Something on the side?

Is Marriage Dead on its Feet?

Everyone’s getting divorced these days. Well, you might get that impression from screaming headlines about family breakup and celebrity adultery. Tawdry details of breakups and cheating are flung in our face every day.

It’s worth pausing to remember however, that if 40% of marriages end in divorce, then 60% don’t. Not only that, but people are still getting married in huge numbers – despite the cost and strain it can place on a relationship. So clearly, the institution appeals to a lot of us and is worth fighting for in the majority of cases.

Marriage is a long commitment. Going by the book – it’s till death. Of course, our  more relaxed attitude to the reading of the marriage vows means that few people perhaps take that as seriously today. It might still be a big commitment, but for many married couples, it wouldn’t be the end of the world if the marriage were to end sometime before its participants were pushing up the daisies on boot hill.

Against this backdrop of changing attitudes to marriage, it is still clear that adultery – cheating – is still a huge ’sin’ in most people’s eyes. We might be prepared to contemplate that our marriage isn’t forever, but none of us wants it to founder on the rocks of our partner getting their jollies elsewhere.

There are two schools of thought as to why we look so dimly on adultery. One line of thought is that it is a hangover from an era in which sex itself – let alone infidelity – was something of which we should be ashamed. Against the careful skirting around the issue that characterised the issue of sex in Victorian and Edwardian times, “marriage” was often nothing more than a codeword for “sex”. Consequently, we’ve never address the fact that ’sex’ can be an entirely separate thing from love – and needn’t carry any great emotional weight.

On the other hand, many people argue that monogamy itself is actually an unnatural state of affairs. Our genetic predisposition is to ensure our DNA gets passed successfully along. Therefore, it is in our interest to spread our seed among as many potential partners as possible. We look around and see that in almost every other species in nature, monogamy is an aberration – not a given.

I’m sure that anyone who’s ever been cheated on will have had that thought up front and centre in their mind when they found out!

Anyway, marriage is – for whatever reason – still a big part of our cultural heritage. From the lowest to the highest, it sets the standard for commitment and regardless of the failings of individuals and partnerships, it looks likely to stay with us for a long time to come.

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