Gordon Robinson | Don’t turn around

A social tsunami has threatened cultural norms for decades but remains under most weather monitors’ radar.

In recent decades, marriage rates have declined.

Warning: Those among you who believe “marriage” can only take place in a church may want to avert your eyes because this column won’t perpetrate that fiction, nor will it acknowledge any theocratic law that picks a number out of the air and calls it “age of consent” despite allowing child marriages.

This column is dealing only in global realities. The percentage of women 15 to 49 years old married or living in a cohabiting union was 69 per cent in 1970 and 64 per cent in 2020. This global decline is driven mainly by a steep decline in the number of women in North America and Europe opting out of committed relationships. In Asia, marriage is on the increase, while in South America the number is flat.

The shocker is that divorce rates have increased by 251.8 per cent globally since 1960. So you do the math. Fewer couples are getting married or living together in a committed relationship. Plenty are calling this marriage thingy off. When you add the societal gender imbalance, whereby more women are highly educated and rising in commerce and professions (reversing a previous imbalance imposed more by misogyny than nature), while fewer men are completing tertiary education, preferring to join gangs and generally engage in “wutliss” behaviour, it should occur to us that we have a serious social problem looming.

According to USA’s National Center for Health Statistics, 42-53 per cent of American marriages end in divorce. Is Jamaica’s census unearthing similar data? Or just counting people so constituencies can be gerrymandered?

MARRIAGE IS HARD

Let’s not fool ourselves. Marriage is hard, especially in a country like Jamaica where men are still socialised to see wives as chattel to be owned and controlled, not loved and protected.

(Turn around)

Every now and then

I get a little bit lonely

and you’re never coming round

(Turn around)

Every now and then

I get a little bit tired

Of listening to the sound of my tears

But since our men are generally clueless, the onus must be on our women to make better choices. I’ve heard too many women deluding themselves that the day their divorce became final was the happiest day of their lives. These are the same women who, a few years before, proclaimed their wedding day as the happiest of their lives. There’s an emotional dysfunction apparent.

What went wrong? I submit nothing that couldn’t have been foreseen with a tad more prep work before planning elaborate weddings and taking too many staged photos. Good looks, charm, success, or fiscal prospects don’t a good spouse make. Nothing in this world is as it seems. All that glitters …

Do. Not. Take. On. A. Relationship. For. Superficial. Or. Financial. Reasons!

This principle applies to men, women, jobs, careers, or vocations. If there’s no connection of the mind and heart, if there’s no meshing of auras, all else is illusion. There’s no truer saying than “if you love your job you’ll never work a day in your life”.

When the abuse starts; when the passion ends; when the relationship (personal or professional) becomes tedious, boring, or spiritually destructive; when you persist despite the abundance of red flags visible even to Stevie Wonder; you’ll wonder why you started it all in the first place.

(Turn around)

Every now and then

I get a little bit nervous

that the best of all the years have gone by

This is why it’s so important not to make snap decisions about marriage, especially when there’s no spiritual connection.

Also, Christians should stop being so judgmental regarding cultural and religious practices in Asian countries where the marriage rates are increasing and divorce rates are low. Arranged marriages may seem distasteful to Western culture, but they tend to work as parents do a thorough due diligence before agreeing to the match. The divorce rate among Protestants (34 per cent) is the highest among religious groups. Roman Catholics come in fourth with 21 per cent. The Hindu divorce rate is one per cent.

Things that make you go hmmmmm …

So you realise you made a mistake. The first thing that happens is you consider seeking outside solace.

(Turn around)

Every now and then

I get a little bit restless

and I dream of something wild

Don’t. Any “solace” is also an illusion based on the inescapable superficiality of THAT relationship. Then, when “solace” proves to be just another complication, too many stay with the evil they know for far too long.

INCOMPATIBILITY

Relationships fail for many reasons, all subcategories of “incompatibility”. Studies show 73 per cent of divorces stem from lack of commitment, 55 per cent because of infidelity, and 45 per cent due to unrealistic expectations.

The worst psychological damage comes in abusive relationships, where the abused partner tends to find it difficult to leave despite irrefutable evidence obvious to everybody else. They behave like a bad Festival song by Robbie Forbes. They threaten to leave but hang around in one capacity or another long after the façade of love dissipates. Some even say “he beats me because I made him angry” or the worst example of mindc-ontrolled psychosis “because he loves me”.

(Turn around)

Every now and then I get a little bit terrified

but then I see the look in your eyes.

(Turn around, bright eyes)

Every now and then I fall apart

And I need you now tonight

And I need you more than ever

And if you only hold me tight

We’ll be holding on forever

and we’ll only be making it right

‘cause we’ll never be wrong.

Together we can take it to the end of the line.

Your love is like a shadow on me all of the time.

I don’t know what to do; I’m always in the dark.

We’re living in a powder keg and giving off sparks!

This is what “motivational speakers” (a euphemism for talking clichés) and pseudo-spiritualists call a “toxic relationship”. You can’t stay in one of those, whether personal or professional. You can’t have one foot in and another out. You must walk away. Definitively! And don’t ever look back.

Once upon a time I was falling in love

but now I’m only falling apart.

There’s nothing I can do

a total eclipse of the heart

Once upon a time there was light in my life

but now there’s only love in the dark

Nothing I can say

a total eclipse of the heart

Total Eclipse of the Heart was the most successful recording for Bonnie Tyler. It topped the UK Singles Chart and was the fifth bestselling single in 1983. The single was certified “Gold” by the Recording Industry Association of America soon after its release and became “Platinum” in 2001. Songwriter-producer Jim Steinman said “... with Total Eclipse of the Heart , I was trying to come up with a love song, and I remembered I actually wrote that to be a vampire love song. Its original title was ‘Vampires in Love’ because I was working on a musical of ‘Nosferatu’.”

So don’t let the illusion of love you helped to create become your reality until it sucks every ounce of blood from your body and leaves you incapable of true love. If you are in a long-term relationship you now realize was an error (for whatever reason), don’t linger. Go!

Don’t fool yourself that the divorce is a happy event for you. It might be an event that promises or brings freedom.

It. Is. Not. Happy!

Unless you were somehow coerced into the relationship, you are as responsible as any other(s) for the break-up. Your responsibility may be limited to failure to take time to know your intended hubby (due to extreme anxiety to marry) or to appreciate your incompatibility with a career, job, or vocation you so willingly undertook in the beginning.

There’s enough blame to share in any failed relationship. Don’t celebrate its demise. Put it firmly behind you. Don’t revisit it in your mind for any reason. Move on to your next quest. If you keep talking about that failed relationship; if you hang on to any part of it beyond the moment you saw it as toxic; if you can’t forget it; you haven’t left. You won’t be able to become who you were intended to be in this world.

So if despite your best advance due diligence, any relationship turns sour, don’t turn around. Never look back. Behind is your O.D. (Old and Done). Ahead is a new you undiscovered and new adventures undone. Focus your bright eyes forward. Go be you! Go do it!

Peace and Love!

 Gordon Robinson is an attorney-at-law. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com