Healthy Endings

I recently had an article of mine published in the Straits Times, Singapore’s national (only) newspaper. I decided to catch onto the fact that there were several letters in the forum talking about how marriage was the bedrock of stability and society and anything that made ending it easier was bad for society and so on and so on. I decided to argue that the problem wasn’t so much the ease of divorce but the ease of marriage that was the cause of societies problems. My letter can be found at https://www.straitstimes.com/forum/letters-in-print/ease-of-getting-married-may-be-the-problem.

[The premise of my letter is that instead of making divorce more difficult, one should make marriage more difficult. As thing stand, it’s ridiculously easy to get married. One merely needs to be over 21 and able to find witnesses. Everything else is a formality and I stick by the argument that nobody really values things that come easily.

My letter got a few likes, including likes from two lawyers and my favourite Pudding decided that my letter was a total waste of a good read because my premise was faulty and I should realise that society does respect marriage hence it makes it easy to get married and very difficult to get divorced (I’m on my second marriage and she’s in her second relationship).

The next day, the press decided to run another article from someone who appears tragically young, who decided to start quoting from a political lobbying group called the Institute for American Values, which argued that unhappily divorced adults were not happier unhappily married adults and that children of unhappily married adults were not better off than divorced parents. That letter can be found at:

https://www.straitstimes.com/forum/letters-in-print/hold-on-to-time-tested-values-amid-rapid-changes?&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social-media&utm_campaign=addtoany

Such articles have the benefit of making me so happy that I come from a patchwork family and have been continuing the task of adding more patchworks. I think too many people miss the point of marriage or get stuck in a some ideal of what it should be.

I’m either the best person or the worst person to talk about this but I believe that marriage is about partnership. It’s about two people who can’t live without each other despite known all the awful things about the other. A married couple should have shared ideals and goals thus having something to keep the individuals together despite the differences that individuals bring to the table and yes, physically attraction should also be part of the game.

My marriage to Gina failed from day one because we didn’t have shared goals. There was nothing in the union to bring and keep us together. OK, that’s not quite true – the sex was fantastic and part of the reason why I allowed her to blackmail me into signing the paper was the fact that I didn’t want to lose a regular sex partner. She on the other hand wanted me to buy a flat quickly and to “settle down.” She was so happy when I got a job in the civil service (teacher), which I couldn’t run from fast enough. The idea of “this is the rest of your life,” sent shudders down my spine. In the words of the late Old Rogue, “She had fire-place written all over her.” I think she got violent when it was clear that I didn’t share her goals.

My marriage to Huong is working out better. Despite our many differences, there are things that keep us together. She’s someone who is more than a quick shag in the bush and hence we struggle to build a home and family and find unity in the struggle of building that.

Marriage is a partnership which should ideally bring out the best in both parties. One always thinks of the saying, “Behind every good man is a woman,” and my mother actually says that her marriage to my Dad made her a more confident person.

I don’t dispute the fact that a stable marriage is the best breeding ground for socially well-adjusted people. The African-American Community in the USA has provided us with plenty of statistics linking criminal behavior to dysfunctional families.

What I do dispute is the notion that a happy, well adjusted family means the biological parents remain together and I disagree with the notion that children become worse off when their parents separate. My sister once said that she felt offended when the discussion came to difficult people being the way they were because they had parents who separated – we weren’t arseholes and our parents had separated (many times as a matter of fact.)

I look my situation and I believe that while a part me wishes my parents marriage worked out, I don’t believe I’m any worse off because it didn’t work out. If anything, I got lucky in that respect and it’s probably in later life, when I got married and divorced for me to appreciate them. My parent’s marriage failed but they didn’t fail me (even if they might disagree whenever I fuck up).

Why do I say that? I believe that my parents had the chance to do what they did for me because when their marriage reached the stage where it was clear they couldn’t live together, they had a chance for clean break. The marriage ended and both of them could move on.

To my mother’s credit, she only brought decent men into our lives. Both stepdads, Lee and Thomas loved Tara and I like their own. The patchwork family, particularly with the American family, somehow gelled. I think I’m the only person in my social group who gets invited to an ex-step-nephew’s wedding. Biology was never an issue with my stepdads, who took their role of being instant dad’s quite seriously.

My mother also worked hard to ensure that I kept my relationship with my father healthy. I’ll never tire of mentioning the fact that she would push me to write letters (pre-internet) to my Dad. I’d protest but she’d push on and guess what, I have a somewhat normal relationship with my father.

I also credit my Dad for ensuring that the financial support would always be there for both me and Max, despite whatever differences he had with his ex-wives. Both of Max and I have never really starved and both of us are educated men because my dad ensured that the funds were there. My final year of university coincided with one of his darkest points financially and he told me, “You will finish university even if I have to beg, borrow or steal the money.”

With my family background, I cannot argue that biology is essential in making the family unit work and it’s quite clear that I am a beneficiary of someone who benefited from a situation that most people would call disastrous. I can appreciate that I’m lucky in the sense that I had the right elements – namely the adult figures in my life at the time happened to be decent enough people who found a way of working things out for my benefit. Not everybody gets that lucky in the genetic lottery the way I do.

Decent people who make bad situations work are hard to find and I guess you can that the statistics hold – children of divorce parents get fucked up.

So, what about the guys who stay together for the kids or worse – to preserve their legacy. I think of a friend of mine who is a naturalized citizen who built up a successful business. This chap married a woman who extracted a heavy price from him – her family have moved into his flat, she’s slowly but surely taken over operational control of the business and her friends are forced upon him. The man is so happy with his family life that he’s out drinking every night and he spends his waking hours plotting how to avoid going home. The kid is left to the grandmother’s (a heavy gambler) care because both parents are officially “too busy” for him. The kid is growing up materially well off but I’m not sure how fun it is growing up in a household where dad does everything possible to avoid mum and gang.

I don’t think it’s respecting marriage to keep unhappy people together. Yes, nobody goes into marriage hopping it would end but we have to accept that people do fall out of love and letting people have a clean break is actually good for everyone. I think decent people who become anything but decent when they are around their significant others because that significant other is a source of pure misery.

You don’t respect an institution or protect minors by forcing miserable people to stay in a situation that is increasing their misery. You help them find a clean break that works out in everyone’s interest.