This has been an exhausting marriage month. Son number 3, Angus, was married to Hannah in the incredibly old St Patrick’s church at Mākara by retired judge Pat Grace. The blend of families gathered from afar turned out all right in the end.
Other people’s marriages are a mystery: why they work is known only by that couple, alone in a room. But there are clues. The crease of an eye as you see a shared sense of absurdity. Or the silly, obscene song, unrepeatable in public, but guaranteed to bring the house down as you shout about what just made you angry. If your days veer from a rugged day in a courtroom, another commute home and then feeding out in the rain, you’d go nuts if — when doors were shut, gumboots kicked off — no one else found the shared bits funny.
These things, not meaningful to anyone else, over time become the fabric of your life. “Love seems the swiftest,” said Mark Twain, “but it is the slowest of all growths.” He believed no one understands “perfect love” until they’ve been together 25 years. And certainly, at some point, your partner becomes simply irreplaceable: giving birth or burying your parents, the keeper of your life’s archive.
Long marriage is not glamorous, young love gets all the screen time and rightly so — old people kissing, eeww — plus there’s a new obsession with the astonishing divorcée dating scene. An unknown and intrepid landscape when taken in from afar. A friend just travelled to Dubai for an online date. So many questions one cannot ask but so want to! Also, it is my wedding anniversary in July, so let’s shout out to long-serving couples who deserve more acclaim. A tiny medal, maybe, or a card from Charles and Camilla who also share 20 years of marriage this year.
When I read that 43 per cent of marriages fail, I think: but 57 per cent succeed! Of every ten couples who throw their lot in together, who must deal with bills, housework rows, colicky babies, cancer, lost jobs, affairs, the daily trial of living up close with the maddening habits and revolting emissions of another human being, seven will last. Isn’t that extraordinary?
We live in an age of loneliness, when most adults have fewer than four close friends and when half the population (the poorer half) will never marry at all. The chief reason for declining birth rates is not career-obsessed cat ladies, as JD Vance claims. (It is the same in countries such as Türkiye, where few women work.) Nor is it because governments are not providing financial incentives. (Even child-friendly Scandinavia has too few babies.) As for marriage being shunned as a patriarchal institution, I have always thought it depends on who you marry and what life you choose. Run away from abusive relationships, partners who suck out your soul, who bore you or never get your jokes. But do not give up too easily: love may just be elusive, however often you swipe right.
Rather, as the social scientist Dr Alice Evans points out, the source of the problem is singledom. Too many young people are not even dating, let alone getting married. In an age of infinite bespoke distractions — porn, gaming, mood boards and chat rooms where you share brunch pictures — why tolerate the dreary daily compromises of being with a human being?
Tom Hanks said that when he met his wife, Rita Wilson, he realised “Having a kid at 21 was the greatest thing that ever happened to me because I didn’t smoke pot. I didn’t do drugs; I was not a party boy.” It meant that by the time he was twenty-seven, when he met his second wife, actor Rita Wilson, whom he married in 1988, “you end up meeting that other person that you’re like, ‘She gets it’. “I don’t think I’ll ever be lonely anymore.” That’s how I felt when I met Katherine, and I am sure it’s how Angus felt when he met Hannah.
After living on opposite sides of the world and then New Zealand, I finally moved in with my then-girlfriend and as she gave me her apartment key she said: welcome to your new life. I’ve never felt such profound relief. Finally, everything was decided. I was home.
A gradual accruing of in-jokes, the building of a private world out of embarrassments, pratfalls, silly moments, a shared life where nothing has truly happened until you’ve talked about it. You can be anywhere in the world, but if you’re together you are home.
Happy Easter!
Gerrard