Shropshire Woman

Jackie Jarvis writes

It’s official. I’m a dinosaur. Unlike so many of my generation I am still married after nigh on 30 years; and to the same man!

I am now a member of what is fast becoming an increasingly outmoded and exclusive club of couples who have chosen not to jump ship at the first sniff of stormy waters.

I’m not saying the past three decades have all been plain sailing. But, as a result of the highs and lows, the good times and bad, we have grown together through shared experiences and have supported and trusted in each other, unreservedly.

We now fit each other like a comfortable pair of slippers.

Sadly, marriage seems to be yet another casualty of the throwaway world in which we live. It is just another one of those commodities, suddenly surplus to requirements, which can be chucked into the dustbin of life without a passing thought.

“It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.” Friedrich Nietzsche

A realist, I am not looking at the world through my rose-tinted spectacles. I know I’d be mad to believe that, when you tie the knot, a lifetime of unbridled wedded bliss stretches out ahead of you on a fantastical yellow brick road along which you are destined to hop and skip in gay abandon, hand-in-hand for all eternity with the love of your life.

Back in the real world marriage takes work. And that’s the point. Too many couples are just not willing, or able, to put in the effort needed to sustain and allow a relationship to develop; to give feelings in the first flush time to grow and deepen until they end up in a more meaningful adult place.

Partnerships break down for a whole raft of reasons. Some couples may simply fall out of love, while others look for comfort elsewhere, perhaps believing that the grass is greener in someone else’s back yard. It rarely is.

And the real victims of these separations are the children who very often feel they are to blame for their parents’ actions or that their mother and father have fallen out of love with them too.

I’m not advocating that couples with offspring stay together no matter what. In some cases, where the relationship has irretrievably broken down to such an extent that open hostilities are impacting badly on family life, it is better for a parting of the ways in order to shield the youngsters from open warfare in the home.

So, given that it’s hard enough staying married, let alone happily, and accepting the fickleness of human nature, we all know there are enough temptations out there for us all to stray off the straight and narrow under our own steam, without being handed them on a plate.

But online companies, which facilitate affairs between men and women, openly advertise their services to couples looking for love outside their marriages. One such site, IllicitEncounters, has been hooking up couples looking to add some extra-marital spice into their lives for the past six years.
The dating firm says the aim of its site is to ‘create a safe and non judgmental environment where married men and women can meet each other.’

In this instance I question why these souls married in the first place if they are not able to commit to one person. Where’s the loyalty to their partners in all of this? In my mind this type of behaviour shows no respect for their better halves, who, in this case, are just that. Better a comfortable pair of slippers than new shoes that are liable to hurt you!