I think Kathy Lette says it all in the Times today. Why would anyone divorced like me want to remarry, particularly given 60% of second marriages fail and given women like me pay huge sums out to men on divorce plus the damage to psychologial and physical health suffered by married women but not married men etc etc
"We? ve got premonogamy tension
Our correspondent explains why women are jilting marriage
Kathy Lette
The institution of marriage is being jilted at the altar. The number of marriages is lower than Paris Hilton?s bikini line ? the lowest level since records began 100 years ago. Britain also has the highest divorce rate in Europe. And, for the first time the majority of those divorces are being initiated by women. Wives are recycling husbands so fast that there should be a recycling bin at the bottle bank just for them. Green glass, brown glass. . . and then the ?boring/cheating husband? bin.
As we know now that marriage suits men much more that it suits women ? married men live longer than single men, suffer less heart disease and mental illness, whereas the reverse is true for females ? it seems to me that it is women who are showing signs of PMT (premonogamy tension).
Women have read the small print on those marriage licences and wised up: being a wife damages your mental health, erodes your social life, dries up your libido and increases the odds that you will be assaulted or murdered in your own home. In a recent report on marriage, 42 per cent of women surveyed said that they often thought about running away with someone else. Half wished they?d never married. And a third found sex boring.
Ask any married woman the difference between a husband and a toy boy and she?ll tell you the same thing. About three hours. According to the same survey, one in three married women never reaches orgasm during sex. Many husbands seem to think that mutual orgasm is an insurance company. But what really inhibits a wife?s sexual desire is being taken for granted.
When you?ve worked all day, then come home to cook dinner, locate the lost sports kit, put on the washing, help with the homework, do the ironing etc etc, by the time you flop into bed the one thing you?re fantasising about is sleep. And then you get ?The Hand? creeping stealthily over from his side of the bed. (Wives take note: if you?re really desperate for a good night?s sleep, this is the time to casually mention that the taxman rang and wants to audit his accounts. Not only will he lose the inclination for sex, he?ll also lose the desire for sleep, which means you won?t have to put up with his snoring either.)
The trouble is that the ?have it all? superwoman has turned into the ?do it all? drudge. Despite making up 50 per cent of the workforce, women still do 99 per cent of the childcare and housework. The Dunkirk evacuation was easier to organise than a working mum getting her kids up and out of the house in the morning ? and all while hubby reads the paper. Men put their ?domestic blindness? down to their inability to multitask. This is a biological cop-out. No male would have trouble multitasking at, say, an orgy.
More and more women are opting to live alone or to raise children on their own. If Jane Austen were alive today she?d be writing about a Mr Bennet trying to marry off his five sad sons. This is because the ?hideous habit ratio? of spouses is about 100:1 in the husband?s favour. They think sitting on the toilet is a leisure activity. They?d rather die than ask directions (which may be why they always include a woman in the space shuttle now.) They believe that the petrol gauge reading ?empty? is the signal to drive another ten miles.
But marriage can have its good points. It?s an immunisation against loneliness. And what a relief not to have to get naked in front of a stranger ever again. Nor to have to lie on your side to make your breasts look bigger. So, how to encourage women to see wedlock as more than a padlock? It seems to me that the equation is simple. Happy wife equals happy life. Husbands need to help more around the house. (It is scientifically proven that no woman ever shot her husband while he was vacuuming.) Husbands need to talk. (A wife often feels that her small intestine communicates with her more often than her husband.) Husbands must not confine affection to times of erection ? hug her occasionally when she?s not horizontal.
Love prepares you for marriage the way needlepoint prepares you for round-the-world solo yachting. Nobody ever said marriage was going to be easy. In sickness and in health and all that ? and believe me, if you marry into allergies there?s always going to be a little something wrong. He?ll always have a niggling ache somewhere. But perhaps we just need to love more realistically. Starting with the revamp of wedding vows. It?s not sickness, infidelity or lack of money that breaks up marriages; it?s cellulite, snoring or interrupting each other?s anecdotes. Or worse, correcting anecdotes. Vicars should say ?in irritating, snorty laughing noises, in anecdote interruption and in equal amounts of housework . . . I now pronounce you man and wife.?
Then perhaps women will no longer feel they are being sacrificed on the altar.