the rest of the world”? That sounds more like an emergency meeting of the G8 than love personified.
‘The harsh reality is: many of us don’t know why we get married, we just do. There’s invariably a moment when it suddenly seems like a good idea. Or, “it’s time”. In the same way it might be a good idea to retile the bathroom or time to have a ham sandwich. There’s a lot more hit and hope going on than we might think. Should we not discuss what game it is we’re playing in the first case?’
Before going to see Dr H, I checked with my mum and asked her if people’s reasons for getting married were any different in her day. Her answer surprised me:
‘Not really, to be honest. I mean, marriage did have more of a function back then in as much as it made a relationship more respectable in the eyes of society at large. A young couple being very much frowned upon if they had been together any length of time and not considered tying the knot. They might even be deemed “suspicious”, which sounds hilarious today. But other than that, no. People met someone and if they got on with each other marriage was just the next step.
‘Now, as for having a child out of wedlock, that was regarded as most unacceptable. I remember thinking at the time: Well, what on earth did they think Adam and Eve were up to?’
But the pressure back then must have been unbearable, with phrases like, ‘It’s time you made an honest woman of that young lady,’ constantly doing the rounds. And young men going off to war, desperate to know they had a sweetheart to keep the home fires burning.
Then there was the pressure coming from older generations. A pressure that still exists in certain cultures today, and in my experience is usually nothing but destructive. This reminds me of a wizened, stale fag of a ‘journalist’ who once took me to task over embarking on my third marriage, the previous two having ended in divorce.
‘It’s your job to stay married,’ she huffed disapprovingly, and as animatedly as her lolloping old black-coffee-soaked bones would allow. The worst advert for ‘hanging on in there’ you could imagine. I couldn’t wait to get her out of my house. It was like having death in the room.
The polar opposite of what it feels like to be in the company of Dr H.
‘In the eyes of many, marriage is simply an old behavioural habit that seems to have slipped through the net of prejudice to swim another day. Bye-bye beheading. Bye-bye hanging. Bye-bye lynch mobs. And witch hunts. And all manner of barbaric goings on. But marriage – NO! You stay, dear. Pull up a chair, old girl. I’ll put the kettle on. Let’s have a cup of tea. You’re all right.’
And I suppose that might be the long and the short of it. While marriage is around, at least we all get a nice day out, a free meal and the bride, her mates and her mum get to look nice in the pictures.
So where does marriage come from?
‘Ah, that’s a good one. Did you know marriage as an idea was originally conceived over five thousand years ago? It was primarily a legal and binding agreement to proclaim ownership of a woman by a man. A far clearer, albeit outrageously immoral, reason for acontract than any we have today. Marriage often didn’t change the man’s life at all, as there was no commitment required from him whatsoever. All it meant was that he could stick a “keep off my grass” notice outside his new wife’s door. As for the poor wretched woman in question, she had little or no say in the matter.’
So marriage, how and why does it happen? Or perhaps now let’s drop the marriage question and simply talk about relationships. Why on earth do we think, how dare we think, that the random encounters of this modern age could/should/would lead to anything more than a brief fling?
For example: I met my first wife at a radio station. My second when she came on my TV show as a guest. And my third on a golf course in the middle of
‘The harsh reality is: many of us don’t know why we get married, we just do. There’s invariably a moment when it suddenly seems like a good idea. Or, “it’s time”. In the same way it might be a good idea to retile the bathroom or time to have a ham sandwich. There’s a lot more hit and hope going on than we might think. Should we not discuss what game it is we’re playing in the first case?’
Before going to see Dr H, I checked with my mum and asked her if people’s reasons for getting married were any different in her day. Her answer surprised me:
‘Not really, to be honest. I mean, marriage did have more of a function back then in as much as it made a relationship more respectable in the eyes of society at large. A young couple being very much frowned upon if they had been together any length of time and not considered tying the knot. They might even be deemed “suspicious”, which sounds hilarious today. But other than that, no. People met someone and if they got on with each other marriage was just the next step.
‘Now, as for having a child out of wedlock, that was regarded as most unacceptable. I remember thinking at the time: Well, what on earth did they think Adam and Eve were up to?’
But the pressure back then must have been unbearable, with phrases like, ‘It’s time you made an honest woman of that young lady,’ constantly doing the rounds. And young men going off to war, desperate to know they had a sweetheart to keep the home fires burning.
Then there was the pressure coming from older generations. A pressure that still exists in certain cultures today, and in my experience is usually nothing but destructive. This reminds me of a wizened, stale fag of a ‘journalist’ who once took me to task over embarking on my third marriage, the previous two having ended in divorce.
‘It’s your job to stay married,’ she huffed disapprovingly, and as animatedly as her lolloping old black-coffee-soaked bones would allow. The worst advert for ‘hanging on in there’ you could imagine. I couldn’t wait to get her out of my house. It was like having death in the room.
The polar opposite of what it feels like to be in the company of Dr H.
‘In the eyes of many, marriage is simply an old behavioural habit that seems to have slipped through the net of prejudice to swim another day. Bye-bye beheading. Bye-bye hanging. Bye-bye lynch mobs. And witch hunts. And all manner of barbaric goings on. But marriage – NO! You stay, dear. Pull up a chair, old girl. I’ll put the kettle on. Let’s have a cup of tea. You’re all right.’
And I suppose that might be the long and the short of it. While marriage is around, at least we all get a nice day out, a free meal and the bride, her mates and her mum get to look nice in the pictures.
So where does marriage come from?
‘Ah, that’s a good one. Did you know marriage as an idea was originally conceived over five thousand years ago? It was primarily a legal and binding agreement to proclaim ownership of a woman by a man. A far clearer, albeit outrageously immoral, reason for acontract than any we have today. Marriage often didn’t change the man’s life at all, as there was no commitment required from him whatsoever. All it meant was that he could stick a “keep off my grass” notice outside his new wife’s door. As for the poor wretched woman in question, she had little or no say in the matter.’
So marriage, how and why does it happen? Or perhaps now let’s drop the marriage question and simply talk about relationships. Why on earth do we think, how dare we think, that the random encounters of this modern age could/should/would lead to anything more than a brief fling?
For example: I met my first wife at a radio station. My second when she came on my TV show as a guest. And my third on a golf course in the middle of
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