News: All through my website you see pictures of my beloved Maltese Bonnie – who inspired six children’s books and my memoir, A Small Dog Saved My Life. Well I am so sad to record that Bonnie died in my arms at home on November 4th. She came into my life in 2002 and has brought such joy. There is a small hole in my life now, and there always will be. Dogs (yes, other animals too) teach us how to love in a very special way.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
WHEN A MARRIAGE IS ‘DEAD.’
We lov’d and we lov’d, as long as we could,
Till our love was loved out in us both:
But our marriage is dead, when the pleasure is fled;
‘Twas pleasure first made it an oath.
John Dryden (Poet Laureate in 1668)
This is an extract from a hard-edged little poem called ‘Marriage a-la-mode’, by the great seventeenth century poet and playwright John Dryden (1631-1700). It begins:
‘Why should a foolish marriage vow
Which long ago was made
Oblige us to each other now
When passion is decay’d?’
What a question! This issue crops up again and again in an advice columnist’s life. People like me are on the receiving end of so much human pain. The man or woman who has fallen in love outside the marriage may well argue, like Dryden, that ‘enough is enough.’ On the other hand, the person left behind will probably invoke ideas of duty, as well as love. The answer to the poet’s rhetorical ‘why’ is, of course, complex and many-layered. You could reply:
*Because a marriage should not just be cast aside without thought and some effort made.
*Because of the children.
*Because we have so much history and have been through so much together.
*Because a vow is a vow.
*Because this attitude is just selfish, not to say cruel.
Yet the lines I chose at the top offer another argument – saying that some marriages do run their course, and it is dishonest to pretend otherwise. If the marriage vow (the ‘oath’) was made because of passion (the ‘pleasure’), then when that dies it is just honest to admit that the marriage is ‘dead.’
It may shock you when I say that sometimes this is true. Sometimes a couple may stay together for all the wrong reasons (fear and finance being just two) and make each other very unhappy indeed. Constant arguments and silent nastiness make a horrible atmosphere and everybody knows how bad that is for children to grow up in. No wonder some couples part when the children have grown up. This is the so-called ‘silver splitter’ generation – the group where divorce figures are rising – which is saying ‘I have one life and deserve some happiness before I die.’
As I get older I see life in more and more shades of grey (though not ‘fifty’!) and know from my problem letters that simplistic judgements about human emotions are a waste of time. Yes, some marriages run their course, and maybe this should not be seen as ‘failure’ but a part of evolution. On the other hand, nobody deserves to be cast off like a single, unwanted glove. Couples can be kind to each other, even at parting. The very last passage in my new book, ‘Lifelines’ is about this – and it is written from sad experience of parting, loss – and long love.