Thoughts on marital bliss for the week thatÕs in it

Date Published: 13-Feb-2013

It used to be said that the great love of most Irishmen’s lives was their Mammy – but tell that to the flower shops and the card stores that have enjoyed their annual bonanza this week as half the country temporarily turns into red-blooded romantics.

Not me, of course – I don’t do occasions as dictated by card companies – but thankfully there are enough less cynical people out there who have cleared the florists out of roses.

Valentine’s Day has different connotations depending on your age; small kids make cards from scraps of papier mache to tell their mammies they love them; teenage boys spend the day in trepidation of getting a card or not getting a card from someone they know or don’t know; young lovers go the whole nine yards…..and settled husbands generously offer to microwave dinner for two.

Of course even the most settled and cynical of us could do worse than reflect for a moment on how good life is – not least because, statistically, if you’re married for ten years or more, you’re officially over the hump.

Divorce patterns in the UK suggests that the first few years are the hardest – not least because of financial pressures and perhaps the presence of small crying machines otherwise known as babies.

The Marriage Foundation – a think tank set up to promote the institution – has discovered that divorce rates for those who have been together more than a decade have remained almost unchanged since the 1960s.

And ironically it would appear that, because cohabitation has become widely accepted, those who do decide to marry are often more committed – and as a result more likely to stay together.

And yet 42 per cent of marriages in the UK end in divorce – an astonishing figure even if that is down from a high of 45 per cent a few years ago.

If you were to put a figure on this risk factor, apparently a couple getting married today would have 20 per cent “risk” of divorce in the first ten years of marriage.

But then the risk falls dramatically – to 13 per cent in the second decade, six per cent in the subsequent ten years and only two per cent after that….probably because you’re too tired to be bothered.

So if you can hang on in for the first decade, you’re over the worst. Alternatively – and with Valentine’s firmly in their sights – there was conflicting research which suggested that the first 18 months was the hardest and that, after that, it was all plain sailing.

But whichever way you look at it, the early years appear to be the hardest – although there are other tips for keeping the romance alive.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.