I’m driven back to this topic — of aelf harm and suicide — by events among those around me. There have been casualties, and near misses among my friends. These are generally good people, but, in the process of their divorce, the betrayal and hurt got to them.

They went to the things that give them comfort, and found them empty. My work is dealing with a death. I’m aware of near misses. And the victims — yes, by suicide, as in the link above, leave children trying to make sense of all of this.

In a divorce, you have to greive and let go — of all the hopes, faith and promises you made, all the good times, as well as all the bad things. It hurts. It costs — your family, and your bank account. There are no winners, and no one is completely right. (If you think you were not at all at fault when your marriage broke up, you are probably the one with the problem.

Divorce has, historically been shunned by societies. Marraige — the life long contract that allowed a couple to synergise their effort so that they could raise kids — was honoured. The alternative, for women, was dependence on their parents or poverty. The idea of love, happiness, or self development was not seen as part of the contract but something one attained by working through the difficulties in life circumstances.

Marraige bound men to one person and to a lifetime of providing for their wife and children. Marraige bound women to one person and a lifetime of supporting a tired, grumpy man and a brood of kids. Marraige was never about freedom.

But our generation has wanted both. We forgot that the security of marraige and the long term joy of marraige depended on people giving up freedom. We could not have both. And the current marraige laws — which define it as concubinage of an indefinate term — does not warm our souls. It leaves us mistrustful, cautious and fearful.

We have driven the joy out of marriage — and by extension, the dance between men and women. We have reduced it to sex. We have not learnt from our gay friends, who can easily find sex but have difficulty finding commitment, love and joy. For these things are not guaranteed. You cannot sue for them. You can only commit to someone and work on living with them, and these things may come.

But… I am a divorced solo father. Inside me, something has broken. I will not bring into my life a person who would harm my children. It is now hard for me to trust a person enough to be intimate with them. I pray this will heal, but until then, it is wiser I am single

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 19th, 2011 at 9:23 pm and is filed under Daybook. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.