DIVORCE - AND MRS X Aileen La Tourette Elizabeth Burns deserves credit for tackling the difficult question of divorce in the last SOF magazine.
Unfortunately, I don't think she got there in the end, and I'll say why.
It's the bit in the piece where she says, dismissively, that of course a case wherein "Mrs X becomes disenchanted with Mr X and thinks that perhaps Mr Y would be a better bet" is unworthy of theological consideration, or, as she seems to imply with talk of moral culpability, any consideration at all. Why ?
It seems to me that Mrs X's and Mr X's and Y's and even Z's and A's considering of new and different alphabetical permutations is precisely the nub of the matter. Because it is a sign of wanting to rearrange oneself, or a sign that a new arrangement has been reached, one that the existing conjugal environment does not cater for. So if I have changed, or I need to SPRING 1991 PAGE 17 SEA OF FAITH MAGAZINE change, profoundly and positively, and I cannot do so in the context of my marriage, or so it appears to me after the most serious and honest debate with myself, what do I do ?
No one in their right mind would argue that one should remain within a relationship in order to be abused, or have one's life ruined by a chronic alcoholic, junkie or whatever who refuses to take their own problem seriously and go for help. Anyone in their wrong mind who does argue for it is, I'm afraid, too out of touch to be worth arguing with. Besides, frankly, Mr X (I am going to identify with the vilified Mrs X here) if you start bashing me about, as far as I'm concerned it's you who has broken the marriage contract between us, not me. Being battered doesn't quite fit in with my notion of being cherished, or of with your body (sic) you me worship, bozo. The only question here is when I decide the contract is really beyond repair, or my will to repair it is finally gone.
When I have lost all energy for this relationship, and it is dead for me, then the time has come to give it a decent burial.
And in doing so, no matter how badly I may have been treated, I think, unlike Elizabeth Burns, that I must take responsibility, too, for what has gone down.
I don't mean that I need blame myself. But then I think 'blame' is a nuisance word. I have been part of the dialogue, however it has been carried out - with fists or words or bottles. Or drugs. Here I really am with Joyce Johnson when she says in her book on the Nussbaum case ('What Lisa Knew', Bloomsbury, 1991) that the wife in the case cannot be exonerated.
It is doing me no favour to deprive me of responsibility or my own fate.
I may well conclude that it is morally wrong for me to remain in a particular marriage. That it is a symptom of fatal lethargy and resignation, and even despair, to remain. That it is a sign that I have given up on myself, that it is a form of suicide. In a case where there is abuse of one sort or another, or a clearly identifiable pathological condition, this is easy to see.
But let's go back to irrepressible Mrs X and her roving eye ...
I, Mrs X, have seen my beloved Mr X transformed into, let us say, a yuppoid nightmare, right before my disbelieving eyes. Old hippies make the best hustlers and he's right out there, taking his mobile phone to bed and forcing me into wine bars with his little yuppoid pack of red-braces-wearing clones. I am subjected to £80-a-head dinners in Japanese restaurants in the City, for which I must spend an entire day preparing myself at the Sanctuary being massaged by blonde body fascists who tsk over my midriff and gag at the sight of my C&A swimsuit.
I, meanwhile, have grown more and more unworldly. I am interested in Buddhism and cultivate simplicity in all things. Wine bars bring me out in a rash and I fast for a week after each sushi binge.
Appeareth on the horizon, Mr Y - a better bet. He has the soul of Van Morrison, the sex appeal of Gerard Depardieu, the bite of John Thaw and the cuddliness of Columbo. He is, in effect, my ideal man. (aside : is there anyone out there who wouldn't leave home for such a package ?) With him, I will be a better woman.
We will share things. I will no longer scratch my rash like a bitch with fleas. I will no longer shrivel and desiccate from fasting. My life will begin again.
OK, enough knockabout. But surely the question is one of choice - or not. Forget the easy ones, the batterers, alkies, junkies, even the chronic philanderers. There's no moral question here, only a chronological one (when ?) and a geographical one (how far ?). The question is - does my right to self-fulfilment include the right to mess up other people's lives, including the lives of children ?
That's the real hard core question. Because although we all loved to think, back in the early 70s, that children were better off in open-faced divorce than in the midst of conflict and hostility, time has raised a big fat question mark over that one. It would seem that children almost always prefer the devil they know, and the security of old familiar rows, to a new world order. It is depressing to think that. But the evidence for it is very strong.
So we can't pretend it is necessarily 'better for them' that we go. We will have to weigh up, very carefully, knowing in advance that our calculations may be well off, however careful we are. Because that's life. But if our covenant is with what makes for life, rather than death - my old favourite idea from Loyal Rue - then we must be, it seems to me, on the side of choice, however imperfect, and the abiding prospect of change, however traumatic.
Those of us who are married must go on making the choice, day after day. Sometimes I feel I make it on an hourly basis, and there's the difficulty of keeping score, of keeping track of the tally. How many 'Yea's this week, how many `Nay's ? That sounds too mathematical and I don't mean it that way. But I do mean that opening up possibilities always makes for less security. And we're all a bit like kids, who'd take anything rather than change. And there's something in ourselves we have to appreciate, and, sometimes, fight. And the real killer is, if we ever do grow up, then no one, no church, no theologian, can ever tell us when to stay and when to go. That's what growing up means.
AILEEN LA TOURETTE chairs the SOF Steering Committee and has led Drama workshops at past SOF conferences. She is a writer living in South London.