Musings on Marriage... or Divorce, Kuwaiti Syle

Hi Ray,

To quote one of the best films ever:  "Mawwiage.  Mawwiage is what bwings us togevah today."

 
Or, more generally, marriage and divorce.  I read an article recently about a woman in Kuwait who divorced her husband on the grounds that he had offensive table manners.  Seems the chap eats his peas by grabbing them up with a piece of bread.  I have to admit, I am kind of the Table Manners Police at my house - wanting the kids to at least know what is appropriate in "polite company" before they decide whether to keep or abandon such things as adults. Still, I give the Kuwaiti husband a small tip of my hat.  Chasing peas around your plate with a fork can turn into quite the Keystone Kop routine and he seems to have found a solution.

The article I read, "Kuwaiti woman files for divorce after one week of marriage... because her husband eats peas using bread rather than a fork," lists a number of other offenses that are deemed divorce-worthy.  Among these grounds for divorce were squeezing the toothpaste tube from the middle; refusing to bring your spouse glass of water; and failing to follow a bride's instructions for a costly wedding.  That last divorce was filed on the couple's actual wedding day, by the way. I suppose this explains why Kuwait has 18 divorces a day.  That might not sound like that many until you remember that if the husband is initiating the divorce, all he has to do is repeat "I divorce you" three times.  Kind of like Beetlejuice or Bloody Mary.

Wedding scene from Princess Bride.
I do not own this image.  I think 20th Century Fox does.
Please don’t sue me.

As a former lawyer who litigated way more divorces than I would have liked, I've seen a lot of people want out of their marriages for a variety of reasons.  Working in that field, you have to start wondering - did all these people just have really bad pickers?  Or do humans evolve and develop throughout our lives in such a way that it is nearly impossible that the person you wed at 25 will be the person to whom you still want to be wed at 45?  Are relationships intended to have a shelf life - a period of time during which they are healthy and useful and just right for both people - and then each party moves on to their next one?

Writer/syndicated radio host/blogger/columnist Emma Johnson thinks marriage, in the traditional sense, is dead.  She proposes a new model for marriage that is based on a 10 year, renewable marriage contract.   Romantic, huh?  Make you all squishy inside.  She does make a logical argument for the idea, though. And it's clear that her position does not spring from marriage-hating, but from a desire to "save" marriage.

So what's your take on it, Ray?  For my money, I favor the old fashioned way - at least for myself.  I mean, I was working as a divorce lawyer when I married The Buddhist and never even considered drafting a pre-nup or any of those types of things that are supposed to be so logical and foster civility if the partnership fails.  I knew marriages don't work out sometimes; he and I had both been married before.  But I feel like factoring that in at the start with a pre-nup or renewable contract, however sensible it may be, removes something from the process and the relationship altogether.  I think that thing is faith.  Or perhaps hope.  Obviously 'marriage til death parts you' is at best a 50/50 proposition statistically.  That's a fact based on all the marriages in the country.  But my marriage isn't about statistics, it is about one relationship... one relationship the success of which I am equally responsible with my partner.  If I'm going to do it, I want to go all in. I don't want divorce insurance in a safe deposit box somewhere just in case.  If it doesn't work out, we'll deal with it then. And it would suck.  But I really don't think it would suck any less because we'd planned for it.  

Best, Patricia

PS I only belatedly recognize the possibility of this being one of those topics likely to annoy The Breadwinner.  Oops.  Obviously, I think your marriage is one for the ages.  Really.  You guys are an awesome team.  And you make really good babies.  Well done!

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Hi Patricia,

Don't worry.  She doesn't care.  She knows I'm here until my student loans are paid.  Which, in all liklihood, will be the same as death.

I read a book a while back called The Postmortal. It's a novel of the near future where they find a cure for aging. You can still die by injury and illness, but the regular mechanism of getting old is turned off by a series of injections.

First thing to go? Social Security.  Second? Traditional marriage. The main character is actually an attorney who helps develop "cycle marriages" which are standard marriages with a 40 year sunset provision. Fun book, particularly where the voluntary suicides start turning to involuntary suicides.

Even short of immortality, it's easy to see that "till death" is a pretty long time.  There's a thousand different reasons that marriages fail, and maybe there's more of this one and fewer of that in a given year.  I'm sure money tops the charts frequently, but a little more frequently lately.  Religious differences may be tapering off, but internet habits may be picking up more.  Peas?  That's a rare one.

Maybe it's just like everything else in our lives, and marriages are being put under an increasing amount of stress.  Real stress, like figuring who was responsible to pick little Kaixin up from soccer practice or what's for dinner when everyone is getting home at 9pm.

Perhaps, a huge stress is how ones' marriage diverges from the norm.  There are those marriage fundamentalists who are shoveling out tripe about what marriage should and should not be. Subservient wives and bacon-home-bringing men. Bliss and flowing white gowns over beach and candles with perfect kids with perfect teeth.  They can shove it up their Pinterest wedding board.

Stress breaks things.  When people can't take any more stress themselves, they'll shove it off to the nearest low-energy entity, which is usually the marriage.  Too much of that and POOF. 

This is where I get to put on my lawyer hat and point out that marriage is both a partnership and an incorporation. There's the first part, a partnership, which dictates what the rules are for each party.  You work, I'll do the laundry.  You drop off at daycare, I'll pick up.  

But then there's the incorporation.  A married couple is a new entity, a body corporate.  Things that have to be decided together and stated in one voice fall here. We own land! We have an account!

Any marriage that contains those two parts - jobs for the individuals, care and feeding of the new entity - is a legitimate marriage to me.  In that sense, I'm absolutely not a purist about marriage.  If you want to put a time limit, fine.  If you can't speak in one voice, even if it's about picking up peas, dissolve the union.  No issues here.  Any corporation that isn't doing it's job should go.  Pre-nups, if it makes the partners comfortable and the corporation operate? Fantastic! They're really understandable when folks are coming into a relationship with big cash.  We did not have that situation, alas.  But I can't complain about folks who get one. 

And the more of these new or weird or divergent or experimental marriages that can get off the ground and work their own way, the better. For decent thinking people, they will be proof.  Not that their own marriage is threatened or under attack, but that there's no single path to be stressed out about failing to find.  

Cheers,

Ray

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Excellent points, Ray,

Perhaps the prenup question might have more meaning to me if I had significant assets. I suppose one could say it's easy enough for me to think I wouldn't want one on principle since I have nothing to lose. I, however, like the contemplative Billy Bragg in Must I Paint You a Picture, tend to reject the notion that "virtue never tested is no virtue at all." Virtue is virtue.  There's not nearly enough of it in the world and I don't believe people must be required to prove their principles in trial by ordeal. 

You have a very practical take on marriage and a good point about the pros of there being a variety of paths for people to get there.  As a Constitutional Law geek, I find the marriage equality issue significant and the resistance to it troubling. It's not about tradition or even about marriage; it's about the 14th Amendment. Our Constitution grants us equal protection under the law. It's just that simple. 

I just saw a news story today that made me shake my head.  Do you remember how after Brown v Board, the state of Virginia decided to close its schools rather than desegregate? Well, some lawmakers in Oklahoma are looking to use that same sort of well thought out, not-at-all shortsighted approach to the recent federal court ruling that Oklahoma’s ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional. They intend to ban marriage altogether in the state of Oklahoma.  Good luck with that, geniuses. 

Well, before I drive us further off subject and into a full-on Equal Protection post, I'll tie a bow on this one and call it done for now. Back to the 10 year renewable marriage contract: why not give it a go? It doesn't say you HAVE to do it that way.  It's merely an idea by a lady who really likes the idea of marriage and really hates the idea of contested, high-conflict divorces.  I've heard worse ideas (looking at you, Oklahoma).

Best,
Patricia