In praise of divorce....but not sex

"In their day, people stayed together"

It's a phrase that we hear every now and again, and suggests that today we are too flighty, to quick to give up and if only we worked a little harder at our marriages then it would all be worth it in the end and bliss would surely be ours.

Yeah, maybe.

I'm not for a single moment suggesting that our relationships should be viewed as disposable, to be abandoned at the slightest difficulty - coming through tough times together is a strengthening and positive experience.

But having recently conducted ceremonies for people who have been unhappy in their marriages, I can also question the point of sticking together beyond all hope. If decades of misery is your thing, then go ahead, but please don't claim the moral high ground about it.



On the other end of the relationship scale:


I don't know if other celebrants find this, but people often seem to be in hurry to tell me how great their sex lives have been. Trust me, if I say in a ceremony "he was an active man", I usually mean that he liked sport.

My favourite example of this was the gent who stood at his wife's funeral and gave a lovely tribute, including a little about what a generous and sensitive lover she had been. Good for them, but I suspect that neither her children, or her grandchildren, wanted to hear it.