Why a pre nup?

Pre nuptial agreements have been around for a while, but most couples still marry without one. Are they a good idea or not? Certainly Jenny and I never considered a pre nup, we just expected each other to behave sensibly in any sort of crisis.

The usual objection to pre nups is that they immediately imply you don't trust each other and need elaborate safeguards to stop the other person behaving badly.

I guess most couples assume the marriage will work out just fine and there's no need to provide for all sorts of unlikely situations. Even if they know how many marriages collapse, they still don't think their own marriage might crumble.

I had a look at what pre nups usually cover:

• Rights over property, inheritances and other assets
• Protecting each spouse from the other's debts
• Each spouse's entitlement to the other's support
• How assets will be split if you divorce
• Providing for children by a previous marriage

Jenny and I have never had a dispute over any of these things (we have no children to worry about). We agreed very early on that all our assets would be jointly owned and we wouldn't have separate bank accounts. This has worked well and neither of us is secretly salting away thousands of pounds or trying to claim sole ownership of the house.

People do add some unusual provisions to pre nups. An American couple agreed that if one of them cheated on the other, they would then have to pay all the household bills. Other pre nups have included the right to random drug tests on a spouse, the condition that a husband watches only one football game a week, and restrictions on the use of social media.

Pre nups might very well avoid some of the nastier marital bust-ups. But who wants to envisage bust-ups when you're still besotted with each other?

Harder than I thought

What I've realised as I get older is that things that seemed very easy when I was young are actually much harder than they look. I was simply too ignorant to be aware of the complexities.

• Like pregnancy. I always wondered why new mothers were congratulated. Surely giving birth was a doddle, something any woman could do in her sleep. I was totally unaware of all the possible obstacles - infertility, miscarriage, stillbirth, ectopic pregnancies, birth defects. I gradually realised congratulations are quite justified, given all the possible pitfalls.
• Like grief. I used to think grief was something very temporary, a short period of anguish that soon gave way to a calmer outlook. It took me a while to realise grief can be quite overwhelming, deeply traumatic and can last for months, years, or even an entire lifetime. It can't just be "shaken off" like a winter cold.
• Like divorce. Why all the fuss? A couple don't get on any more, so they split up and go their separate ways. All very straightforward. It gradually dawned on me that it can be immensely painful not only for the couple themselves but for any children they have. The sense of failure and inadequacy and guilt can be huge.
• Like moving house. You just buy a house and move in, right? Certainly that's how I saw the family's move when I was 13. I was blithely unaware of the buying process, all the preparations for moving, and then the whole settling in palaver. I suppose partly because I was at school, and partly because I didn't have to do any of the donkey work. It was only when Jenny and I bought our first flat that we realised what a nightmare the whole process is.

If it looks easy, it probably isn't.

Silver splitters

Apparently there's a rising trend for "silver splitters" - older couples who divorce in their fifties or sixties, often after decades of marriage, and either marry again or stay single. They no longer want to stay together till the bitter end, but decide to split up and make a new start while there's still plenty of their life left.

But one relationship counsellor says that people underestimate the consequences of splitting, both for themselves and other family members. It can be much more expensive than they thought, it can greatly upset their children, and it can be hard to cast aside the psychological bonds of a long-lasting relationship.

Personally, I can't imagine leaving Jenny and starting again with someone else. After so many years of forging such close bonds with each other, I'm sure it would be incredibly difficult to begin that process all over again with another person. At every step I'd be bringing a whole lot of emotional baggage from my previous relationship, which surely would get in the way of making a new one.

Of course if your existing relationship is disastrous, if there's domestic violence, if you have fiercely differing views on many subjects, if you simply don't get on, if your partner is an alcoholic or a drug addict, then it's a lot easier to make the break, though even then there may be a reluctance to give up on a relationship you've invested so much in over so many years.

Then again, some former spouses simply don't want another relationship. They decide they're perfectly happy living on their own. As one divorcee put it: "All of my girl friends who have got divorced went wild in the year afterwards. They were having a blast dating guys."

What you might call Silver Seducers.

Costly nosiness

How much privacy are spouses entitled to when it comes to personal information about their financial transactions? Are they entitled to keep it secret or should they be more transparent?

Suspecting her husband of infidelity, Karen Santi opened one of his paper bank statements, read messages on his computer, and sent some of the information to a financial advisor.

It seems she didn't find any evidence of an affair, and her furious husband Lawrence retaliated by seeking a court non-disclosure order to stop her passing the information to anyone else.

The divorce case is continuing, but meanwhile Mrs Santi has been told to pay £54,000 of her husband's £90,000 legal costs, a sum she says will "wipe out her liquid assets".

She maintained that looking at the confidential information of the other in the context of a marriage breakdown was understandable.

Well, this situation would never arise for me and Jenny, because all our financial transactions are on joint accounts and neither of us have individual accounts. Whatever one of us spends is immediately visible to the other.

I can see the £100 she paid for that fancy handbag and she can see the £100 I spent on Calvin Klein underpants (just kidding).

So if one of us was shagging someone else, it would be obvious pretty quickly - that unexplained hotel bill or that purchase from Posh Frocks.

But if we had separate accounts, would I feel justified in having a furtive peek at my spouse's bank statements? If I suspected a clandestine affair, maybe I would. But I'd be more cunning about it and not leave any traces of my nosiness.

Not that either of us has any hankering for affairs. We have much more interesting and guilt-free ways of enjoying ourselves.

Karen Santi is paying a high price for her suspicions.

Pic: Karen Santi

Puttering along

 

I'm grateful for the fact that Jenny and I have weathered the pandemic and the various lockdowns so successfully. There haven't been any big psychological or emotional traumas, and we've just puttered along comfortably.

That's not the case for many others who've found the pandemic hard to cope with and have been driven to unexpected extremes. They've divorced, or had affairs (or discovered them), or developed mental problems like anxiety or depression, or had violent arguments over housework or shopping - or just different attitudes to fighting the virus.

Of course it helps that Jenny and I are such a long-standing couple and have had plenty of time to adjust to each other's personalities and quirks and weaknesses. The pandemic is just another crisis we've adjusted to together. Therapists have noticed that long-standing couples are coping better with the pandemic than short-term couples.

Sometimes I miss the old freedoms we took for granted - going wherever we wanted, going to the cinema or art galleries or literary events, jetting off to some exciting destination - but most of the time I'm happy to hunker down with a good book or a glass of wine. After all, I've been retired for almost three years, so I'm used to amusing myself.

I'm also glad all this has happened now, when I can share the crisis with a partner in a big, warm house. If it had happened in the seventies, when I was living on my own in a bleak, freezing bedsit, I would probably have been very miserable. For a start, I wouldn't have had the internet to entertain me.

The only thing that worries me right now is, will I get my usual slap-up birthday meal at our favourite local restaurant, or will it still be closed? Will I have to make do with a mushroom pizza and a few swigs of pinot grigio? Time will tell.

Promises promises

Do people take their wedding vows seriously? Do they honestly intend to stay with their spouse through thick and thin, through hell and high water, through the grimmest of circumstances? Or do they make that promise a bit tongue-in-cheek, not really meaning it? Like you agree to the terms and conditions on an insurance policy, without actually reading them?

I don't recall what wedding vows Jenny and I used. I don't remember us writing our own vows, so I think we must have used the traditional ones, which go something like this:

"I, whoever, take thee, whoever, to be my wedded husband/wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part."

But since around 40 per cent of marriages end in divorce, clearly in practice everyone has their particular limits, and what one person will happily tolerate will drive another to pack their bags.

Whatever their wedding vows, people may be unable to cope with their partner getting a nasty illness, becoming an alcoholic, being work-obsessed, being a total slob, joining some weird cult, or sleeping around. And you wouldn't expect anyone to put up with ongoing violence or cruelty or gaslighting.

I doubt many spouses really believe they should tolerate absolutely anything, however distressing or humiliating. I suppose the wedding vows are still very much a puritanical hangover from the days when wives were expected to endure whatever their husbands inflicted on them.

Jenny and I have never had our pledge of loyalty put to a serious test - certainly none of the things I just mentioned. How would we cope if one of us got a dreadful illness, or turned into a pugnacious bully? Hard to say unless it actually happened.

Only a saint could adhere faithfully to the wedding vows. And not many of us are saints.

To stay or to go?

It's conven-tional wisdom that divorce has a very bad effect on children, that it can seriously traumatise them and damage their self-confidence and sense of security. But can a failing marriage be just as damaging?

Keeping a crumbling marriage going "for the sake of the children" isn't necessarily the right thing to do. Ending the marital tension and bitterness and making a new start might actually be the better choice.

I wonder about all this because staying together "for the sake of the children" is probably what my parents did, except that they never said much about their relationship so it was never made explicit.

However, I do vividly remember that at one point my mother was planning to move out and took me and my sister to see several flats she might have moved into. As it turned out, things were patched up, the marriage continued, and the divorce never happened.

But there was always tension and bitterness in the marriage, which didn't do my emotional health any good. My father was bad-tempered and prone to verbally abusing my mother, as well as demanding she be the traditional housewife, cooking his meals and doing the cleaning.

Would it have been better if they had divorced, put an end to the constant tension and abrasiveness, and provided my sister and I with a calmer and happier household? I suspect the answer is yes and we kids would have benefited. But who can say? It's one of those nebulous what-if scenarios.

I've certainly seen what look like very fraught marriages and very emotionally troubled children, but who knows what the children need? And for that matter, what the parents need? Feeling more and more ground-down by a frustrating marriage is itself emotionally destructive.

Whatever the decision, it's a tough one.

Judge ye not

I'm shocked at how hard it still is for someone to divorce a partner they can't bear living with any longer. A judge can still refuse a divorce, saying that the grievances aren't convincing enough, or that the other person's behaviour doesn't seem unreasonable.

If a divorce on the grounds of unreasonable behaviour (which applies in the vast majority of cases) is refused, the only alternative is living separately from the other person for five years before getting a consent-less divorce.

Some of the comments made by judges are outrageous. One woman who said her husband's unreasonable behaviour made her feel unloved, isolated and alone, was told he was simply "old school".

Another woman was told that the examples of her husband's unreasonable behaviour - like his workaholic tendencies and regular grumpiness - just weren't good enough.

Several of my blogmates and Facebook friends have had incredibly acrimonious and long-drawn-out divorces, and surely it should be easier to get a no-fault divorce without having to "prove" the marriage has broken down?

When someone is already seriously distressed by a failing marriage, to have to convince a sceptical judge you're at your wits' end just adds insult to injury.

As divorce lawyer Ayesha Vardag puts it, "The very idea that someone who desperately wants or needs to exit a marriage can be prevented at the discretion of a judge is absolutely terrifying. Forcing couples to stay married has no part in a civilised society."

The irony is that getting married is extremely easy. You sign a few bits of paper and that's it. Nobody asks you to "prove" that you're serious about marriage and want to make it work. Yet if everything goes pear-shaped, endless obstacles are put in your path.

Judge not, that ye be not judged....

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PS: Today is my 10th blogiversary. How about that?

The final straw

I'm always interested in what destroys a relation-ship, what drives people apart. Especially if couples have been together for decades and then suddenly, apparently right out of the blue, they're getting divorced and it's all over.

Usually they don't reveal the exact cause of the meltdown. Or only to their closest friends. They tell people vaguely that "it simply wasn't working any more" or "he just wasn't the same person". Strange habits and personal failings are hinted at but not spelt out. You can only guess at the straw that broke the camel's back.

I'm forever astonished at how long Jenny and I have been together. In some ways we're very different, and I'm amazed there's never been some fundamental clash that proved impossible to resolve. The usual clichés about "loads of give and take" and "giving your partner plenty of space" don't go very far. The winning formula, whatever it is, is too complex to be summed up so neatly.

I think one reason we've stuck together is that somehow we've dodged all the big issues that tend to ambush other couples.

Like money. We're both sensible about spending and neither of us have expensive habits that soak up cash. We don't gamble, binge drink, buy flashy cars or go for £1,000 suits. Like affairs. We've never been tempted. Like children. We both agreed very early on that we didn't want them. Like sex. There's no nagging incompatibility. Like insecurity and jealousy. We're not threatened by the other's friendships or activities. Like bad communication. We're good at opening up and talking things through. And like mutual respect. Many couples break up because the man turns out to be an engrained misogynist, or the woman is nagging and controlling.

But that isn't the whole story either. Plenty of other things could have capsized us, could have driven a wedge between us. Somehow we've sidestepped them all. How lucky is that?

Cold feet

It seems that a surprising number of those about to marry already doubt that the relationship will last. And quite a few of them consider leaving their spouse-to-be at the ceremony. But for one reason or another they go through with it - often only to confirm their original doubts and get divorced.

A survey of 1,600 divorcees found that 49 per cent were worried on their wedding day that the marriage was a big mistake, and two thirds thought about calling it off.

So why did they squash their doubts and carry on anyway? They thought their partner would change for the better. They thought "it would all work out". They were too embarrassed. They felt guilty letting their partner down. They succumbed to family pressure. Or they thought it was just "wedding nerves".

One woman who explains her numerous doubts says she only realised how empty her marriage was when a workmate got engaged and she burst into tears.

I wonder how many of the divorcees cohabited before they married. It seems to me that a period of cohabiting will make it very clear whether you're suited to each other and likely to stay together or whether it's just not going to work.

Jenny and I cohabited for 14 years before we married, and by then were confident we would stay together. Even though the marriage was basically for financial reasons (I would only inherit her occupational pension if I was a spouse), we had no doubts whatever as we did the necessary at the local register office.

But I can understand those with cold feet not having the nerve to stand up and say "No, I just can't do it". Especially if it's a mega-bucks white wedding with all the trimmings. Disappointing hundreds of people and throwing all that cash down the drain. Looking like a complete idiot for going along with huge preparations.

Who wants to be a party-pooper?

Unforgettable girls

The confusion over Cate Blanchett's "relation-ships" is a reminder that platonic friendships can be just as intense and rewarding as sexual couplings, even though the latter are usually seen as the real deal.

Many women say they've had female friendships just as important to them as sexual relationships - emotionally, mentally, and on every level - yet such friendships are often dismissed as trivial and superficial.

Journalist Daisy Buchanan writes "I barely remember the boys I went out with as a student, but the girls are unforgettable. They're the ones you'd have 72 hour 'dates' with and they're the times I feel nostalgia for.

"Modern female friendship - at least at the start - can be more like a love affair than an actual romance itself. Anxiety, jealousy, neediness; it's a lot like falling in love.

"It makes me wonder whether no relationship can be entirely platonic, and that you don't have to experience sexual feelings towards a person in order to feel romantic ones."

I'm not sure men could say the same about male friendships though. From what I know, they seldom have that intensity and richness. I've certainly never had a male friendship like that myself, either at school or in adult life.

As for sexual relationships being superior, quite often sex is the only thing that keeps them going, and the friendship aspect is minimal. Or conversely, there may be minimal sex and it's more like a tight and complex friendship.

But there's a general assumption that sex somehow enriches a relationship in a way that's lacking in an "ordinary" friendship. The logic is never quite explained but the cliché persists.

A curious cliché considering the high divorce rate and all the sexual relationships that collapse just as often as the platonic variety. Clearly they're going sour as much as they're being enriched.

Let's hear it for the infinite possibilities of friendship, in or out of bed.

The agony of divorce

If you think staying married can be tricky, try getting divorced. It often leads to the most horrendous and tangled proceedings you could imagine. Bitter squabbles over every aspect of the break-up, from children to property to money to how much each spouse contributed to the marriage.

A High Court judge said recently he was filled with "nothing but despair" over a wealthy couple who had already spent some £700,000 on divorce proceedings which had barely started, such were the labyrinthine arguments about aspects of the relationship. He decried the "unedifying" sight of a family "tearing itself apart."

It seems virtually impossible for a couple to divorce amicably and sensibly, with the bare minimum of fuss. The long-standing anger and resentment that led to the split in the first place seem to boil over in the courtroom and create one impasse after another. Each partner is afraid of giving too much away, losing out, appearing to be weak, and they keep upping the ante.

I know of several couples whose divorce was a horrific experience, with one or the other digging their heels in, refusing to compromise, and making life as difficult as possible for the soon-to-be ex-spouse. Very profitable for the lawyers but a nightmare for the warring couple.

There have been many attempts to replace ugly court cases with informal mediation arrangements, but quite often they lead to much the same stubborn wrangling.

My parents were sometimes bruised enough to talk about getting divorced. But they never did. In the end they stuck together as that's what most couples did in those days. "For the sake of the children" as they usually explained it. Maybe they should have divorced, but I'm glad they didn't. I can only imagine the tearful and rancorous scenes it would have involved and the misery for each parent as they tried to move on.

A shame there isn't some kind of foolproof psychological test couples can take before they marry, to determine if they're truly compatible or in the throes of some grand romantic illusion. It could save an awful lot of agony later on if things turn nasty.

Tall dark stranger

As is customary at this time of year, I always ask the renowned psychic and clairvoyant Esme Plunge what the new year has in store for me. Swallowing my earlier doubts about her psychic gifts, I ventured once more into her garish consulting room, trying not to stare at her ample bosom.

Nick: So, Esme, darling, what’s 2013 got up its sleeve?

Esme: Well, sweetheart, I see you being swept off your feet by a tall dark charismatic stranger.

Nick: But I’m a happily-married man.

Esme: Ha, that’s what they all say.

Nick: So, this tall dark charismatic stranger. Does she have a lot of money?

Esme: I’m not sure. My crystal ball’s getting a bit cloudy.

Nick: So is she cultured, well-read, sophisticated, witty?

Esme: Sorry, it’s really fogging up now, I can’t see a thing. Ask me another.

Nick: So is she red-hot under the sheets?

Esme: I can’t answer that. This is a decent, God-fearing, family business. But my psychic channels say she’s definitely not the shy, retiring type.

Nick: I see. So do I face any unexpected catastrophes in 2013?

Esme: Yes indeed. Your cosmic aura tells me that following a very messy and acrimonious divorce, your new mistress will desert you for a 22-year-old lesbian and you’ll be well and truly washed-up, eking out a miserable existence in a scummy bedsit.

Nick: Oh dear. But can I prevent all this?

Esme: Of course you can. Just ignore the tall dark charismatic stranger, take plenty of cold showers and remember your marriage vows. Tell yourself that temptation can always be resisted.

Nick: But then 2013 might also be a bit boring.

Esme: Not at all. I also foresee a hugely successful series of sado-masochistic soft porn novels, written by your wife, her whirlwind romance with a tall dark charismatic journalist, and a messy and acrimonious divorce followed by….

Nick: That’s quite enough. I don’t want to hear any more. I love my wife dearly. Nothing must ever come between us. Our union is unshakeable. The bonds between us are stronger than life itself.

Esme: Whatever. That’ll be £51, cash only, sweetheart.

Pic: the legendary Esme Plunge

Hacked off

Getting a divorce can be a pretty nasty business. But not many wives tie their estranged husband to a bed, cut off his penis and put it in the garbage disposal.

When paramedics arrived at Catherine Kieu Becker's house in Garden Grove near Los Angeles, they found her husband still tied up and bleeding profusely from his groin.

They retrieved parts of his severed penis from the garbage disposal but it's not known if surgeons were able to reattach it.

Why Ms Becker resorted to such a horrific measure is anyone's guess (she is reported to have said only "he deserved it"). The couple were married in December 2009 and had recently sought a divorce.

Her husband has vigorously denied he was bedding other women but all sorts of rumours are flying.

I can't imagine how any woman could do something so drastic (and probably irreversible), something that presumably will ruin the man's life, however badly he had mistreated her or impugned her sexuality.

What can she possibly gain from it except his burning hatred and the sort of media notoriety most of us would run a mile from?

Was she for some reason trying to render him incapable of seducing or bedding another woman because of some appalling experience he had put her through (or supposedly put her through)?

Ironically, if she is found guilty of the six charges against her and jailed indefinitely, she also will never again have a normal sex life. Nor will she be able to hack off any more penises.

Penectomy note: She isn't the first of course. Lorena Bobbit sliced off her husband John's penis in 1993, and a Bangladeshi woman, Monju Begum, cut off a neighbour's penis because of persistent harassment in May this year.

Pic: an unflattering police mugshot of Catherine Kieu Becker

Love derailed

I'm always fascinated by marriages that fall apart in a matter of months. How did this amorous couple become disillusioned with each other so quickly?

What did one of them find out about their partner that was so shocking, so disappointing, so repulsive that they just had to call it a day and walk out?

Sometimes you find out, sometimes you don't. Sometimes the aggrieved spouse is only too keen to dish the dirt on their other half and demolish their glossy image. Sometimes they're just too embarrassed to explain, too stunned by their own inability to see their partner's weaknesses before they tied the knot.

They may discover that Mr Right is a chronic womaniser, an alcoholic, a bully, or a closet gay. Ms Perfect may turn out to be a spendthrift, a neat freak, a self-pitying whinger, or a kleptomaniac.

Of course we all uncover unsavoury characteristics in our loved ones sooner or later. Nobody can keep up a phoney facade of rectitude forever, particularly if you're living with someone day in and day out. Eventually the cleverly-constructed mask will slip.

Most of these peculiarities we can adjust to as a minor aspect of our partner's rich and varied identity. But sometimes something emerges that is so alien, so extreme that we simply can't stomach it. Then the relationship dies overnight.

I scratch my head at the self-delusion of individuals who're well aware of some serious personal failing but get involved with someone else in the hope either that their unattractive defect will stay miraculously hidden or that the other person will be infinitely understanding and indulgent. Not surprisingly, their wishful thinking generally ends in tears, and the house of cards collapses in a startling heap.

Santa's troubles

Santa's trying to keep it quiet, but there's growing unrest in the Grotto. The elves are demanding a pay rise and better working conditions.

They say the toy-production targets are impossible to keep up with, and dangerous machinery is causing serious injuries. They also want a few female toymakers to increase job satisfaction.

Not only that but the reindeer are demanding strict mileage limits on the distribution run, after several reindeer died from exhaustion during last year's deliveries. And they want in-flight entertainment instead of having to stare into space all night. "It's so fucking boring" said one disgruntled reindeer, who didn't want to be named.

An angry Santa has hit back at the rebels, threatening mass sackings and blaming outside troublemakers working for rival toymakers Here Comes Santa. Inside sources say the stressed-out super-hero is drinking heavily, chain-smoking and running up massive gambling debts.

Santa is already under pressure from consumers complaining of the declining quality of his festive gifts. Said Jason, 10, of Croydon, "It was a load of rubbish last year. Everything fell to bits or wouldn't work. The clothes were embarrassing, I couldn't possibly wear them. The senile old git should have been pensioned off years ago."

On top of all that, Santa's wife of 19 years, the astonishing Pixie Ambrosia Angeldust, is seeking a divorce on the grounds of incompatibility. "I mean nothing to him. All he cares about is his bloody workshop. It's toys, toys, toys, morning noon and night. I might as well not exist. I'm not hanging around like a spare bogroll any longer."

Santa was not available for comment.

Pic: Santa and Pixie

Wedding vows

I didn't realise that up till now pre-nuptial agreements weren't legally binding in Britain. So if your spouse had agreed never to claim on your private fortune, or whatever, it would never have been upheld anyway.

But the English Court of Appeal has just ruled that such contracts are in fact legally valid, and German heiress Katrin Radmacher needn't give her ex-husband Nicolas Granatino a penny - as he had agreed before the wedding.

I think the idea of a marriage contract briefly flashed through my mind before I married Jenny, but of course in our case it was pretty pointless. Neither of us had a vast fortune, a stash of Old Masters or anything else of any great value.

But if there's a possibility of gold-digging or any other kind of unscrupulous go-getting, I guess such contracts are a sensible way of preventing it and ensuring the marriage is for genuine reasons.

Mr Granatino had previously been awarded £5.8 million of Katrin's £100 million fortune, but the court decided she didn't have to pay it.

The judges said a pre-nuptial agreement was realistic when divorce was commonplace and could lead to a lot of stress and expense if nothing had been agreed about dividing up assets.

Perhaps we missed a trick not drawing up a PNA. It could have laid down a few useful markers. I could have put strict limits on Jenny's sessions of retail therapy while she could have insisted I clean the house from top to bottom every week.

Although for those couples like us who stay together and aren't likely to divorce anyway, it would just be an extra cash cow for the lawyers as they cobble together all those unnecessary legal provisos. And if you do divorce, then they sting you twice - once when you tie the knot and once when you unravel it. So keep that cheque book handy....

NB: This is the situation in English law. But the law in Scotland and Northern Ireland could be different again!

Photo: Katrin Radmacher

Break-up gossips

People so often jump to knee-jerk conclusions about why a relationship failed and whether it was A's fault or B's fault. In fact the truth is usually a lot more complex than such simplistic name-calling.

Obviously I'm thinking of a certain well-publicised divorce* where one individual is getting pilloried ruthlessly by the media while the other is being help up as a saintly icon who's been taken to the cleaners.

The fact is that nobody outside a relationship can truly understand how it works, or doesn't work, and glib judgments about fault and misbehaviour are usually based on false assumptions and prejudices that have little to do with reality.

While everyone else claims to know exactly what caused the break-up, the couple themselves may be completely mystified. They may have genuinely wanted the relationship to work and been baffled that their best efforts and noblest intentions came to nothing.

It's easy to side with one person, particularly if they're a personal friend, and blame their partner for all the problems and failures. But the real-life cocktail of personalities, expectations and emotions that decides the fate of a relationship defies such black-and-white loyalties.

Sure, some break-ups can be pinned fairly and squarely on one person - the alcoholic husband who beats his wife or the wife who discovers she's gay. But I think they're the exceptions that prove the rule.

And might I suggest that people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones? Those who delight in picking over the entrails of other people's wrecked relationships should maybe take a closer look at their own and see if their behaviour meets the exalted standards they apply elsewhere. Or sooner or later the wagging tongues could be fastened on them.

* Oh all right, then, Heather and Paul.

The postcard mentioned in Red's comment. Nice one! It was posted on postsecret.blogspot.com

Bed and bored

Northern Irish couples are almost twice as likely to blame collapsing marriages on affairs as couples in the rest of the UK.

They're also twice as likely to blame boredom, though domestic violence and lack of sex are mentioned a lot less*.

Why so many affairs? Are there really that many or is it just that Northern Irish folk are more likely to know about them because it's such a tight-knit society?

People here are so closely connected through family, work and neighbourhood links that if your spouse is bedding someone else the chances are you'll find out pretty quickly through a mutual friend or workmate. Especially since Northern Irelanders are such avid gossips.

If you want to keep an affair under wraps, you'll have to do it in disguise or in a different country. And steer clear of that travel agent who just happens to be your plumber's cousin.

But what about boredom? Why do so many Northern Irish couples find each other so dull? Perhaps it's all those men whose idea of excitement is a day's fishing. Or all those women whose big thing is scouring the outlet centres for a flattering blouse.

Or maybe it's just that their minds have stopped functioning after another 10 hour working day to pay for the sky-high mortgage on their fashionable Malone apartment?

It's also interesting that although many Northern Irelanders are intensely religious, divine guidance doesn't necessarily stop hubby making out with Fiona from Accounts and upsetting the marital apple cart. Or maybe it was the missis yakking on about the benefits of the Good Book that drove him into Fiona's arms in the first place. God works in mysterious ways....

* A survey by InsideDivorce.com, reported by Relate Northern Ireland.