver cause (divorce rates, slipping morality, homosexuality, the 'disposable' nature of society) I'd like them to show me exactly what time period they'd like to hark back to. Has there ever been a society in which the majority of marriages have been true unions of love? Or is this a myth, perpetrated by those same conservative idealists, used by them in that most ridiculous argument: bemoaning the erosion of something which has never truly existed?

Listening to: Kendall Payne "Supermodels"

Quote:
"So Josh is this your first time here?"
"Ah no Sam, I've been here lots of times."
"No,I mean in a room without pillows."

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