A 'happily ever after' divorce

Wedding rings turn ordinary people into couples – suddenly they are talking about the dry-cleaning, foods the other can’t digest, family holidays. There is immense information – quite useless to spectators – couched in memories, shared anecdotes, photo albums and the wine-stained carpet they never threw away. They get to attend weddings and funerals together, moan about school admissions and in-laws, and complete each other’s jokes in a flat voice. It is a given that couplehood continues forever, that it is a circle of life that will, well, keep circling.

Yet we see around us broken homes. Marriages that hit the brakes with a screech and everyone jumping out in a hurry. It is not just the inhabitants of that particular family who have to adjust without each other, it is the neighbour and relative and well-wisher too who must come to terms with this abrupt reconfiguration. Marriage is humdrum, taken for granted, goes on and on – and when the order is reversed, opinions pour in from everywhere. Most of the tch tch is reserved regarding the children if any. Bad marriages must go on till husband and wife die because the kids need both parents, however squabbling, at all times. That couples with issues think reproduction will solve their marital problems in the first place is a major fact in such alliances disintegrating along the way; the kids have been deliberately brought into a toxic atmosphere and carry the guilt of not having improved the situation. Marriages that never took off now have more members to consider!

The debate over this is endless: do people need their parents to stay together despite all odds or have them part ways like good-natured adults, setting up home with other partners? Amanda Abbington, actor Martin Freeman’s ex, is worried over the adjustments their children have to make in the light of their parting. That this could cause ‘irreparable damage’ to the kids, leading them to drink and drugs, is the Sherlock actress’s main fear.

So which is better: staying together for the sake of the kids or to take the kids into confidence, treat them like equals and tell them how rough the going is? Because however much one thinks the younger generation self-centered, they are as sensitive to discord in their surroundings as anyone else, going by memoirs and the hours of therapy some of them require to get through the passive-aggressive relations of their parents or the downright screaming matches. Unhappy people really cannot raise happy people.

Perhaps the resolution lies in a more neutral zone. Marriages may or may not go on with sparring partners, but a divorce needs two friends if the children must grow up in a well-adjusted atmosphere. That is all a growing person needs: parents who may or may not be together but who get on okay. If marriage does not allow happiness into the home, a divorce should. How to have a happy marriage may be from the fairytale genre, but how to have a happy divorce is a survival manual.