Showing posts with label divorce. Show all posts
Showing posts with label divorce. Show all posts
Tuesday 2 April 2024
Saturday 27 January 2024
Sunday 18 June 2023
Economics Essay 78: Ownership and Control of Firms
Discuss how the divorce of ownership from control may affect both the conduct and performance of firms.
Key terms:
Divorce of ownership from control: This refers to a situation in which the individuals who own a company (shareholders) are not the same individuals who manage and control the company's day-to-day operations (managers). In many large corporations, shareholders are dispersed and have limited influence over the decision-making process, while managers make strategic and operational decisions.
Conduct of firms: The conduct of firms refers to how firms behave in terms of their strategic choices, pricing decisions, production methods, investment decisions, and interactions with competitors. It encompasses the actions taken by managers to maximize the firm's objectives, such as profit maximization or market share expansion.
Performance of firms: The performance of firms refers to the outcomes achieved by firms, such as profitability, efficiency, market share, innovation, and customer satisfaction. It reflects the extent to which a firm is successful in achieving its objectives and delivering value to its stakeholders.
The divorce of ownership from control can have significant implications for the conduct and performance of firms:
Conduct of firms:
- Agency problems: The separation of ownership and control creates agency problems, as managers may prioritize their own interests over those of the shareholders. Managers may engage in self-serving behaviors, pursue personal goals, or make decisions that do not align with shareholders' interests.
- Risk-taking behavior: Managers may be more inclined to take excessive risks when their personal wealth is not fully tied to the company's performance. They may pursue ambitious projects or make risky investments that could negatively impact the firm's financial stability.
- Managerial discretion: Managers, in the absence of close monitoring by shareholders, have more discretion in decision-making. They can shape the firm's strategies, set executive compensation, and determine resource allocation. This discretion can influence the firm's conduct, including its competitive behavior and investment choices.
Performance of firms:
- Shareholder value: The divorce of ownership from control can result in a divergence between the interests of shareholders and managers. This misalignment can lead to suboptimal firm performance and a failure to maximize shareholder value.
- Managerial incentives: Managers may prioritize goals other than profit maximization, such as personal reputation, job security, or firm growth. This may lead to decisions that do not optimize the firm's financial performance or long-term sustainability.
- Accountability and monitoring: Without effective oversight and monitoring by shareholders, managers may face less accountability for their decisions and actions. This can impact the firm's performance by reducing the incentives for managers to perform at their best or make efficient use of resources.
It is worth noting that the impact of the divorce of ownership from control can vary across firms and industries. Some firms may implement governance mechanisms, such as independent boards of directors or performance-based compensation, to align the interests of managers with shareholders and mitigate the negative effects. Additionally, the extent to which the separation affects conduct and performance depends on factors such as the degree of competition, market conditions, industry regulations, and the specific managerial practices implemented within the firm.
Overall, the divorce of ownership from control can introduce agency problems and influence the behavior and performance of firms. Addressing these challenges through effective governance mechanisms and aligning the interests of managers with those of shareholders is crucial for maintaining sound conduct and improving firm performance.
Monday 22 May 2023
Monday 24 May 2021
Monday 17 May 2021
Wednesday 31 July 2019
Modern Marriages - For Better or For Worse
By Girish Menon
Recently, I heard the story of somebody who was married for over 30 years and had a hostile spouse for an equivalent time period. This person it was revealed had no moments of intimacy from the outset but they performed the sexual act in a spirit of mutual need. The couple still retain their marital status and one of the partners told the other, ‘I will destroy you but not give you a divorce”.
On the other hand the courts in Mumbai receive over 3000 cases each month. The traditional Indian idea of a family is metamorphosing quickly and even rapidly catching up with the western world. My cousin has this quip,‘ While the Indian woman has changed the Indian male has failed to adapt to this change’.
From an economic point of view this increasing divorce rate is a good development. In this era when GDP growth is the altar that we are duty bound to worship, then more divorces mean an increased contribution to GDP growth. Every splitting couple will employ a minimum of two lawyers, they will need separate houses and their children will need some childcare. All of this creates economic opportunities and contributes to the GDP counter. Second marriages and divorces also further contribute to economic growth.
Among Malayalees the absence of ‘yogam’ is the catchall phrase used to explain away any failed marriage. In simple terms, it means the couple were not meant to be successful in marriage. This is a post hoc rationalisation akin to the use of the term destiny.
But is there a good predictive method for choosing a partner of longevity?
In economics, the process of mate selection could be looked at as an imperfect information problem. Horoscope matching, family compatibility, cultural similarity and many other factors have been used to establish the suitability of a partner. Unfortunately, none of them have proved sufficiently reliable. In true rational spirit modern couples have experimented with living together for long periods of time to overcome the imperfect information problem. However, anecdotal evidence seems to reveal marriage dissolution even among such couples. The reason could be the inability to predict and cope with unforeseen future events that hit every marital boat.
Fortunately, I have no advice to give in this matter. All that I have noted is the failure to observe Christian marriage vows ‘for better or for worse’ by many separating couples. However, even such vows are put to the test among long surviving couples; as an aunt remarked when my uncle retired, ‘I married him for better or for worse but not for lunch’.
Saturday 16 March 2019
Be honest, be kind: five lessons from an amicable divorce
Consciously uncoupling is possible: choose your battles, build a support network and learn to play the long game writes Kate Gunn in The Guardian
1 Understand that marriage breakdown impacts on everyone – yes, even your ex
The first night after telling the children that their father I were splitting up, I lay awake in bed with all three of them curled around me asking endless questions: “What is happening?” “Why don’t you love each other?” “Do you still love me?” “Where will Daddy live?” “Why does it hurt so much?”
I stared out into the darkness, praying for sleep. But I also thought of Kristian, alone in a different bed in another part of the house. He didn’t have the comfort of the children, yet he was fighting his own demons. It was an important step for me to take. It wasn’t just me and the children suffering – Kristian was, too. We were in this together, even if we were parting.
Our new living arrangements meant that I had the children most of the time. As the months went on, Kristian admitted that he understood the impact this had on me. He knew it wasn’t easy. Just hearing him say it eased the burden and any resentment that may have built up.
Never lose sight of the fact that the breakdown of a marriage affects everyone involved – not just you. It’s the key to having the compassion to get through it together.
2 Gather a positive support network
Support was vital in the early stages, and we were both lucky to have family who picked us up and carried us. Once the mantra of “I’m fine” was dispensed with, and we accepted the offers of help, our support network became a hugely positive influence on how the breakup manifested itself.
My sisters would check in on Kristian regularly, and his parents would message to see how I was getting on. There was neither blame nor accusations from either side, and everyone was prepared to help us and the children through the most difficult times.
I have spoken to others who have been through separation or divorce, many of whom said those closest to them wanted to show support by pointing fingers. That kind of behaviour makes the vital task of building a good relationship with your former partner much more difficult. Make it clear that you aren’t looking to play the blame game and that it’s far better for everyone if other voices are supportive but balanced. If they are unable to do that, gently ask them to take a step back until you are in a more stable place.
3 Always aim for the middle
Think about which aspects you want lawyers to be involved in. Although we took advantage of a free mediation service run by the Legal Aid Board (we live in Ireland, but there will be a service wherever you live), we did a lot of the early negotiating ourselves: living arrangements, care of the children, who got the coveted CD collection. This kept legal costs and interference down. We both knew that if lawyers got involved in the early negotiations it would not only become expensive, but probably more contentious, too. Legal representatives will usually fight for their client’s right to as much as possible – that is, after all, what you are paying them for. But we didn’t want to fight. We wanted what was fair.
Our starting point was that we wanted the children to be happy and we wanted each other to be happy; we tried to make decisions based on these factors. The only thing that always seemed to throw us off track was money.
I would wake frequently at night, numbers swirling around my head – the moving bills, the double rent, the extra light, heat, car and petrol costs that would need to be paid for out of a very limited and stagnant pool of money. No matter which way I spun them, the numbers never balanced out.
Kristian and I discussed what we could do to improve our financial situation. He offered to take the kids for another night during the week so I could take on extra work. We negotiated until we reached a mid-point agreement that neither of us was entirely happy with. In hindsight, this was probably a good indication that it was pretty fair.
Try to work out what you absolutely need legal advice on and what you can sort out between yourselves. If you get 80% of an agreement in place together, it will be a lot less stressful and expensive to get the remaining 20% finalised with legal assistance.
4 Play the long game
The early months of separation are often when things go awry. With so much fear and uncertainty, it’s like a game of Hungry Hippos, with each of you blindly grabbing as much as you can, as quickly as you can, afraid to lose out on anything, whether you want it or not.
When people ask me for advice, I tell them what I was told by others: “Play the long game.” Don’t look for the small wins that will make this day, or this week, or even this year easier. Look at the long-term goal. What’s important to you?
For us, it was our relationship and our children’s happiness. We placed a good relationship between ourselves above long-term financial security. For me, fighting for extra child maintenance each month at the expense of Kristian’s living arrangements didn’t seem like a solid long-term plan. I might have gained an extra bedroom, but for a lifetime of animosity it was never going to be worth it. In turn, Kristian placed being close to the children above his desire to run home to friends and family.
Choose your battles. Don’t fight for what you can get or what you have been told to expect – work out what you really want and how it will affect the relationship with your ex-partner for the next 20 years.
5 Write, don’t speak
Things didn’t always run smoothly, of course. There were arguments and fallouts, and some moments when I thought the wheels had entirely fallen off. In the most difficult times we often communicated best by email. It allowed us to consider what we wanted to say and then let the other person digest the words in their own time. During one particularly fraught discussion about money, Kristian sent me an email that was so beautifully written and so perfectly timed that I could say it saved our entire breakup.
Here’s a part of it: “I would like to believe we have the trust, integrity and maturity to deal with this in the right manner. I know you. I know you are not manipulative, nor selfish, nor deceitful. Our kids are a beautiful testament to both of us being honest, loving, loyal and all round beautiful people! I want us to remain great friends, not because of our kids, but because of all the great experiences we have encountered together and the growth through them.”
That email contained all the lessons any couple need for a good divorce: honesty, explanation, compassion and compromise.
Kate Gunn and ex-husband Kristian. Photograph: Cliona O'Flaherty/The Guardian
It’s not always infidelity that leads a couple to split – sometimes a marriage simply runs out of steam and both sides are better off apart. But when that happens, is it really possible to part amicably?
It’s been five years since my marriage broke down but, since Kristian and I separated, we have been on family holidays together, shared dinners, spent every Christmas with one another and even been out to a gig while my new partner babysat.
It was hard to disentangle our lives when we had three kids, a house, friends, family, debts, savings, personal possessions, plus 10 years of shared memories, but we did it and remained friends. How was that possible?
The secret was that those five years of untangling our lives weren’t just about the nuts and bolts of separation and divorce – they were about building up a new friendship, too. It may seem extreme to talk about friendship in the same breath as divorce but, while it wasn’t easy, by remaining friends, life is now so much better for all of us.
Here are my five lessons for consciously uncoupling in the real world.
It’s not always infidelity that leads a couple to split – sometimes a marriage simply runs out of steam and both sides are better off apart. But when that happens, is it really possible to part amicably?
It’s been five years since my marriage broke down but, since Kristian and I separated, we have been on family holidays together, shared dinners, spent every Christmas with one another and even been out to a gig while my new partner babysat.
It was hard to disentangle our lives when we had three kids, a house, friends, family, debts, savings, personal possessions, plus 10 years of shared memories, but we did it and remained friends. How was that possible?
The secret was that those five years of untangling our lives weren’t just about the nuts and bolts of separation and divorce – they were about building up a new friendship, too. It may seem extreme to talk about friendship in the same breath as divorce but, while it wasn’t easy, by remaining friends, life is now so much better for all of us.
Here are my five lessons for consciously uncoupling in the real world.
1 Understand that marriage breakdown impacts on everyone – yes, even your ex
The first night after telling the children that their father I were splitting up, I lay awake in bed with all three of them curled around me asking endless questions: “What is happening?” “Why don’t you love each other?” “Do you still love me?” “Where will Daddy live?” “Why does it hurt so much?”
I stared out into the darkness, praying for sleep. But I also thought of Kristian, alone in a different bed in another part of the house. He didn’t have the comfort of the children, yet he was fighting his own demons. It was an important step for me to take. It wasn’t just me and the children suffering – Kristian was, too. We were in this together, even if we were parting.
Our new living arrangements meant that I had the children most of the time. As the months went on, Kristian admitted that he understood the impact this had on me. He knew it wasn’t easy. Just hearing him say it eased the burden and any resentment that may have built up.
Never lose sight of the fact that the breakdown of a marriage affects everyone involved – not just you. It’s the key to having the compassion to get through it together.
2 Gather a positive support network
Support was vital in the early stages, and we were both lucky to have family who picked us up and carried us. Once the mantra of “I’m fine” was dispensed with, and we accepted the offers of help, our support network became a hugely positive influence on how the breakup manifested itself.
My sisters would check in on Kristian regularly, and his parents would message to see how I was getting on. There was neither blame nor accusations from either side, and everyone was prepared to help us and the children through the most difficult times.
I have spoken to others who have been through separation or divorce, many of whom said those closest to them wanted to show support by pointing fingers. That kind of behaviour makes the vital task of building a good relationship with your former partner much more difficult. Make it clear that you aren’t looking to play the blame game and that it’s far better for everyone if other voices are supportive but balanced. If they are unable to do that, gently ask them to take a step back until you are in a more stable place.
3 Always aim for the middle
Think about which aspects you want lawyers to be involved in. Although we took advantage of a free mediation service run by the Legal Aid Board (we live in Ireland, but there will be a service wherever you live), we did a lot of the early negotiating ourselves: living arrangements, care of the children, who got the coveted CD collection. This kept legal costs and interference down. We both knew that if lawyers got involved in the early negotiations it would not only become expensive, but probably more contentious, too. Legal representatives will usually fight for their client’s right to as much as possible – that is, after all, what you are paying them for. But we didn’t want to fight. We wanted what was fair.
Our starting point was that we wanted the children to be happy and we wanted each other to be happy; we tried to make decisions based on these factors. The only thing that always seemed to throw us off track was money.
I would wake frequently at night, numbers swirling around my head – the moving bills, the double rent, the extra light, heat, car and petrol costs that would need to be paid for out of a very limited and stagnant pool of money. No matter which way I spun them, the numbers never balanced out.
Kristian and I discussed what we could do to improve our financial situation. He offered to take the kids for another night during the week so I could take on extra work. We negotiated until we reached a mid-point agreement that neither of us was entirely happy with. In hindsight, this was probably a good indication that it was pretty fair.
Try to work out what you absolutely need legal advice on and what you can sort out between yourselves. If you get 80% of an agreement in place together, it will be a lot less stressful and expensive to get the remaining 20% finalised with legal assistance.
4 Play the long game
The early months of separation are often when things go awry. With so much fear and uncertainty, it’s like a game of Hungry Hippos, with each of you blindly grabbing as much as you can, as quickly as you can, afraid to lose out on anything, whether you want it or not.
When people ask me for advice, I tell them what I was told by others: “Play the long game.” Don’t look for the small wins that will make this day, or this week, or even this year easier. Look at the long-term goal. What’s important to you?
For us, it was our relationship and our children’s happiness. We placed a good relationship between ourselves above long-term financial security. For me, fighting for extra child maintenance each month at the expense of Kristian’s living arrangements didn’t seem like a solid long-term plan. I might have gained an extra bedroom, but for a lifetime of animosity it was never going to be worth it. In turn, Kristian placed being close to the children above his desire to run home to friends and family.
Choose your battles. Don’t fight for what you can get or what you have been told to expect – work out what you really want and how it will affect the relationship with your ex-partner for the next 20 years.
5 Write, don’t speak
Things didn’t always run smoothly, of course. There were arguments and fallouts, and some moments when I thought the wheels had entirely fallen off. In the most difficult times we often communicated best by email. It allowed us to consider what we wanted to say and then let the other person digest the words in their own time. During one particularly fraught discussion about money, Kristian sent me an email that was so beautifully written and so perfectly timed that I could say it saved our entire breakup.
Here’s a part of it: “I would like to believe we have the trust, integrity and maturity to deal with this in the right manner. I know you. I know you are not manipulative, nor selfish, nor deceitful. Our kids are a beautiful testament to both of us being honest, loving, loyal and all round beautiful people! I want us to remain great friends, not because of our kids, but because of all the great experiences we have encountered together and the growth through them.”
That email contained all the lessons any couple need for a good divorce: honesty, explanation, compassion and compromise.
Tuesday 23 January 2018
A travesty of divorce: Triple talaq has nothing to do with religion
Tabish Khair in The Hindu
It is easy to blame political parties for the mess around the triple talaq issue. But before doing so, one has to put the matter in perspective: it is not political ‘manipulation’ that came first; triple talaq already existed. Can you really blame others for tossing stones into your house when you have a gaping hole in the roof?
True, only a minuscule percentage of Muslim men practised triple talaq, but still the number of afflicted women ran in the tens of thousands. There was no justification for it — legal, political or social. There wasn’t even a convincing theological argument in favour of it, as the Shias wisely accepted.
Rashly rejecting a constructive say in the matter (and, once again, failing to position itself on the progressive side of history), a section of the so-called Sunni leadership in India is now resorting to various other objections — some of which are justified and many of which are not — against the law that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government seeks to pass to stop triple talaq.
This unholy mix of objections has even confused Muslims who were against triple talaq, partly because of the general suspicion that Muslims bear towards the BJP. This suspicion is misplaced at times, but it is not groundless: if many Muslim leaders have failed to build bridges, many BJP politicians and (more often) their acolytes have also trumpeted their dislike for Muslims and everything Muslim. It has been a mutual failure of the sort that no nation can afford.
Need for a law
Despite the reasons for suspicion among Muslims, there is a pressing need to legislate on this issue. Triple talaq is not going to go away without a law against it. Perhaps this could have been a possibility if Sunni leaders had collaborated in delegitimising it publicly. But having chosen to miss that chance, they have left the government — BJP or not — with no option but to pass a law against triple talaq.
Legislation against triple talaq is not a law against divorce, as has been made out in some Muslim quarters. It is simply a law that ensures equal rights to the wife. Its purpose is to ensure that a husband does not abandon his wife outside a proper legal set-up, which may obtain some rights for the woman after years in a marriage. Of these rights, financial maintenance is central in a place like India, where often wives ‘do not work’ (read: wives work at home but without remuneration) or their earnings are appropriated by their husbands.
The greatest failure on the part of so-called Sunni leaders has been their inability to see triple talaq as part of a major social problem that has nothing to do with religion: wife abandonment. But viewing the matter through their own set of saffron-tinted glasses (as against the green-tinted ones of the Sunni leadership), the BJP too has failed to see triple talaq as a type of wife abandonment, which exists in other forms and other communities too. It is common knowledge that far more (Hindu) wives are abandoned by their Hindu husbands without a divorce than (Muslim) wives are ‘divorced’ with a summary triple talaq by their Muslim husbands.
Abandonment by the husband
Please note that wife abandonment is not the same as the decision by a married couple — Hindu, Muslim, or whatever — to live separately without suing for divorce, if this decision is mutual, legally negotiable by both parties, and without any undue pressure on either party. Wife abandonment involves a one-sided decision by the husband to live separately from the wife, without providing her with legal and mutually negotiated maintenance, and either refusing to divorce her, if she should so desires, or divorcing her arbitrarily and without equal legal recourse. Triple talaq is a form of such an arbitrary divorce, a travesty of divorce. But it is by no means the only form of wife abandonment — within or without Muslim communities.
If triple talaq is seen as a type of wife abandonment, the government could come up with a better law than the current proposal. The proposed law seems to actually recognise triple talaq as effecting a divorce, while penalising the husband with criminal sanctions. This is illogical and provides the wife with no real protection. Instead, triple talaq should be considered a type of wife abandonment, along with other versions in all communities. It should not be accepted as an effective divorce, but as abandonment by the husband and grounds for the wife to obtain a divorce in her favour. Its ‘use’ should be automatically converted into a case of legal divorce through the law courts, which can then implement the conditions of divorce in favour of the wife, with added penalties on the husband.
As men resort to triple talaq and other forms of wife abandonment only to shirk their financial responsibility, this would be a far more effective course than needless criminalisation.
No law is foolproof. Even laws against murder can be misused, and they do not eradicate the incidence of murder. One cannot demand a foolproof law or a non-punitive ‘law’ (as that would be no law in effect!), but one has every right to expect a comprehensive and fair law. Countries are built with such laws. And they can be written, if we take off our variously tinted glasses.
It is easy to blame political parties for the mess around the triple talaq issue. But before doing so, one has to put the matter in perspective: it is not political ‘manipulation’ that came first; triple talaq already existed. Can you really blame others for tossing stones into your house when you have a gaping hole in the roof?
True, only a minuscule percentage of Muslim men practised triple talaq, but still the number of afflicted women ran in the tens of thousands. There was no justification for it — legal, political or social. There wasn’t even a convincing theological argument in favour of it, as the Shias wisely accepted.
Rashly rejecting a constructive say in the matter (and, once again, failing to position itself on the progressive side of history), a section of the so-called Sunni leadership in India is now resorting to various other objections — some of which are justified and many of which are not — against the law that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government seeks to pass to stop triple talaq.
This unholy mix of objections has even confused Muslims who were against triple talaq, partly because of the general suspicion that Muslims bear towards the BJP. This suspicion is misplaced at times, but it is not groundless: if many Muslim leaders have failed to build bridges, many BJP politicians and (more often) their acolytes have also trumpeted their dislike for Muslims and everything Muslim. It has been a mutual failure of the sort that no nation can afford.
Need for a law
Despite the reasons for suspicion among Muslims, there is a pressing need to legislate on this issue. Triple talaq is not going to go away without a law against it. Perhaps this could have been a possibility if Sunni leaders had collaborated in delegitimising it publicly. But having chosen to miss that chance, they have left the government — BJP or not — with no option but to pass a law against triple talaq.
Legislation against triple talaq is not a law against divorce, as has been made out in some Muslim quarters. It is simply a law that ensures equal rights to the wife. Its purpose is to ensure that a husband does not abandon his wife outside a proper legal set-up, which may obtain some rights for the woman after years in a marriage. Of these rights, financial maintenance is central in a place like India, where often wives ‘do not work’ (read: wives work at home but without remuneration) or their earnings are appropriated by their husbands.
The greatest failure on the part of so-called Sunni leaders has been their inability to see triple talaq as part of a major social problem that has nothing to do with religion: wife abandonment. But viewing the matter through their own set of saffron-tinted glasses (as against the green-tinted ones of the Sunni leadership), the BJP too has failed to see triple talaq as a type of wife abandonment, which exists in other forms and other communities too. It is common knowledge that far more (Hindu) wives are abandoned by their Hindu husbands without a divorce than (Muslim) wives are ‘divorced’ with a summary triple talaq by their Muslim husbands.
Abandonment by the husband
Please note that wife abandonment is not the same as the decision by a married couple — Hindu, Muslim, or whatever — to live separately without suing for divorce, if this decision is mutual, legally negotiable by both parties, and without any undue pressure on either party. Wife abandonment involves a one-sided decision by the husband to live separately from the wife, without providing her with legal and mutually negotiated maintenance, and either refusing to divorce her, if she should so desires, or divorcing her arbitrarily and without equal legal recourse. Triple talaq is a form of such an arbitrary divorce, a travesty of divorce. But it is by no means the only form of wife abandonment — within or without Muslim communities.
If triple talaq is seen as a type of wife abandonment, the government could come up with a better law than the current proposal. The proposed law seems to actually recognise triple talaq as effecting a divorce, while penalising the husband with criminal sanctions. This is illogical and provides the wife with no real protection. Instead, triple talaq should be considered a type of wife abandonment, along with other versions in all communities. It should not be accepted as an effective divorce, but as abandonment by the husband and grounds for the wife to obtain a divorce in her favour. Its ‘use’ should be automatically converted into a case of legal divorce through the law courts, which can then implement the conditions of divorce in favour of the wife, with added penalties on the husband.
As men resort to triple talaq and other forms of wife abandonment only to shirk their financial responsibility, this would be a far more effective course than needless criminalisation.
No law is foolproof. Even laws against murder can be misused, and they do not eradicate the incidence of murder. One cannot demand a foolproof law or a non-punitive ‘law’ (as that would be no law in effect!), but one has every right to expect a comprehensive and fair law. Countries are built with such laws. And they can be written, if we take off our variously tinted glasses.
Sunday 21 January 2018
Is sex the answer to your relationship woes?
Amelia Hill in The Guardian
How does it make you feel when your partner is cold and distant? Or when they’re critical and prickly? Does it make you want to rip their clothes off, order in a vat of whipped cream and install a chandelier to swing from?
No? Well there’s your problem – according, at least, to Michele Weiner-Davis, the marriage-guidance counsellor whose Ted talk explaining her unconventional advice to warring couples has been viewed almost 3.5 million times online.
Her advice couldn’t be simpler: shag. Do it even if you don’t want to, do it especially if you don’t want to and, most important of all, do it frequently whether you want to or not. To make it even clearer, she’s borrowed one of the most famous advertising slogans of recent times: Just Do It. “Your partner will be grateful, happier and therefore nicer, too,” she explains from her clinic in Colorado. “It’s a win-win situation for both of you!”
Weiner-Davis’s self-confessed “zealotry” for marriage has its roots in the moment her mother blew her teenage world apart by announcing that her seemingly perfect marriage had been a sham for its 23-year duration. She was 16 at the time, and says she wasn’t the only one who didn’t recover from the bombshell: her mother never remarried and her two sons rarely speak to her.
If couples put the work in, they can fall back in love
The experience, says Weiner-Davis – who states that her greatest achievement is her own 40-year marriage – was transformative. She became a staunch believer in the fact that most divorces can be prevented; that the relief of a post-divorce life is temporary but the pain of divorce is permanent; and that if couples put enough work into staying together, they can fall back in love and live happily ever after.
Over the years, Weiner-Davis has honed her message. She’s now stripped it back to what she believes is the essence of a successful marriage. Gone is any therapeutic consideration of a couple’s history; of their emotional travails; of cause and consequence. Now she is entirely one-track minded: no matter how appalling the state of a marriage, she believes that kind, generous and frequent sex can bring it back from the teetering edge of collapse.
Her realisation was hard-won. “For decades, I was in the trenches with warring couples,” she says. “But there were times when I was not too effective. I realised that there was a pattern to the times I’d failed. There was always one spouse desperately hoping for more touch and because that was not happening, they were not investing themselves in the relationship in other ways.”
Weiner-Davis stopped focussing on the couples’ difficulties from an emotional angle and addressed them exclusively as sexual problems. that when the so-called “low-desire” partner – who is, she is at pains to emphasise, just as likely to be a man or a woman – was encouraged to have sex they didn’t particularly want, not only did they end up enjoying themselves but the high-desire partner became a much nicer person to be around.
There is always one spouse desperately hoping for more touch
“I heard the same story from my clients so often that I did some research,” she said, “and found several different sex researchers who confirmed what I was finding: that for millions of people, they have to be physically stimulated before they feel desire.”
Armed with this new theory, Weiner-Davis began encouraging her low-desire clients to be receptive to the sexual advances of their high-desire spouse, even if they weren’t feeling up for it. “I found that unless there was something a lot more complicated going on,” she insists, “there were usually substantial relationship benefits to making love with your high-desire partner.”
She rejects any suggestion that she’s advocating a sexually subservient, anti-feminist, “lie back and think of England” approach. , she says this is the embodiment of female empowerment.
“It’s not just telling women to spread their legs,” she insists. “This is not just about sex. For a high-desire spouse, sex isn’t usually about the orgasm: it’s about someone wanting to feel that their partner desires and wants them. I’m hoping that women will feel empowered that they are getting their own needs met through understanding their partner.”
No still means no, she says. “But it helps to not just say no. Instead, explain why you don’t want to make love, suggest a later date and ask whether there’s something you can do for your spouse right now instead. “But here’s the deal,” she adds: “There had better be a whole more Yes’s or Later’s than No’s because if the No’s win, it leads to the problems I have been talking about.”
Weiner-Davis points out that while it’s commonly accepted that couples should make all their important family decisions together, when it comes to sex, who ever has the lower sex drive makes a unilateral choice for them both. And, just to rub salt in the wound, she adds, the disenfranchised, high-desire one is expected to stay monogamous. No wonder, she says, they get cross.
I mention Weiner-Davis’s theory to some female friends of mine. The overriding response is: “Oh God, not another thing for my To Do list!” Weiner-Davis is quick to condemn this response. “Imagine if, when a woman said she wanted to have more intimate conversations or a date night, her husband said: “It’s just one more thing on my To Do list!” For a high-desire spouse who experiences love through touch instead of quality time, it’s exactly the same impact. I’ve had grown men crying in my office, crying about the sense of rejection they feel from their low-desire wives.”
I then regale her with the experience of a friend whose husband had started his own business which quickly went catastrophically wrong. The family finances were in peril and he couldn’t cope. His wife stepped in. Alongside her own job and while juggling the childcare, she worked late into the night for weeks to stabilise their security. During this time, she was scrupulous in not blaming her husband, either explicitly or implicitly.
With crisis narrowly averted, the stressed and sleep-deprived wife realised her husband was being snippy and sulky. When she asked what was wrong, he exclaimed: “We haven’t had sex for weeks!” Surely, I ask Weiner-Davis, this shows that not all demands for sex should be met with her Just Do It ethos.
Not at all, she says. “This woman knew his ego needed to be protected and tried to do that by not blaming him for his mistakes. But it sounds like the bigger statement for him was: ‘Am I still a man and do you still desire me?’”
But it’s the selfish, uncontrolled behaviour of a spoilt child, I insist. Weiner-Davis doesn’t disagree. “Women often say that they feel they have three children instead of two children and a husband,” she admits. “But the fact that this husband was telling his wife what he was feeling sad about is a really good sign: some people throw in the towel.
Is the deal explicit, I ask, does the low-desire one say: “OK, we’ll make love more often, but then you have to turn your iPhone off every once in a while so we can actually talk”?
Yes and no, Weiner-Davis says. “This isn’t about keeping score. Relationships are not 50:50. They’re 100:100. We have to take responsibility for doing everything that it takes to put the relationship on track – even if you’re not getting the response you want initially. That’s really hard.
“It’s about asking yourself,” she says, “when he or she speaks and acts badly, whether it’s because you have not had sex for four weeks. Is their anger actually about feeling hurt and rejected? If it is, the low-desire spouse needs to be more sexy – even though they will not want to do this. And the other one needs to ask themselves when the last time the couple spent quality time together.”
On the other hand, Weiner-Davis admits there is a limit. “I’d say that after several weeks, if nothing has changed in terms of reciprocity, then the couple do need to sit down and identify what’s missing in their relationship for each of them and what they would like to have.”
Michele Weiner-Davis’s cure for a sex-starved marriage
If you have a low sex drive try to adopt the Nike philosophy – and ‘Just Do It!’, even if you feel neutral towards having sex at that moment.
If you’re the one with a high sex drive, try to discover the way your partner wants to receive love. It’s typically through quality time, words of affirmation, thoughtful, practical acts of caring and material gifts.
If you don’t want sex at a particular moment, explain why and suggest another specific time - and ask whether you can do something else physical at that moment for your partner instead.
If you have a higher sex drive than your partner, try to empathise with them and accept they might never want wild or creative sex, but see the increased level of intercourse as a gift showing their love.
Remember there’s no daily or weekly minimum to ensure a healthy sex life. As a couple you need to work out together what works for you.
How does it make you feel when your partner is cold and distant? Or when they’re critical and prickly? Does it make you want to rip their clothes off, order in a vat of whipped cream and install a chandelier to swing from?
No? Well there’s your problem – according, at least, to Michele Weiner-Davis, the marriage-guidance counsellor whose Ted talk explaining her unconventional advice to warring couples has been viewed almost 3.5 million times online.
Her advice couldn’t be simpler: shag. Do it even if you don’t want to, do it especially if you don’t want to and, most important of all, do it frequently whether you want to or not. To make it even clearer, she’s borrowed one of the most famous advertising slogans of recent times: Just Do It. “Your partner will be grateful, happier and therefore nicer, too,” she explains from her clinic in Colorado. “It’s a win-win situation for both of you!”
Weiner-Davis’s self-confessed “zealotry” for marriage has its roots in the moment her mother blew her teenage world apart by announcing that her seemingly perfect marriage had been a sham for its 23-year duration. She was 16 at the time, and says she wasn’t the only one who didn’t recover from the bombshell: her mother never remarried and her two sons rarely speak to her.
If couples put the work in, they can fall back in love
The experience, says Weiner-Davis – who states that her greatest achievement is her own 40-year marriage – was transformative. She became a staunch believer in the fact that most divorces can be prevented; that the relief of a post-divorce life is temporary but the pain of divorce is permanent; and that if couples put enough work into staying together, they can fall back in love and live happily ever after.
Over the years, Weiner-Davis has honed her message. She’s now stripped it back to what she believes is the essence of a successful marriage. Gone is any therapeutic consideration of a couple’s history; of their emotional travails; of cause and consequence. Now she is entirely one-track minded: no matter how appalling the state of a marriage, she believes that kind, generous and frequent sex can bring it back from the teetering edge of collapse.
Her realisation was hard-won. “For decades, I was in the trenches with warring couples,” she says. “But there were times when I was not too effective. I realised that there was a pattern to the times I’d failed. There was always one spouse desperately hoping for more touch and because that was not happening, they were not investing themselves in the relationship in other ways.”
Weiner-Davis stopped focussing on the couples’ difficulties from an emotional angle and addressed them exclusively as sexual problems. that when the so-called “low-desire” partner – who is, she is at pains to emphasise, just as likely to be a man or a woman – was encouraged to have sex they didn’t particularly want, not only did they end up enjoying themselves but the high-desire partner became a much nicer person to be around.
There is always one spouse desperately hoping for more touch
“I heard the same story from my clients so often that I did some research,” she said, “and found several different sex researchers who confirmed what I was finding: that for millions of people, they have to be physically stimulated before they feel desire.”
Armed with this new theory, Weiner-Davis began encouraging her low-desire clients to be receptive to the sexual advances of their high-desire spouse, even if they weren’t feeling up for it. “I found that unless there was something a lot more complicated going on,” she insists, “there were usually substantial relationship benefits to making love with your high-desire partner.”
She rejects any suggestion that she’s advocating a sexually subservient, anti-feminist, “lie back and think of England” approach. , she says this is the embodiment of female empowerment.
“It’s not just telling women to spread their legs,” she insists. “This is not just about sex. For a high-desire spouse, sex isn’t usually about the orgasm: it’s about someone wanting to feel that their partner desires and wants them. I’m hoping that women will feel empowered that they are getting their own needs met through understanding their partner.”
No still means no, she says. “But it helps to not just say no. Instead, explain why you don’t want to make love, suggest a later date and ask whether there’s something you can do for your spouse right now instead. “But here’s the deal,” she adds: “There had better be a whole more Yes’s or Later’s than No’s because if the No’s win, it leads to the problems I have been talking about.”
Weiner-Davis points out that while it’s commonly accepted that couples should make all their important family decisions together, when it comes to sex, who ever has the lower sex drive makes a unilateral choice for them both. And, just to rub salt in the wound, she adds, the disenfranchised, high-desire one is expected to stay monogamous. No wonder, she says, they get cross.
I mention Weiner-Davis’s theory to some female friends of mine. The overriding response is: “Oh God, not another thing for my To Do list!” Weiner-Davis is quick to condemn this response. “Imagine if, when a woman said she wanted to have more intimate conversations or a date night, her husband said: “It’s just one more thing on my To Do list!” For a high-desire spouse who experiences love through touch instead of quality time, it’s exactly the same impact. I’ve had grown men crying in my office, crying about the sense of rejection they feel from their low-desire wives.”
I then regale her with the experience of a friend whose husband had started his own business which quickly went catastrophically wrong. The family finances were in peril and he couldn’t cope. His wife stepped in. Alongside her own job and while juggling the childcare, she worked late into the night for weeks to stabilise their security. During this time, she was scrupulous in not blaming her husband, either explicitly or implicitly.
With crisis narrowly averted, the stressed and sleep-deprived wife realised her husband was being snippy and sulky. When she asked what was wrong, he exclaimed: “We haven’t had sex for weeks!” Surely, I ask Weiner-Davis, this shows that not all demands for sex should be met with her Just Do It ethos.
Not at all, she says. “This woman knew his ego needed to be protected and tried to do that by not blaming him for his mistakes. But it sounds like the bigger statement for him was: ‘Am I still a man and do you still desire me?’”
But it’s the selfish, uncontrolled behaviour of a spoilt child, I insist. Weiner-Davis doesn’t disagree. “Women often say that they feel they have three children instead of two children and a husband,” she admits. “But the fact that this husband was telling his wife what he was feeling sad about is a really good sign: some people throw in the towel.
Is the deal explicit, I ask, does the low-desire one say: “OK, we’ll make love more often, but then you have to turn your iPhone off every once in a while so we can actually talk”?
Yes and no, Weiner-Davis says. “This isn’t about keeping score. Relationships are not 50:50. They’re 100:100. We have to take responsibility for doing everything that it takes to put the relationship on track – even if you’re not getting the response you want initially. That’s really hard.
“It’s about asking yourself,” she says, “when he or she speaks and acts badly, whether it’s because you have not had sex for four weeks. Is their anger actually about feeling hurt and rejected? If it is, the low-desire spouse needs to be more sexy – even though they will not want to do this. And the other one needs to ask themselves when the last time the couple spent quality time together.”
On the other hand, Weiner-Davis admits there is a limit. “I’d say that after several weeks, if nothing has changed in terms of reciprocity, then the couple do need to sit down and identify what’s missing in their relationship for each of them and what they would like to have.”
Michele Weiner-Davis’s cure for a sex-starved marriage
If you have a low sex drive try to adopt the Nike philosophy – and ‘Just Do It!’, even if you feel neutral towards having sex at that moment.
If you’re the one with a high sex drive, try to discover the way your partner wants to receive love. It’s typically through quality time, words of affirmation, thoughtful, practical acts of caring and material gifts.
If you don’t want sex at a particular moment, explain why and suggest another specific time - and ask whether you can do something else physical at that moment for your partner instead.
If you have a higher sex drive than your partner, try to empathise with them and accept they might never want wild or creative sex, but see the increased level of intercourse as a gift showing their love.
Remember there’s no daily or weekly minimum to ensure a healthy sex life. As a couple you need to work out together what works for you.
Saturday 7 October 2017
The con behind every wedding
Anon in The Guardian
A lavish wedding, a couple in love; romance was in the air, as it should be when two people are getting married. But on the top table, the mothers of the happy pair were bonding over their imminent plans for … divorce.
That story was told to me by the mother of the bride. The wedding in question was two summers ago: she is now divorced, and the bridegroom’s parents are separated. “We couldn’t but be aware of the crushing irony of the situation,” said my friend. “There we were, celebrating our children’s marriage, while plotting our own escapes from relationships that had long ago gone sour, and had probably been held together by our children. Now they were off to start their lives together, we could be off, too – on our own, or in search of new partners.”
It’s bittersweet, this clash of romantic hope and lived experience. I am living it now, yo-yo-ing between the wedding plans of my daughter and son, both in their 20s, and the fragility and disappointment of my own long marriage. My days seem to be divided between excited chat about embryonic relationships that are absolutely perfect, and definitely going to last for ever, and remote and cold exchanges with a husband who has disentangled himself emotionally from me, and shows no signs of wanting to reconnect (I have suggested Relate many times; he is simply not interested).
To some extent, this juxtaposition of young love and old cynicism was ever thus: throughout time, weddings have featured, centre-stage, a loved-up duo who believe their devotion to one another will last for ever, while observing from the wings are two couples 30, 35 or more years down the line, battle-scarred by experience, and entirely devoid of rose-tinted spectacles – the parents of the bride and groom. And in the generation of “silver splitters”, these sixtysomethings are more likely than ever to be in the process of uncoupling, at the precise moment when their offspring are embracing the dream of lifelong partnership.
So how do we reconcile our cynicism – or, at best, our scepticism – for marriage and long-term love, with our offsprings’ enthusiasm to tie the knot, and embark on a life of seeming marital bliss? On one level, the phenomenon is heartwarming. It is testament, you could argue, to the resilience of the human spirit: however difficult our own marriages turned out to be, we war veterans look at our kids staring into each other’s eyes, and we melt inside. Yes, we think to ourselves, we made mistakes; we took paths that turned out to be wrong. Even, we think, we made fundamentally bad choices: we married the wrong men.
As a result, love was seriously skewed for us: but in the next generation – we nod our heads vigorously to this, while cheerily agreeing to a no-holds-barred expensive wedding – things will be different. True love will be theirs; the fairytale that eluded us will work for them, at last.
What hokum. As the survivor of a difficult marriage, this much I know: the biggest burden is the disappointment. And it is a disappointment born on my own wedding day in 1985: more than three decades later, the hopes of that morning still glint from the shadows. The expectations heaped on us, including by my in-laws whose own miserable marriage still had another two decades left to torture them, are the ghosts around the sad embers of our once-glowing fire.
So what can we do differently? Here’s the truth of it, as a wise friend said to me recently: in the 21st century, in a world in which women as well as men have choices and independence and long lives (all good), it will be increasingly difficult for one individual to answer the emotional, spiritual and physical needs of another, across many decades. Life is different now: we have bigger imaginations, we have higher expectations, we have more opportunities and, crucially, those opportunities continue well on into our 50s, 60s and 70s – and for all I know, into our 80s and 90s too. Even more significantly, we women have these opportunities: for men, they are less of a novelty. But their more widespread existence is the agent of seismic change in intimate relationships. We no longer need to put up with misery; we can alter the way we live.
I suggest that we, the parental generation, take a subtle lead in being honest with our twenty- and thirtysomethings about the realities of relationships, and love, and longevity, and choices. That we stop buying into the burgeoning and ever-more-elaborate wedding industry, a giant luxury liner that sails full-steam ahead, oblivious to the lifeboats and shipwrecks all around it in the water. At least begin to ask questions of the commercial interest that operates that liner, of its intentions and its fallout (not to mention its profits). There is more than coincidence, surely, in the way we seem to invest more and more resources in marriages that are less and less likely to survive.
How we introduce these notes of caution into our children’s lives is a much more difficult task. As parents, we want nothing more than happiness for our offspring: none of us wants to burst their bubble, at the precise moment it is so expanded.
As so often with parenting, though, we have to take the longer view. Sometimes I think that, even though my children may not understand or welcome some of the messages they get from me now, with me in my mid-50s and them in their mid-20s, there may be moments in the future when what I said, or how I behaved, suddenly makes sense. Parenting means filling your children’s backpack with supplies, and some of the supplies down the bottom of the bag may not be needed for many years to come.
One important factor in all this was raised by Sylvia Brownrigg in these pages earlier this year, and it is this: children are not interested in their parents’ relationships. They’re not interested in their parents’ marriage (beyond hoping that it is incident-free, and as calm as possible) and they are certainly not interested in their parents’ other relationships, if those happen or are ongoing. So we cannot weigh them down with the detail of why our marriages are failing, or unhappy, or disappointing – and yet, we must somehow signal to them that life is a long journey, and that it may be a mistake to invest too much in one central relationship on into the far distant future.
We are pioneers, us fifty- and sixtysomething mothers; we are walking a tightrope, and it is difficult to get the balance right. Sometimes we wobble; sometimes we fall right off. But the fact that we are walking the tightrope at all is the important bit. We are trying to be authentic, to our burnt-out marriages and to ourselves, as well as to our children and the realities of their future.
And choices cut both ways, too. Remember those mothers at the wedding party? My friend, as I say, is now divorced; but the bridegroom’s parents are having counselling, and have not ruled out the possibility of sharing their lives again.
Being more ambitious for ourselves doesn’t mean our marriages can’t survive, but it does mean a bad marriage can only survive if it can change. And that surely is the message, and the hope, we want to give our children, as they taste the realities of long-term love, or long-term what-was-once-love, and what just possibly might be love once again.
Wednesday 3 May 2017
You can’t just cut and run from Europe, Theresa May – it’s illegal
Helena Kennedy in The Guardian
Leaders of Britain’s 27 EU partner countries have now thrown down the gauntlet: no discussions on a trade deal will take place until there’s progress on the UK’s divorce bill, the Ireland-UK border and the rights of EU citizens.
We are told there is a document on the table relating to UK citizens living in Europe and those of citizens from other EU countries who live in Britain, but the UK is not prepared to sign. No reason has been given as to why.
The problem for our prime minister is that at every turn her head hits the hard wall of law and the role of the European court of justice (ECJ). Theresa May has cornered herself by insisting that the UK withdraw totally from the court and its decisions. Nobody explained to her that if you have cross-border rights and contracts you have to have cross-border law and regulations. And if you have cross-border law you have to have supranational courts to deal with disputes.
Call it what you like, but in the end you need rules as to conduct, and arbiters for disagreement. Even the World Trade Organisation has a disputes court.
But May has had a bellyful of European courts after her run-in with the totally separate European court of human rights when, as home secretary, she was trying to deport the fundamentalist preacher Abu Qatada to Jordan. Jordan’s use of torture on political opponents proved a handicap to his expulsion. However, although all this related to a quite separate legal regime, the words Europe and court in the same sentence still invite obstinate opposition from May.
This is now a problem in the Brexit negotiations, because all the preliminary matters raised by EU leaders involve legal commitments from which we cannot walk away. Calls to cut and run without paying a penny in the Brexit settlement are unlawful and unethical. It is not surprising that the other 27 want to see the colour of our money up front.
There is talk of a special deal to be negotiated for Northern Ireland, whatever the rest of the UK does, by possibly joining the European Economic Area (EEA) with some additional border arrangements between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. EEA membership is a semidetached position that Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein have signed up to, whereby they have the benefits of the EU single market but not the full obligations. However, it also has legal implications. You cannot trade without the protection of law because things can go wrong. EEA members have to sign up to the European Free Trade Association court, a special supranational judicial body which deals with EEA disputes; it sits in Luxembourg, and is run largely according to EU law and ECJ judgments. Of course, such law is made without the input of EEA states, which makes it a solution that would be hard for many Brexiteers to swallow.
In preparation for the negotiations, EU representatives have been appearing before Lords and Commons committees and meeting Brexit ministers. They are invariably bemused. They say they keep being told the UK wants to continue to be part of various arrangements, including the European arrest warrant and Europol – yet nobody in London seems to understand that such collaboration requires the ECJ to have ultimate jurisdiction and for EU law to apply.
It seems obvious to them that cross-border collaboration requires supranational legal arrangements covering everything from financial services, trade, farming, fishing, security, environment, employment and maternity rights to industry standards and consumer rights. Intellectual property law, for instance, covers a huge array of research, entrepreneurship, invention and creativity; the European patent court has only recently been built here in London and was due to be opened. What happens to it now, they ask.
For years the British public have been subjected to a barrage of tabloid mendacity suggesting that we are victims of an onslaught of foreign-invented law and interference by foreign courts. In fact, a vast amount of incredibly advantageous law has been created in the EU in the past 40 years. And here’s the rub: we have been major contributors to that law. The British are good at law. We have had a strong hand in the creation of EU law.
The committee I chair in the House of Lords has heard overwhelming evidence about the benefits to business of being able, for instance, to secure a judgment in a British court against a recalcitrant debtor in Poland and know it will be enforced anywhere in the EU.
A mother can secure a maintenance order against her children’s renegade father who has sloped off to continental Europe, and have the order enforced. A holiday accident in Spain can lead to swifter resolution and compensation by virtue of EU law. A British father can get access to his kids by order of a court in Munich. Cross-border relationships require cross-border law, and agreements on mutual enforcement are fundamental.
No wonder the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, is reported to have said Theresa May is on another galaxy in imagining she can retain the best bits of Europe without its institutions or legal underpinnings. Her fantasy that the “great repeal bill” will fix the problem by bringing EU law home, or that a deal can be done without the need for any European court, is unravelling. These legal arrangements require reciprocity. The courts of EU countries do things for us because we do likewise for them. A piece of unilateral legislation on our part does not secure that mutuality which is embodied in many regulations.
Harmonising law across Europe has raised standards – to our advantage. Europe-wide law is integrated into our lives. In the “new order” of trade agreements with China and others, none of these safeguards will exist. My guess is that if May does secure a deal with the EU, we will find ourselves quietly signing up to a newly created court or tribunal, a lesser ECJ.
The law, judges and courts are under attack in many democracies – from Trump’s America to Poland, Hungary and Turkey. It is the currency of our dangerous times. Be warned: good law is a protection we have to preserve. The price of its loss will be very high indeed.
Leaders of Britain’s 27 EU partner countries have now thrown down the gauntlet: no discussions on a trade deal will take place until there’s progress on the UK’s divorce bill, the Ireland-UK border and the rights of EU citizens.
We are told there is a document on the table relating to UK citizens living in Europe and those of citizens from other EU countries who live in Britain, but the UK is not prepared to sign. No reason has been given as to why.
The problem for our prime minister is that at every turn her head hits the hard wall of law and the role of the European court of justice (ECJ). Theresa May has cornered herself by insisting that the UK withdraw totally from the court and its decisions. Nobody explained to her that if you have cross-border rights and contracts you have to have cross-border law and regulations. And if you have cross-border law you have to have supranational courts to deal with disputes.
Call it what you like, but in the end you need rules as to conduct, and arbiters for disagreement. Even the World Trade Organisation has a disputes court.
But May has had a bellyful of European courts after her run-in with the totally separate European court of human rights when, as home secretary, she was trying to deport the fundamentalist preacher Abu Qatada to Jordan. Jordan’s use of torture on political opponents proved a handicap to his expulsion. However, although all this related to a quite separate legal regime, the words Europe and court in the same sentence still invite obstinate opposition from May.
This is now a problem in the Brexit negotiations, because all the preliminary matters raised by EU leaders involve legal commitments from which we cannot walk away. Calls to cut and run without paying a penny in the Brexit settlement are unlawful and unethical. It is not surprising that the other 27 want to see the colour of our money up front.
There is talk of a special deal to be negotiated for Northern Ireland, whatever the rest of the UK does, by possibly joining the European Economic Area (EEA) with some additional border arrangements between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. EEA membership is a semidetached position that Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein have signed up to, whereby they have the benefits of the EU single market but not the full obligations. However, it also has legal implications. You cannot trade without the protection of law because things can go wrong. EEA members have to sign up to the European Free Trade Association court, a special supranational judicial body which deals with EEA disputes; it sits in Luxembourg, and is run largely according to EU law and ECJ judgments. Of course, such law is made without the input of EEA states, which makes it a solution that would be hard for many Brexiteers to swallow.
In preparation for the negotiations, EU representatives have been appearing before Lords and Commons committees and meeting Brexit ministers. They are invariably bemused. They say they keep being told the UK wants to continue to be part of various arrangements, including the European arrest warrant and Europol – yet nobody in London seems to understand that such collaboration requires the ECJ to have ultimate jurisdiction and for EU law to apply.
It seems obvious to them that cross-border collaboration requires supranational legal arrangements covering everything from financial services, trade, farming, fishing, security, environment, employment and maternity rights to industry standards and consumer rights. Intellectual property law, for instance, covers a huge array of research, entrepreneurship, invention and creativity; the European patent court has only recently been built here in London and was due to be opened. What happens to it now, they ask.
For years the British public have been subjected to a barrage of tabloid mendacity suggesting that we are victims of an onslaught of foreign-invented law and interference by foreign courts. In fact, a vast amount of incredibly advantageous law has been created in the EU in the past 40 years. And here’s the rub: we have been major contributors to that law. The British are good at law. We have had a strong hand in the creation of EU law.
The committee I chair in the House of Lords has heard overwhelming evidence about the benefits to business of being able, for instance, to secure a judgment in a British court against a recalcitrant debtor in Poland and know it will be enforced anywhere in the EU.
A mother can secure a maintenance order against her children’s renegade father who has sloped off to continental Europe, and have the order enforced. A holiday accident in Spain can lead to swifter resolution and compensation by virtue of EU law. A British father can get access to his kids by order of a court in Munich. Cross-border relationships require cross-border law, and agreements on mutual enforcement are fundamental.
No wonder the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, is reported to have said Theresa May is on another galaxy in imagining she can retain the best bits of Europe without its institutions or legal underpinnings. Her fantasy that the “great repeal bill” will fix the problem by bringing EU law home, or that a deal can be done without the need for any European court, is unravelling. These legal arrangements require reciprocity. The courts of EU countries do things for us because we do likewise for them. A piece of unilateral legislation on our part does not secure that mutuality which is embodied in many regulations.
Harmonising law across Europe has raised standards – to our advantage. Europe-wide law is integrated into our lives. In the “new order” of trade agreements with China and others, none of these safeguards will exist. My guess is that if May does secure a deal with the EU, we will find ourselves quietly signing up to a newly created court or tribunal, a lesser ECJ.
The law, judges and courts are under attack in many democracies – from Trump’s America to Poland, Hungary and Turkey. It is the currency of our dangerous times. Be warned: good law is a protection we have to preserve. The price of its loss will be very high indeed.
Sunday 2 April 2017
Fatah ka Fatwa - Episode 12 on Triple Talaq
Cow slaughter and Halala Friday Night with Barrister Hamid Bashani
Sunday 29 January 2017
Sunday 25 December 2016
Brexit Facts for your Christmas Dinner
Dan Roberts in The Guardian
Avoiding politics at the dinner table may prove harder than ever this Christmas for families on opposite sides of Britain’s intergenerational Brexit divide.
Voters over 65 were more than 50% more likely to vote to leave the European Union than those under 34, and polls suggest opinions have hardened since. Divorce lawyers have already warned that differing views on the subject are also an added source of stress in many marriages.
At Thanksgiving, when American families gathered for the first time after the equally divisive election of Donald Trump, the New York Times was so worried it published a list of “election facts to keep handy for holiday discussions”. In the interest of similarly avoiding a post-truth Christmas in the UK, here is a festive bluffer’s guide to latest twists and turns of the Brexit debate to keep by the crackers:
Whose Idea was it again?
Six months on from the referendum we know a lot more about the demographics of the electorate. A recent study by NatCen Social Research found the people most likely to vote leave were those without formal educational qualifications (78%), those with a monthly income of less than £1,200 (66%) and those in social housing (68%). Voters against EU membership were also more likely to be white, male, and readers of the Sun or the Daily Express. Anyone brave enough to point this out over Christmas pudding should bear in mind that just 9% of leave voters said they were regular readers of the Guardian. Remainers were also heavily concentrated in London, Scotland and Northern Ireland, but in a minority elsewhere.
Will it ever actually happen?
In private, one European finance minister puts the chances of the Brexit “experiment” being abandoned as high as 25%. Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, has proposed the radical solution of Scotland staying in the single market even if the rest of the UK leaves. In London, it is hard to find anyone in any doubt that the UK government will at least have to give full Brexit a very good try before the next general election. There is always a risk that unforeseen events – another financial crisis or a wider EU unravelling, for example – can intervene, but the likelihood is they won’t. This is happening.
What about that legal challenge?
A supreme court judgment on the government’s right to start divorce proceedings by invoking article 50 without consulting parliament is due in the middle of January. The government is expected to lose, but the impact of the case has been undermined by growing signs that it could easily assemble enough MPs to pass the necessary legislation. An amendment to a Labour motion calling for more transparency in the process saw just 23 Labour MPs vote against their party whip in protest at the very idea of invoking article 50.
Weren’t we meant to be eating baked beans in candlelight by now?
The Guardian’s latest Brexit barometer confirms that many of the more dire economic projections of the impact of a leave vote have yet to come to pass. That does not mean they won’t, though. There are already worrying signs of anxietyabout Britain’s future trading arrangements that can be seen in the slumping value of sterling. EU negotiators are also threatening to extract a £50bn divorce settlement as the price of agreeing a post-membership deal which our ambassador has warned could take a decade. In the meantime, banks and carmakers are warning of an exodus if a transitional arrangement is not agreed to soften the “cliff edge”. Don’t throw out the candles just yet.
So, what’s the plan?
Ah. This is where lunch could get awkward. The truth is we don’t have one yet. Theresa May has said she will give a speech in January setting out the broad aims of Britain’s negotiating position. The Brexit minister, David Davis, has said he will publish a slightly fuller, but not very full, outline for parliament to debate in March. The prime minister also admitted to the Commons liaison committee on Tuesday that leaving the EU without any sort of agreement on the terms of divorce let alone future relations was one of several contingency plans that Whitehall was preparing for. There is now talk of soft Brexit, hard Brexit or “train-crash” Brexit, with the smart money increasingly on something between the last two.
Avoiding politics at the dinner table may prove harder than ever this Christmas for families on opposite sides of Britain’s intergenerational Brexit divide.
Voters over 65 were more than 50% more likely to vote to leave the European Union than those under 34, and polls suggest opinions have hardened since. Divorce lawyers have already warned that differing views on the subject are also an added source of stress in many marriages.
At Thanksgiving, when American families gathered for the first time after the equally divisive election of Donald Trump, the New York Times was so worried it published a list of “election facts to keep handy for holiday discussions”. In the interest of similarly avoiding a post-truth Christmas in the UK, here is a festive bluffer’s guide to latest twists and turns of the Brexit debate to keep by the crackers:
Whose Idea was it again?
Six months on from the referendum we know a lot more about the demographics of the electorate. A recent study by NatCen Social Research found the people most likely to vote leave were those without formal educational qualifications (78%), those with a monthly income of less than £1,200 (66%) and those in social housing (68%). Voters against EU membership were also more likely to be white, male, and readers of the Sun or the Daily Express. Anyone brave enough to point this out over Christmas pudding should bear in mind that just 9% of leave voters said they were regular readers of the Guardian. Remainers were also heavily concentrated in London, Scotland and Northern Ireland, but in a minority elsewhere.
Will it ever actually happen?
In private, one European finance minister puts the chances of the Brexit “experiment” being abandoned as high as 25%. Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, has proposed the radical solution of Scotland staying in the single market even if the rest of the UK leaves. In London, it is hard to find anyone in any doubt that the UK government will at least have to give full Brexit a very good try before the next general election. There is always a risk that unforeseen events – another financial crisis or a wider EU unravelling, for example – can intervene, but the likelihood is they won’t. This is happening.
What about that legal challenge?
A supreme court judgment on the government’s right to start divorce proceedings by invoking article 50 without consulting parliament is due in the middle of January. The government is expected to lose, but the impact of the case has been undermined by growing signs that it could easily assemble enough MPs to pass the necessary legislation. An amendment to a Labour motion calling for more transparency in the process saw just 23 Labour MPs vote against their party whip in protest at the very idea of invoking article 50.
Weren’t we meant to be eating baked beans in candlelight by now?
The Guardian’s latest Brexit barometer confirms that many of the more dire economic projections of the impact of a leave vote have yet to come to pass. That does not mean they won’t, though. There are already worrying signs of anxietyabout Britain’s future trading arrangements that can be seen in the slumping value of sterling. EU negotiators are also threatening to extract a £50bn divorce settlement as the price of agreeing a post-membership deal which our ambassador has warned could take a decade. In the meantime, banks and carmakers are warning of an exodus if a transitional arrangement is not agreed to soften the “cliff edge”. Don’t throw out the candles just yet.
So, what’s the plan?
Ah. This is where lunch could get awkward. The truth is we don’t have one yet. Theresa May has said she will give a speech in January setting out the broad aims of Britain’s negotiating position. The Brexit minister, David Davis, has said he will publish a slightly fuller, but not very full, outline for parliament to debate in March. The prime minister also admitted to the Commons liaison committee on Tuesday that leaving the EU without any sort of agreement on the terms of divorce let alone future relations was one of several contingency plans that Whitehall was preparing for. There is now talk of soft Brexit, hard Brexit or “train-crash” Brexit, with the smart money increasingly on something between the last two.
Saturday 26 November 2016
7 ways to tell if you’re heading for divorce
Krystal Woodbridge in The Guardian
‘When one person is stonewalling, the person being stonewalled may try to trigger a row in order to get a reaction’ (photograph posed by models). Photograph: JackF/Getty Images/iStockphoto
Problems such as stresses brought on by circumstances (new job, moving, living somewhere too small, a new addition to the family, etc) are often fairly easy to address and work on. They are usually a blip unless they are ignored and turn into some of the bigger things below. None of the things listed mean your relationship is heading for divorce unless one, or both of you, are not prepared to work on it, either because one of you no longer wants the relationship to work, or can’t admit anything is wrong. While you are both still committed to making it work, there is always hope.
My wife keeps saying 'No sex tonight': the spreadsheet that lays it all bare
Not having enough sex. This does not mean you need to head to the divorce courts. It’s the mismatch that matters. If you want more, or less, sex than your partner, that can cause problems. Otherwise, it doesn’t matter what anyone else does or doesn’t do, it’s what works for you as a couple. Unless there’s an underlying psychosexual or medical reason, a lack of sex is usually a symptom of a deeper relationship problem rather than the issue itself.
Spending time together. Date nights are not necessary unless you want them to be. But not having them does not mean your relationship is doomed. However, if we replace “date nights” with “spending time together”, that is important. It can be going for a walk, watching a film or cooking together. What it does is say “I’m making you a priority”. Otherwise there is a risk of disconnection. If you don’t make time for each other, you can’t know what’s going on with your partner and without that there will eventually be a loss of intimacy. What make you a romantic, rather than a purely functional couple, is being emotionally intimate.
Appreciation and gratitude. These are really important and if they go (or were never there in the first place) this can start to lead to one of the four bigger warning signs below. It’s not about the grand gesture, but small, everyday signs of appreciation. Saying, “I really appreciate how hard you are working for the family,” or even just doing things like making someone a cup of tea. However, in couples therapy there are the Gottman Institute’s “four horsemen of the apocalypse” signs, which are good to know about and look for. These are warning signs that we would look for in therapy that may signal a relationship where the problems go a little deeper and is in trouble, unless the couple are prepared to recognise and work on these areas.
Criticism. If you or your partner criticise each other habitually, you are attacking their personality. Over time, this will breed resentment. If one person is constantly criticising the other partner this can become a huge problem.
Contempt. This is the hardest to work with but not impossible as long as it’s named, recognised and both of you are prepared to work on it. But if one consistently looks down on their partner, is dismissive, constantly rolling their eyes at what the other says, mocks them, is sarcastic (and not in jest) or sneers at their partner, then they are seeing them as “less than”. Contempt can closely follow behind loss of respect.
Defensiveness. If you can’t talk to one another because one or both of you are defensive, this can be a problem because you won’t be listening to one another’s point of view and, over time, you will switch off. Communication is key to working on any relationship problem – without that you can’t get anywhere. Defensiveness can lead to “blame tennis” where each person is just lashing out in defence: “You did this.” “Yes, but you did this.” You’re indignant and everything is a battle. You’re so busy defending yourself that nothing gets resolved. If you can stop, get some perspective and give each other space and time to talk and listen, you have a hope of sorting this out.
Stonewalling. This is when one person retreats, won’t talk, and will block the other person. It usually happens if the person stonewalling doesn’t want to hear what’s being said, either because they are afraid of it or can’t deal with it, or both. This can result in the person being stonewalled desperately trying to talk to the other; they may even try to trigger a row to get the stonewaller to react and talk. It results in an awful atmosphere and can eventually make the person being stonewalled too afraid to have any sort of discussion because they are afraid of the silent treatment. This then shuts down any hope of communication and reconciliation.
‘When one person is stonewalling, the person being stonewalled may try to trigger a row in order to get a reaction’ (photograph posed by models). Photograph: JackF/Getty Images/iStockphotoProblems such as stresses brought on by circumstances (new job, moving, living somewhere too small, a new addition to the family, etc) are often fairly easy to address and work on. They are usually a blip unless they are ignored and turn into some of the bigger things below. None of the things listed mean your relationship is heading for divorce unless one, or both of you, are not prepared to work on it, either because one of you no longer wants the relationship to work, or can’t admit anything is wrong. While you are both still committed to making it work, there is always hope.
My wife keeps saying 'No sex tonight': the spreadsheet that lays it all bare
Not having enough sex. This does not mean you need to head to the divorce courts. It’s the mismatch that matters. If you want more, or less, sex than your partner, that can cause problems. Otherwise, it doesn’t matter what anyone else does or doesn’t do, it’s what works for you as a couple. Unless there’s an underlying psychosexual or medical reason, a lack of sex is usually a symptom of a deeper relationship problem rather than the issue itself.
Spending time together. Date nights are not necessary unless you want them to be. But not having them does not mean your relationship is doomed. However, if we replace “date nights” with “spending time together”, that is important. It can be going for a walk, watching a film or cooking together. What it does is say “I’m making you a priority”. Otherwise there is a risk of disconnection. If you don’t make time for each other, you can’t know what’s going on with your partner and without that there will eventually be a loss of intimacy. What make you a romantic, rather than a purely functional couple, is being emotionally intimate.
Appreciation and gratitude. These are really important and if they go (or were never there in the first place) this can start to lead to one of the four bigger warning signs below. It’s not about the grand gesture, but small, everyday signs of appreciation. Saying, “I really appreciate how hard you are working for the family,” or even just doing things like making someone a cup of tea. However, in couples therapy there are the Gottman Institute’s “four horsemen of the apocalypse” signs, which are good to know about and look for. These are warning signs that we would look for in therapy that may signal a relationship where the problems go a little deeper and is in trouble, unless the couple are prepared to recognise and work on these areas.
Criticism. If you or your partner criticise each other habitually, you are attacking their personality. Over time, this will breed resentment. If one person is constantly criticising the other partner this can become a huge problem.
Contempt. This is the hardest to work with but not impossible as long as it’s named, recognised and both of you are prepared to work on it. But if one consistently looks down on their partner, is dismissive, constantly rolling their eyes at what the other says, mocks them, is sarcastic (and not in jest) or sneers at their partner, then they are seeing them as “less than”. Contempt can closely follow behind loss of respect.
Defensiveness. If you can’t talk to one another because one or both of you are defensive, this can be a problem because you won’t be listening to one another’s point of view and, over time, you will switch off. Communication is key to working on any relationship problem – without that you can’t get anywhere. Defensiveness can lead to “blame tennis” where each person is just lashing out in defence: “You did this.” “Yes, but you did this.” You’re indignant and everything is a battle. You’re so busy defending yourself that nothing gets resolved. If you can stop, get some perspective and give each other space and time to talk and listen, you have a hope of sorting this out.
Stonewalling. This is when one person retreats, won’t talk, and will block the other person. It usually happens if the person stonewalling doesn’t want to hear what’s being said, either because they are afraid of it or can’t deal with it, or both. This can result in the person being stonewalled desperately trying to talk to the other; they may even try to trigger a row to get the stonewaller to react and talk. It results in an awful atmosphere and can eventually make the person being stonewalled too afraid to have any sort of discussion because they are afraid of the silent treatment. This then shuts down any hope of communication and reconciliation.
•
Sunday 3 April 2016
Freedom from triple talaq: Goa shows the way
S A Aiyar in the Times of India
A step forward in gender justice is the Supreme Court’s admission of the petition of a Muslim woman, Shayara Bano, pleading that polygamy and oral triple talaq —saying talaq thrice in succession — violate fundamental human rights, and hence are unconstitutional. Indian politics has always sabotaged gender justice for Muslim women. But the Supreme Court does not have to woo Muslim vote banks, and can be objective.
The mullahs are livid, of course. Kamal Farooqi of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board says, “This will mean direct interference of the government in religious affairs as Sharia religious law is based on the Quran and Hadith, and its jurisprudence is strong as far as Islam is concerned. It will be against the constitutional right to religious freedom.”
Sorry, but the Constitution makes it very clear that freedom of religion does not override fundamental rights, and does not bar reforms of traditional religious practices. Sharia law may permit the stoning to death of a woman for adultery, but our secular laws ban that. Sharia law may call for the amputation of fingers or hand of a thief, but not our secular laws. Sharia law may prohibit interest on loans, but Muslims giving or taking loans are subject to laws on interest payments.
Now, religious minorities have been allowed to continue with traditional personal laws on matters like marriage and inheritance. Jawaharlal Nehru had the courage to amend Hindu personal law, outlawing polygamy and providing female rights to inherit property, divorce, and remarry. Alas, he funked similar reforms for Muslims, leaving Muslim women as oppressed and subjugated as ever.
A Directive Principle of the Constitution says the state shall endeavour to secure for citizens a uniform civil code throughout India. This has never been implemented. Muslim conservatives are dead opposed. Religious objections apart, they say a civil code will become a form of Hindu oppression.
Some enlightened Muslims have urged modernization of Islamic personal law. But secular political parties know that conservatives control the Muslim vote, and woo them by saying Muslims themselves must take the initiative on reforms. In effect, secular parties have thrown Muslim women to the wolves in search of votes.
The BJP is the only party backing a common civil code, but its strong anti-Muslim instincts lead one to suspect it is keener on bashing Muslims than ending gender oppression.
Right fight: Politicians who say Muslims don’t want personal law reforms are thinking only of Muslim men
Oral triple talaq permits a man to utter three times that he is divorcing his wife, and she is at the mercy of his whims. In our travels through India, my late wife Shahnaz often spoke to Muslim women, who invariably said that one of the greatest injustices they faced was the ever-present threat of triple talaq. The same fears are expressed by Shayara Bano in her Supreme Court petition. “They (women) have their hands tied while the guillotine of divorce dangles perpetually ready to drop at the whims of their husbands who enjoy undisputed power.”
Women constitute half the Muslim population, but have no voice because of male subjugation. Politicians who say Muslims don’t want to reform personal laws are thinking only of male Muslims, not female Muslims. When oppressive Muslim laws keep women under the thumbs of men, they cannot express their true wants and have to follow male orders. Conservative Muslims have historically discouraged female education, keeping women disempowered and unable to strike out on their own.
If a referendum with secret voting is held among Muslim women, they will surely opt to abolish triple talaq and polygamy. But they are not given the chance. So they remain disempowered and subjugated,with the shameful complicity of secular parties claiming to represent universal rights.
The 2012 Committee on the Status of Women has made gender recommendations covering all religions. It seeks to ban triple talaq and polygamy. It seeks stronger provisions for maintenance payments to women and children (these can currently be cut off if a divorcee is “unchaste”). The Supreme Court should heed the report.
Forget the propaganda that a common civil code will mean Hindu oppression. Goa is the only state that disallows personal laws of all religions. It has a uniform civil code — with a few exceptions not relevant to Muslims — based on Portuguese colonial laws. Goa’s mullahs sought to extend Muslim personal law to Goa after liberation from Portuguese rule, but happily were foiled by the Goa Muslim Women’s Associations and Muslim youth activists. Muslims account for 8.3% of Goa’s population, and are a prosperous community. The civil code has not oppressed Goan Muslims or forcibly Hinduised them.
Any fear that a uniform civil code will mean Hindu oppression of Muslims will be exposed as groundless if India simply follows Goa’s example. The Supreme Court should point all political parties in Goa’s direction.
Monday 21 March 2016
The secret of a happy marriage? Low expectations
Daisy Buchanan in The Guardian
Since I got married last October, I’ve been thinking a lot about divorce. Not in a “serving papers” way, but in the sense that nothing is impossible and it’s good to be prepared. Divorce is something that could never have happened to me before the wedding – but now there’s a chance that it’s in my future. Just as some people believe there’s no better way of appreciating life than by contemplating the inevitability of death (“You might get knocked down by a bus tomorrow!” Not if I stick to heavily pedestrianised areas!), I think that the best way of appreciating the best bits of my relationship is to remind myself that we’re both free to leave at any time.
Reader, I married him hoping that it will last for ever, but knowing that it’s going to be hard, because life is hard. The variables are infinite – loved ones might get seriously ill, we might get ill, one of us could do something thoughtless and hurtful and stupid that changes the nature of the relationship, we might end up growing apart instead of growing together. Surely any idiot knows that the romantic bits – wearing your best underwear, snogging your way through plane safety demonstrations on your endless minibreaks and holding in your farts – happen in the six months after you meet. Marriage is all “Can you get a birthday present for my mum? By the way, the toilet’s broken and we’ve just had a council tax bill for 800 quid.”
So I’m not surprised by the results of a recent study which show that the higher a couple’s expectations of marriage, the more likely the union was doomed to failure. When couples had low expectations that were easily reached, they were happier than the couples who had higher expectations, despite having the same needs met.
The study surmised: “Among spouses who either reported less severe problems or were in marriages observed to be characterised by lower levels of destructive behaviour, standards were positively associated with satisfaction over time,” but that bringing impossibly high expectations to marriage was as damaging as undermining each other, or communicating badly.
Dr James McNulty, the psychologist in charge of the research, advises newlyweds to “realise their strengths and weaknesses and calibrate their standards accordingly”, explaining that the problems occur when couples experience “a mismatch between what they demand and what they can actually attain”.
The lesson is obvious. Love the one you’re wedded to, not the tidier, healthier, cleverer, more committed person you hope marriage might make them. If they’re always hitting on your friends and being sick in taxis, they won’t be cured of it just because all of your relatives have bought you flatware from a John Lewis list .
I know I’m incredibly lucky to have met my husband in the UK, in 2015. In other countries and other eras, marriage hasn’t been a choice for women but an inevitability. Many hoped that courtship, and the chance to live away from home, would lead to slightly more independence and fun. In some households, you’re still better off as a matriarch than as an adult female child. But that only reinforces my point.
If you’re marrying in the belief that it will make your life significantly better, then things probably aren’t great to begin with.
Literature is littered with characters who have entered disastrous marriages in the failed pursuit of wealth and adventure. Your Becky Sharps and Emma Bovarys start unions in the hope that they will allow them to realise personal ambitions, and it never ends well.
I’m optimistic for my own marriage because I have no hopes for social betterment, grand balls, or private jets. I married my husband knowing that we have the same idea of what constitutes a good time. We believe there is no greater state of wedded bliss than lying on a sofa with your head on your spouse’s bottom, and six hours of QI repeats scheduled. If I were to dare to dream and get ideas above my station, I might hope that one day we could replace our customary bag of own-brand crisps with a big sack of Kettle Chips.
Ultimately, a marriage can only ever be as good as the people in it. You can’t make coq au vin with a can of Red Stripe and a £1.99 six-piece selection from Chicken Cottage, but you’ll have a nicer dinner if you appreciate the tasty charm of your raw ingredients instead of moaning about their lack of nutritional value. My greatest ambition for my marriage is that we keep treating each other with as much tenderness and respect as we did when we first met, and that we love each other enough to admit it’s time to call it a day if we ever can no longer do this. I hope it will never happen, but at least when it comes to love, a pessimist is never disappointed.
Since I got married last October, I’ve been thinking a lot about divorce. Not in a “serving papers” way, but in the sense that nothing is impossible and it’s good to be prepared. Divorce is something that could never have happened to me before the wedding – but now there’s a chance that it’s in my future. Just as some people believe there’s no better way of appreciating life than by contemplating the inevitability of death (“You might get knocked down by a bus tomorrow!” Not if I stick to heavily pedestrianised areas!), I think that the best way of appreciating the best bits of my relationship is to remind myself that we’re both free to leave at any time.
Reader, I married him hoping that it will last for ever, but knowing that it’s going to be hard, because life is hard. The variables are infinite – loved ones might get seriously ill, we might get ill, one of us could do something thoughtless and hurtful and stupid that changes the nature of the relationship, we might end up growing apart instead of growing together. Surely any idiot knows that the romantic bits – wearing your best underwear, snogging your way through plane safety demonstrations on your endless minibreaks and holding in your farts – happen in the six months after you meet. Marriage is all “Can you get a birthday present for my mum? By the way, the toilet’s broken and we’ve just had a council tax bill for 800 quid.”
So I’m not surprised by the results of a recent study which show that the higher a couple’s expectations of marriage, the more likely the union was doomed to failure. When couples had low expectations that were easily reached, they were happier than the couples who had higher expectations, despite having the same needs met.
The study surmised: “Among spouses who either reported less severe problems or were in marriages observed to be characterised by lower levels of destructive behaviour, standards were positively associated with satisfaction over time,” but that bringing impossibly high expectations to marriage was as damaging as undermining each other, or communicating badly.
Dr James McNulty, the psychologist in charge of the research, advises newlyweds to “realise their strengths and weaknesses and calibrate their standards accordingly”, explaining that the problems occur when couples experience “a mismatch between what they demand and what they can actually attain”.
The lesson is obvious. Love the one you’re wedded to, not the tidier, healthier, cleverer, more committed person you hope marriage might make them. If they’re always hitting on your friends and being sick in taxis, they won’t be cured of it just because all of your relatives have bought you flatware from a John Lewis list .
I know I’m incredibly lucky to have met my husband in the UK, in 2015. In other countries and other eras, marriage hasn’t been a choice for women but an inevitability. Many hoped that courtship, and the chance to live away from home, would lead to slightly more independence and fun. In some households, you’re still better off as a matriarch than as an adult female child. But that only reinforces my point.
If you’re marrying in the belief that it will make your life significantly better, then things probably aren’t great to begin with.
Literature is littered with characters who have entered disastrous marriages in the failed pursuit of wealth and adventure. Your Becky Sharps and Emma Bovarys start unions in the hope that they will allow them to realise personal ambitions, and it never ends well.
I’m optimistic for my own marriage because I have no hopes for social betterment, grand balls, or private jets. I married my husband knowing that we have the same idea of what constitutes a good time. We believe there is no greater state of wedded bliss than lying on a sofa with your head on your spouse’s bottom, and six hours of QI repeats scheduled. If I were to dare to dream and get ideas above my station, I might hope that one day we could replace our customary bag of own-brand crisps with a big sack of Kettle Chips.
Ultimately, a marriage can only ever be as good as the people in it. You can’t make coq au vin with a can of Red Stripe and a £1.99 six-piece selection from Chicken Cottage, but you’ll have a nicer dinner if you appreciate the tasty charm of your raw ingredients instead of moaning about their lack of nutritional value. My greatest ambition for my marriage is that we keep treating each other with as much tenderness and respect as we did when we first met, and that we love each other enough to admit it’s time to call it a day if we ever can no longer do this. I hope it will never happen, but at least when it comes to love, a pessimist is never disappointed.
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