The altar: Happily ever after or a death sentence?Bob B. Brown

“Until death do us part”. The famous declaration of love for your significant other. Or is it beginning to sound like an ominous warning for the road ahead?

The statistics are there. Divorce rates are higher than ever; in England and Wales 42 per cent of marriages were expected to end in divorce in 2012. That’s 13 divorces an hour. Many look back to the days of our grandparents and wonder how they did it. Where did we go wrong? But it is exactly this thought that is not right. We haven’t gone wrong. Society has changed and the concept of marriage we’ve inherited from the 13th century simply has not kept up. 

There is “sanctity” in marriage, permanence we can’t really escape. In fact, it’s been drilled into us from the moment we opened our eyes to the wondrous world of Disney. It’s this kind of ‘Happily Ever After’ syndrome we’re all unwittingly living in. Sure, we’re preoccupied right now with studies and the thrill of future job prospects, but eventually societal pressure will kick in and that underlying feeling of needing to ‘settle down’ will bubble up and take over. This is the point when we find our significant other and walk off into the distance, ‘Happily Ever After’. 

We all know the reality is far from this rose-tinted image. You are still you, paying bills, mortgages, getting promotions or demotions, still seeking that feeling of accomplishment or purpose, walking the perpetual path to happiness. All the while this is spent in the company of your beloved ‘other’. But what if you have changed to the point where you don’t want to walk with each other anymore?                        

In the ‘golden olden’ days up to around 1960s, the couple would most likely have stuck it out. Mainly because the prospects for a single, divorced woman were far more dismal and difficult than they are now. Yet the increasing empowerment of women from the 1970s onwards is key.The question now isn’t ‘why can’t we stick to the vows’ but ‘why should we?’  

This doesn’t mean condoning multiple affairs, far from it. It is more about acknowledging their existence - in USA 42 per cent of divorces are caused by infidelity, which gives either party the freedom to make their choice and not feel trapped by those sacred marital vows.  We are fortunate enough to live in a time of choices, where we can question why we do what we do and whether we’ll be happier elsewhere. It’s a time of limitless social contact. We’re able to meet new people easily and regularly. There’s more freedom than ever to change, and with that we’ve become more fickle and complacent with our desires, always looking for the ‘greener grass’. Surely with these changes to society, our expectations of marriage should change too? 

No doubt it should still represent a celebration of love between two people, in fact that’s one of the key points. However, there are other aspects to the institution of marriage that now come across as archaic and out-dated. It was only in 1932 that the bridal vow of promising to ‘cherish and obey’ the husband was omitted from the prayer book. The outdated nature of marital vows meant that single-sex marriage was only legalised as of the 1st January 2015. 

Not only have these laws, up until recently, prevented single-sex marriage, they also perpetuate the unrealistic belief that two spouses will be ‘bound together forever under the eyes of God’. This notion creates a sense of entrapment and worse yet, a sense of failure when we can’t comply with them. 

Many still feel obliged to try and ‘fix’ the problem and they linger in an unhappy marriage for far too long. This creates distress and instability for both the parents and children. For those that do approach the dreaded ‘D-word’ and get a divorce, they face a certain stigma and are almost looked on in pity by the rest of society. This can especially be the case for divorced women. Despite the leaps and bounds we’ve made in female empowerment over the last few decades, there is still an underlying current of belief that a single woman has somehow failed in life. And whilst the single man can be victim to this stigma, it is more often the case they are hailed as the ‘fun and playful bachelors’ of our time. 

The world of middle-aged divorcees is growing and will most likely continue to grow. Rather than vilify these ‘failed marriages’, we should celebrate their courage to seek change and find their own happiness. The era of sticking out a marriage, ‘in sickness and in health’ until one side becomes ‘the old ball and chain’, is over. There is no need to live under this form of guilt; where the harder it is now, the better it might be in the long run. Our preconceptions of marriage and its rigid laws need to change into something far more fluid, flexible and light-hearted, something that mirrors the changes in society today. Stephen Fry’s recent marriage to Elliot Spencer epitomises this nouveau form of marriage. It ignores the potential judgement of their thirty-year age gap and is done as a celebration of love and the joining of two people. Whether it lasts is entirely up to them and, quite frankly, none of our business. 

Our days as students are numbered and the next thing we know, this fickle marital world will be on our doorstep. Forget the next ‘ArcSoc’ Facebook invitation, soon enough it will be smug wedding invitations dropping through our letterboxes. As the next generation of grooms and brides, it is about time we walk down the aisle with an open mind and different expectations of what lies ahead.