Watching the shipwreck of the Chris Huhne and Vicky Pryce court case has made me feel guiltily relieved that, at the age of 42, I haven’t yet married. The operatic scale of the disaster makes it appear emblematic of all the other couples who make each other unhappy all the time in smaller, less dramatic ways. That two people can bind themselves together for life, raise five children together and yet remain so emotionally unintelligent about each other and the world in which they live says several things to me.
It makes me think that they may have got married for the wrong reasons, most likely because they were young and ambitious and, in conventional terms, marriage makes you appear more successful.
It also suggests that the expectations they placed upon each other at the outset were too high and that, when faced with the reality of marriage the return, in terms of fun and support, was too small: their marriage failed.
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