Marriage and divorce

SO I asked my young friend, Rina, where she thought her life was going.

She is gainfully employed, albeit in a contractual position in the service industry. She has a kid already studying in a private elementary school courtesy of her parents-in-law, but her husband is a bum.

Try to understand where I’m coming from. Rina’s husband is not even the landed gentry type used to being waited hand and foot by servants, but someone whose own parents worked really hard at their jobs to give their children a good education, a decent house, and three square meals each day. So I couldn’t comprehend the roots of the lazy attitude.

Rina was quiet. This was one of the few conversations I’ve had with her over the years. I don’t like poking in other people’s private lives, but I finally had to speak up. She and her husband had yet another senseless fight, and there was some pushing involved this time, aside from the usual heated exchange of hurtful words.

It would’ve been more acceptable if her husband at least took care of their kid well, and helped around the house by cleaning up or doing whatever domestic chores that Rina couldn’t do because she was at work. But this isn’t a portrait of a stay-at-home Dad. She works hard at her job, while her husband stays at home, sleeping most of the time while the TV or the computer babysat their kid.

She finally spoke up that she didn’t like their situation either. So what are you going to do about it? Another stretch of silence.

Rina’s case isn’t unique. It still happens to quite a number of people in this day and age. You fall in love, get pregnant out of wedlock, and decide to marry the father because both of you think it’s the right thing to do for the child. Sure, you probably even think you two are honestly in love with each other. I get it.

But I must admit I wasn’t too thrilled when Rina decided to get married to the father of her child. So the guy’s a nice kid. But there was something about him that I just didn’t trust. It could be because he initially disowned being the father of Rina’s child. (They were both just 18 and still in college when this happened.)

He also didn’t finish college. A few credits shy of graduating, he simply disappeared and didn’t bother showing up at school or at home. He also lied to his parents about flunking out.

Frankly, it’s not the flunking out that bothers me, it’s being unemployed that I’m more disturbed about. What could he be thinking? That his parents would be around forever to support him and Rina, and their child going to college? This guy is no Bill Gates, who dropped out of school but went on to launch Microsoft.

The marriage was a recipe for disaster.

But adolescents like Rina never ever see it this way. They think love will see them through this difficult time in their lives. It will save them from whatever dire future awaits them. Her love for her husband will eventually rehabilitate him from his current lifestyle and, soon enough, he will turn around and actually get off his lazy skinny ass and find a job.

I am two decades older than Rina, and have seen marriages like hers come and go. No amount of wise counseling will prepare her for the tougher life ahead for her small family. (Thank God, she has enough sense in her to not get pregnant again.)

I wish things could go differently for her and that she not end up a statistic like many others before her who married for the wrong reasons. She will have to make her own mistakes, bump her head against the wall, and eventually wake up from her reverie.

When she does, all I can do is just be there for her, listen to the sad stories that I’ve already predicted would happen, and hold her hand firmly to say that it’s time she wipe away all that crap she’s stumbled into and start over.

AS I write this, the news on TV is that the divorce bill is being revived in Congress.

Of course, we will hear our esteemed Catholic bishops go berserk over this issue, the same way they did over the reproductive-health bill. (Sorry, I just think people who aren’t allowed to have sex or get married have no business poking their noses in these issues.) But they can’t deny the fact that a growing number of couples are separating without the benefit of divorce, and may be even “living in sin” with people other than their spouses.

Understand that I still believe in marriage and joyfully celebrate when friends get hitched. I still believe that two people who truly love each other and are emotionally prepared to undertake a future together should get married. But these bishops also have to listen to the needs of their flock. People need a way out of bad or failed marriages.

When there is domestic violence involved, when there is adultery, when there is substance abuse (or a spouse has simply gone nuts), or when one or both spouses are immature to accept the challenges of married life, or, yes, when both spouses simply have lost their love for each other—these are among the valid reasons for couples to end a marriage.

Not being affluent enough to afford an annulment, which I am told can cost upward from P200,000 these days, their only recourse is to live separately from their spouses.

(According to news reports, the 1935 Constitution did allow divorce in the Philippines. I wish there were official statistics then to show how many couples took advantage of that law.)

Catholic bishops have to trust their flock that a divorce law will not be abused. No one ever wants a marriage to fail. I know couples that have separated who say the decision to walk away from a marriage was not easy. Spouses will always try to stay together and work out their problems first, before deciding to end things, especially when there are children involved.

But in the same way a wedding ceremony or a marriage certificate formalizes the legal union of two people, separated couples need a divorce law to formalize the dissolution of that union. It’s the only way for them to really move on with their lives and make a fresh start. –Ma. Stella F. Arnaldo / Something Like Life / http://stella-arnaldo.blogspot.com