Ow, that hurts

I'm quite susceptible to little hurts. A dozen times a day I feel hurt that I've been rejected, or ignored, or slighted, or not appreciated, or not understood, or treated brusquely.

But they're only little hurts, a bit like nettle stings or pinpricks. They only last a minute or two and then they're forgotten. I'm too resilient to dwell on them for long. I don't magnify every little hurt into a tearful melodrama. I shrug them off as a trivial part of daily life, just a sign of the rough and tumble of a hectic world.

The big hurts are a different story. The sort of hurt when a long-time friend suddenly snubs me, or my professional competence is doubted, or someone questions my sincerity or integrity. That goes deeper, like a thorn in my flesh. It pierces through the usual resilience and lodges somewhere, constantly resurfacing in bursts of bewildered pain.

That's the sort of hurt that can't just be shrugged off, though I'm still able to see it philosophically as an unfortunate but inevitable part of being human. I'm not the type of person who deals with serious hurt by getting bitter and vengeful, trying to cause as much hurt as was done to me.

I know some people would say that's a cop-out, that I'm bottling up my feelings and it's far healthier to ease the hurt by flinging it back where it came from. But that's not the way I see it. I want to drain the hurt, not add to it. So I keep it to myself and let it run its natural course.

Then again there's the biggest hurt of all, which is grief. Luckily up till now I've never experienced major, all-consuming grief, and I hope I never have to. I can only imagine how I might cope with it. Very well? Very badly? Probably the latter. Such excruciating hurt would knock me for six.

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.