Till death do us part

Why do some people get married if they’re going to get divorced?

The question is not so stupid if we consider the enormous amount of money that goes into the simple act of tying the knot. The expenditures include floral arrangements, the catering service, the bridal gown, the orchestra or music band for the ocassion, the gold rings, wedding invitations, hall rental, limousine rental, wedding cake, honeymoon trip, the tuxedo of the groom, the dresses of the bridal maids, and all this besides the engagement ring itself which is usually quite expensive. All in all, the cost of getting married may easily approach or even surpass the cost of a brand new sports car or perhaps a yacht, except that no one in his right mind has any intention of divorcing his hard-earned sports car or his hard-earned yacht.

Most of those who do get married and end up getting divorced, when asked why they got married in the first place, will most likely answer that when they got married they thought love would last forever and love alone would overcome whatever grievances and quarrels they would face as a married couple. In the USA, for quite some time now, about half of those who do get married end up getting divorced. They make solemn promises of eternal love, where the word eternal has been redefined to mean five or six years at the most. What made them think in each individual case that they were rather special, that breakup would not even be a possibility in the future? What made them think they would not end up in divorce court as time went by? Did they really believe when they were taking their wedding vows that they were immune to a breakup?

Still some others with religious beliefs might argue that, since living together as a couple without getting married is akin to living in sin and going to Hell, they are willing to tie the knot by doing what was considered in days of yore as “the right thing to do”. However, considering that marriage vows are taken to be something sacred (the words “united in holy matrimony” still appear on many marriage certificates), an oath solemnly made in the presence of the Lord with the wording “till death do us part”, breaking up a marriage after taking a sacred vow in front of a minister of the Lord would seem to be a sin just as bad as simply living together as an ummarried couple. Thus, invoking the sanctity of marriage as an excuse to go ahead and get married thus doing “the right thing” is no excuse at all, it is a rather poor argument and justification to take such a big step.

The ages old excuse that “when you’re in love, you don’t think” used when jumping into marriage without gauging the future consequences cannot be taken at face value. Even those blindly in love still go to work, still do math calculations when required, still go out shopping when needed and still drive their cars, and these activities require a fully functioning brain taking logical decisions at every minute. If all brain activities except those having to do with hormonal functions became impaired, it would become impossible even to remain standing up. As an excuse, it is a rather poor excuse, at best.

Marrying the wrong person is not just something that happens to dumb people. It happens to bright people too. None other than Einstein himself got married, he took his sacred vows, he promised to his bride that he would always be at her side, forever, “till death do us (a)part”. And what happened? Yep, his marriage ended up in divorce, and it was a rather messy divorce, certainly not in the most amicable terms. It also happens to people who belong to the highest social strata. Though fairy tales have popularised the fantasy notion “and they lived happily ever after” (that’s why they’re called fairy tales), the truth of the matter is that not even Adam and Eve themselves were able to make that claim of living happily ever after, most certainly not them (and they were not even married, for the institution of marriage had not yet been instituted by any established religion!). The story lines of such fairy tales often describe a princess swept off her feet and being carried away by a handsome prince to a beautiful castle. Something along this story line happened to Princess Diana. She got married to a prince just as fairy tales dictate. Her prince was not bad looking, he was not a drunkard, he was a gentleman, well educated, in line to become King of England. Both took their sacred vows in a majestic scenario, their wedding was proclaimed as the wedding of the century and shared by all Britons with joy. And what happened? After just a few years, all Hell broke loose, and they ended up hating each other and saying goodbye forever in yet another rather messy divorce, recanting from their wedding vows which in the end were nothing but promises not to be kept. Things got so bad that the Mother Queen referred to the last year of Prince Charles and Princess Diana as annus horribilis (a most horrible year, and even those words did not begin to describe it). Thus, getting married to a prince or a princess is no guarantee that whatsoever that what amounts to a ticking time bomb will not end up exploding in a big bang worthy of a Wagnerian drama.

In divorce court, the argument usually given for the breakup is “unreconcilable differences”. But if the phrase “till death do us (a)part” is to have any meaning at all, then both husband and wife should feel obligated to chew up anything they might have against each other, tolerating each other’s deficiencies as unbearable as they might seem at times, and accepting their self-imposed fate as a result of a very poor decision that lead all the way up to marriage, accepting the stark reality that there is no other way out of what turned to be a very bad deal other than death itself, which is a rather grim way to escape from what otherwise can end up being Hell on Earth. On the other hand, it is true that one of the main purposes of taking this lifelong commitment is to protect the offspring that come later in life as a result of marriage. Once the kids have grown up, are on their own and leave the nest, a separation in amicable terms is undoubtedly far better than being chained forever to someone when there is no longer any love either way.

The Catholic Church is very specific on this issue. A separation is acceptable as long as none of the members of married couples who split ever get married again to someone else. In other words, once the wedding vows have been taken, the knot is tied forever and cannot be broken up, even if the husband turns up to be a drug addict or a homosexual, even if the wife turns up to be an unrepentant adulteress, even if they both end up hating each other in such a way that they cannot bear to see one another for a single minute. The indisolubility of marriage follows from a strict interpretation of the New Testament, when Jesus himself performed his first miracle during a wedding held at Cana. As a matter of fact, marriage counselors were not even contemplated in those times, both husband and wife were expected to live up to their end of the agreement just as they both promised. If, once married, things begin to sour quickly, the most cynical might argue that taking such vows which have the potential of ruining one’s life forever and for which there is no escape is akin to making a deal with the Devil himself. No way out, that’s the admonishment. If you err, if you married someone you should have not married, well, you will have to accept the fact that you have ruined the rest of your life, without the chance to correct what turned out to be a very awful mistake. It is no wonder that, considering the alternatives, in the past many men and women opted to become monks and nuns, thereby renouncing at the possibility of playing a Russian roulette with this old institution we now call marriage. And most certainly, although splitting up and marrying someone else is considered to be a sin that comes from breaking one’s vows in the countenance of the Lord in his shrine, refusing to marry and remaining celibate forever is not considered to be a sin, quite the contrary, it is considered to be a road to sainthood. The only objection that can be raised would be that, if everybody on Earth at one point in time had decided to live a monastic life, mankind would most certainly become extinct in the course of a single generation; the only thing that keeps this from happening is that the sex drive is stronger than any religious belief that may be imposed upon Man, and it is this drive that has kept mankind away from extinction.

There are those who think that marriage is an institution created by Man, while there are others who believe that marriage is a sacrament instituted by God. Among the former there are those who are convinced that marriage is an outdated tradition that has outlived its usefulness and whose course has run out. Among the latter there are those who are convinced that marriage is a sure way to martyrdom and therefore a way to Heaven. A noted Mexican humorist once said: “How can priests talk with such authority about Hell if they have never been married?”.

If marriage is not to be taken lightly, if marriage is to be taken as one of the most important and serious decisions a man and a woman can take jointly, then a welcome change in all marriage ceremonies around the world would be not to hold on to marriage as something easy to do. Beyond the economic considerations that make marriage such a difficult step to take, the truth of the matter is that it is rather easy nowadays to get married, far too easy. If it is going to be something nearly impossible to undo, then marriage itself should be something equally impossible to get into in the first place. Perhaps the time has come to demand from all those who want to get married a reasonable trial period, say two years, of living together as a couple. No marriage ceremony performed until the trial period is over. Two years should be a reasonable time period for a woman to find out that her would-be-husband is a drunkard or a wife-beater. It should also be a reasonable time period for a man to find out that his princess on the outside is really an ill-tempered hag on the inside. The justification for the pre-marital time period is that divorce cannot possibly take place between two persons who were never married to begin with.

Even after a two-year time trial period, the wording used in the religious ceremonies themselves should be modified in order to make both parties think twice and think hard before they say “I do”. Perhaps the priest or the parson might add: “The step you are about to take is extremely serious, this is no joke, this is no game; are you absolutely sure that you still want to take your wedding vows? Are you both absolutely sure that the word divorce has been banned from your vocabulary from now on? Look at me straight in the eye, think about all those before you who have taken the same vows you want to take now and who have ended up in divorce court. Are you absolutely, positively sure, that you will not end up the same way? What makes you so sure? Remember that you are about to take a sacred oath, and as a minister of the Lord I hereby forbid you to take such an oath if you are not absolutely positively sure you want to take this step. If there is even the smallest trace of doubt in your minds that your marriage will not last forever, then I implore you to stop at this very moment, for this will be the last chance you will have to keep a marriage going bad from happening. And just so you will be sure you want to say YES when you are asked to do so by me, I will give you ten minutes alone in that private booth you see over there so you can talk things over for a last time, and when you come out I expect you both to be sure without the faintest hint of doubt that you will live up to your promise.”

So, why do some people get married if they’re going to get divorced? The most logical explanation, given the above considerations, is that it is very easy to jump into the pool even if the pool is empty and has no water inside, when you are blind. The rules should be tightened and the requirements should be strengthened. If getting married is turned into a rather difficult thing to do, if the act of marriage becomes an almost impossible event except in those cases when both parties have passed all their tests with flying colors, if getting married becomes just as difficult if not more than getting divorced, then divorce rates might go all the way down to zero or something very close to zero. It is an experiment worth trying.

There is, of course, that lingering possibility that even if marriage rules are tightened nearly to a breaking point, testing the patience of both bride and groom to the very limit, divorce rates will remain as high as always, in which case, the question would be have to be rephrased as follows:

Why do some people STILL get divorced, after all they have gone through in order to get married, undergoing a painful divorce almost as hard to get as was the wedding itself?

The answer would then have to be, without a doubt, when it comes to marriage: “because some people are just plain dumb, period”.