Divorce: The Final Answer?

Divorces have entered the public spotlight since the latter half of the twentieth century, with some blaming increasing work pressures, declining moral values and a reduction in the social stigma attached to divorces for the rash of broken marriages that has plagued society since.

Divorces are currently increasingly common in the USA, the UK, a host of other European Union-member countries, South Korea and Canada. Divorce is in fact illegal in the Philippines and Malta, primarily due to the influence of the Catholic Church, which views divorce as highly unfavourable due to its contravention of standard Christian moral values and its resulting in the splitting apart of families. The Catholic Church has attempted to staunchly oppose divorce, and even managed to ban divorce in France and England in the 1800s.

Divorces have lead to two moral, religious and constitutional crises in England. These are interesting to examine because the first such case was, by no means, ‘final’ while the second was exceedingly ‘final’ and resulted in an outcome agreeable to all parties involved. The first such crisis was prompted in 1553 by King Henry VIII who wished to divorce his wife, Catherine of Aragon, and marry Anne Boleyn, a commoner while the latter was still alive. The Roman Church refused to be a party to his request, and so Henry VIII separated English Catholicism from Roman control by creating the Church of England. Even though he subsequently married Anne Boleyn by obtaining an annulment of his marriage with Catherine, declaring it as incestuous under Levictal law, his betrothal of Anne Boleyn was by no means final. He later had her convicted of treason, summarily executed and went on to marry four more wives. Thus, his first divorce was not ‘the final solution’.

For Edward VIII, however, a divorce proved to be the final solution as his wife, Mrs. Wallis Simpson, obtained one from her American husband in 1936 in order to marry the king, who was forced to abdicate the throne in order to do so. They remained married until his death thirty-five years later, thus showing that a divorce lead to a ‘final solution’ for them.

Modern-day divorces provide employment to thousands of divorce lawyers around the world, who battle over issues such as alimony payments, child custody, distribution of property, and child support.

However, modern counselling practitioners only advocate divorce if several other measures fail to restore the sanctity of the bond between husband and wife. For instance, they recommend relationship counselling, drug or alcohol rehabilitation (if either of those two modern social ills is proving detrimental to the relationship), anger management therapy, psychiatric treatment or psychotherapy if either of the two partners is experiencing trouble with any of those related conditions, or intimacy counselling if the couple’s sex life is not meeting both partner’s expectations. The next step is generally a trial separation to gauge whether the couple are ready for a full-blown divorce.

Reconciliation after divorce sometimes occurs, especially in situations in which the divorce has been hurried, or if the circumstances that lead to the divorce (for example, a drug problem, psychiatric issue or infidelity) are eliminated as factors. On several occasions, couples have found that the grass really isn’t ‘greener on the other side’, and that they dearly miss the companionship and love of their erstwhile spouses. In cases such as these, divorce is almost certainly not ‘the final answer’.

However, there exist several instances in which divorce is not only the ‘final’ but also the ‘only’ answer. For example, in relationships that lead to abuse, either of a spouse or a child, immediate and swift termination of the marriage is cited as the best recourse to restore the victim’s lives to some semblance of normality and allow them to heal from the physical and psychological scars inflicted by such maltreatment and harassment. Another instance in which divorce may be prescribed as necessary is in situations in which the children are being affected by the tussle between the parents; sometimes, they are used as pawns by either parent to curry favour with either the courts or other competent authority. Studies have shown that this sort of treatment has psychological implications for the children, who often exhibit intimacy or relationship issues later on in their lives.

Divorce: not the best answer, not the only answer but now all too often the final answer.

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About the Article Author

James Walsh is a freelance writer and copy editor. For more information on getting a Divorce see www.quickie-divorce.com

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