I’ve been married 3 times & feel sorry for single pals – nab a bloke before your autumn years or you’ll always be alone
AS it’s revealed the number of couples opting to get married has dropped below half for the first time ever, one writer reveals why she still believes in getting spliced.
I WAS a right little weirdo when I was a kid. Although my parents had a disgustingly happy marriage, I never dreamt of getting wed, as small girls are reputed to.
Instead, I dreamt of getting divorced — it sounded so sophisticated.
Somehow, I managed to get hitched three times.
Considering I’m such an awful person, I don’t think a heart-shaped hat-trick is too bad.
The world’s most-married serial-monogamist man was an American named Glynn Wolfe, who was married a whopping 31 times, the final wife being the world’s most-married woman, Linda Taylor, with 23 husbands under her belt.
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It’s a shame he’s not around today as we could use someone to drive up the matrimonial batting average.
New figures for 2021 reveal the number of people in a marriage or civil partnership has dropped to an historic low of 49.7 per cent.
This fell further to 49.4 per cent in 2022. A decade earlier, in 2012, it was 51.2 per cent, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The Marriage Foundation predictably opined that this reluctance to forsake all others is a bad thing, with their spokesman Harry Benson saying: “The trend away from marriage is bad news for children.
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“Nearly half of teenagers do not live with both natural parents, most of which is due to the separation of parents who never married.
“Marriage may not be a panacea but it stacks the odds in favour of stable families.”
But I don’t believe that unhappy marriages are better for children than being brought up by a happily single parent or happily separated parents.
Marriage is no guarantee of sticking to one’s vows and thus keeping a family intact.
I was a bad mother, and the bonds of matrimony certainly didn’t serve to make me less wanton.
Illicit relationship
If anything, during my first marriage, the idea that I was committing “adultery” (such a dirty word) made me feel more enchanted by the illicit relationship with the man who became my second husband than I probably would have been had I simply been shacked up with my bloke.
Women are far more likely to be forced into marriage than men, and to suffer violence in them — so anything which makes it easier to divorce is, for me, a mark of a civilised society.
Despite so many husbands murdering their wives and the hundreds of “Take my wife . . .” gags, it turns out that marriage is better for men than for women.
Married men score higher at happiness than single men, whereas the reverse is true for women.
Perhaps this is why nearly 70 per cent of divorces are initiated by women and why over 50 per cent of divorced wives never want to remarry, as opposed to 30 per cent of men.
A somewhat shocking survey in 2016 found that while men who are widowed die far sooner than married men of the same age, women who are widowed are likely to live longer than their married sisters.
All that being said, I have still always wanted to be married and — this sounds awful — it is because I saw it as a sort of test of strength, all three times I did it.
My first husband was extremely ambitious, my second was a Lothario, my third was my girl friend’s brother.
They were all — in different ways — not the easiest men to marry, which made them challenges.
Similarly, my reputation as being a bit of a wild card probably made me an attractive marriage prospect to them.
We’re all writers, and writers fear boredom more than most people, as what would we write about if life was all sunshine and lollipops?
I was also keen to get spliced as I believe that the word — I’m shuddering as I type it — “partner” (unless used by someone in a law firm) is the unsexiest sexual status known to man or beast.
As a feminist I probably shouldn’t say this, but when I see a couple who’ve been together for more than a couple of years and they’re not married, and she’s always talking about her “partner” and how they don’t need “a piece of paper,” I do instinctively think that the woman is keener on getting married than the man.
And then, I think (bitchily), “It’s not marriage he’s against — it’s marrying you he’s against. He’s just waiting to see if he can find someone better than you.”
First I got married as a teenager and it lasted five years. Then I got married in my mid-twenties, which lasted ten years.
Now I’m 64, I’ve been with my third husband for nearly 30 years.
To some extent this third-time-lucky longevity might be down to the fact that we naturally slow down as we age.
I also believe that “The One” rarely exists, even though the vast majority of rom-coms are based around this fiction.
I believe that “The Queue” is a far more realistic way to view our romantic lives; as the late Peter Ustinov said about friends: “They are not necessarily the people you like best — they are merely the people who get there first.”
I would be sad if my husband and I broke up. But do I think that we would each be alone forever, mooing in the wilderness, because we’d lost The One? Of course not.
If you believe that someone has so many good qualities that you love them, you surely believe they’d easily find loads of other people who saw the same in them. (And as for oneself, of course, this goes without saying.)
Most of us have it away with the people we find attractive until we find one we prefer — or until no one else wants us any more.
We all lose our charms in the end, so if you don’t want to be single, pin a decent one down by the autumn of your days or you’re liable to find that the cupboard is bare.
I’ve been married since I was a teenager and I’ve never once — not once — envied a friend for being single.
Good news is only half as good until I tell my husband about it and bad news is made immeasurably lighter the moment I share it with him.
For better or worse, I can’t ever imagine that being true of someone I wasn’t married to.
- MAKING MARILYN, a play by Julie Burchill and Daniel Raven, debuts on Brighton Pier in May.
Divorce can be great too
By Ulrika Jonsson
I’M once, twice, three times a married lady. So, when it comes to matrimony, you could say I have some skin in the game.
And while, my marriages [to cameraman John Turnbull, Army officer Lance Gerrard-Wright then advertising exec Brian Monet] were largely pleasant experiences, I am now proper off the whole shenanigans.
I married for the first time at the tender age of 23, having met my then husband at 21.
I came from a broken home.
I felt displaced.
I didn’t think I was good enough for anything or anyone – so when a decent, salt-of-the-earth man pops the question, you jump at the chance because you think finally someone likes you.
You think a wedding, a piece of paper and a ring will seal the deal for ever.
But it doesn’t.
It didn’t on my second or third marriage either.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with marriage – but it’s not for me.
I won’t marry again.
I can’t envisage living with anyone again.
I respect the will of the diminishing number of couples who think popping the question is the ultimate in commitment. But it is not.
Commitment comes in more than one shape and size.
Couples are quite capable of dedicating themselves to each other without the state or the church getting involved or me having to apply to the courts to be “detached” from a husband.
And marriage does not guarantee happier children.
There are many children trapped in unhappy marriages just as much as the parents – so don’t ever entertain that notion.
In fact, many parents co-parent better outside marriage.
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I have concrete proof of that three times over.
So while I’m not here to put anyone off marriage – I am here to say that divorce can be a wonderful and marvellous thing too.