THE HAPPY EVER AFTER MYTH . . .WHO NEEDS IT?Despite their fairytale

SO, we come to the end of a story. Brad and Jen. As ever, it's the wedding pictures that remain. The single informal image, heads turned in, smiling and looking down, a cloud of hair and veil. It suggested a lot: an intimacy, a warmth, an ideal union of physical beauty.

But four years later, months before they split, Brad Pitt was saying to the press: "There is so much pressure from day one to be with someone forever, and I'm not sure if it really is in our nature to be with someone for the rest of our lives." The fantasy that the two of them had created, the prince and princess of Hollywood, was just that: a fantasy.

Real people, he implied, are built to love more than one person, to hanker for diverging life-paths, to grow bored and irritated with their partners.

For Pitt and Aniston it was not to be "till death do us part". In fact, Pitt was suggesting that fulfilling this part of the traditional marriage vow doesn't come naturally to any human being. The divorce statistics support his comment. Scotland has one of Europe's highest divorce rates, with more than 10,000 break-ups a year - each costing an average of [pounds]13,000. Within half a century, the number of first marriages in Britain has halved and the number of re-marriages doubled and if the trend continues, around 70per cent of adults will divorce at least once. A divorce takes place roughly every three minutes, and each one is accompanied by the whiff of failure.

Aniston and Pitt's Dollars1m fairytale wedding was one of a long line of high-profile unions doomed to turn sour. Charles and Diana. Bruce and Demi. Andrew and Fergie. Nicole and Tom. Each time it seems to leave us with a mild sense of disillusionment. As one Aniston fan, put it: "I no longer believe in fairytales. If these guys can't make it, who can?"

In reality, this particular coupling had a lot stacked against it. According to Anne Roiphe, author of Marriage: A Fine Predicament, the kind of beautiful, charismatic people who crave the admiration stardom brings are, by their nature, perennially seeking external confirmation of their adorability: a factor unlikely to be compatible with long-term monogamy. Aniston appears to have lacked self- confidence. In addition, she and her husband spent long weeks apart on distant sets.

Hollywood, with almost the highest divorce rate in the world, is the land of multiple marriage. Liz Taylor did it eight times; Lana Turner seven; Zsa Zsa Gabor nine. J-Lo is already clocking them up.

At some point in all this, the till-death-do-us-part ideal starts to seem redundant.

Could it be that it's time to stop berating ourselves for "failing" in the pursuit of a goal that seems increasingly unattainable? As divorce becomes the norm among lesser mortals, as well as the stars, wouldn't we be happier if we simply accepted that marriage is a flexible institution - its duration determined by the reality of people's relationships, rather than the romantic ideal of lifelong commitment?

In much of Scandinavia, says psychologist Oliver James, author of Britain On The Couch, this is more or less the way marriage is viewed. "They still marry, but don't have this expectation that it's till death us do part." It is possible to marry "the wrong person", and in such circumstances, divorce is "a great thing" - except that "parents splitting up distresses the hell out of children". And while there is evidence that seriously bickering parents can make children very unhappy, he thinks there's much to be said for staying together "for the sake of the kids".

The fact that a marriage fails to deliver our heart's desire in terms of love, sex and fulfilment is not, he argues, necessarily a reason to relegate marital relationships to the realm of temporary institutions; nor will such a mindset make us happier. Instead, we should simply lower our hopes. "People's expectations of what marriage will deliver are so much higher than the reality could ever provide; or hardly ever." Young women in particular, says James, "have been misled, by magazines like Cosmopolitan, to think they should be having this fantastic sex life, career and so on when actually hardly anybody has a fantastic sex life, even when they're not married".

"Familiarity doesn't necessarily breed contempt but it breeds sexual lethargy. And on average, three years into any relationship - married or not - people are having sex twice a month. Chuck children into the equation and they're having sex hardly ever. And so what? We're in a society where if you aren't having lots of sex in lots of Desperate Housewives sorts of ways, you feel there's something wrong with you. Which is nonsense.

"The short answer, " he adds, "is to be satisfied with what you have." He blames advanced capitalism for making us want what we can't have, and be someone we're not. "Forget that bollocks, " he advises. "OK, your husband or wife isn't perfect - nobody is. Every relationship is deeply flawed. Start from a much more pessimistic standpoint, and things will be a lot better."

James's pragmatic approach is at odds with the abiding, Platonic idea that human beings are split creatures, in search of their other halves; their soulmates. We all know that there are probably thousands of perfectly good partners out there, yet there is a seductive comfort in letting ourselves slip into the easy popcorn storyline of "the one".

These two narratives slide around, talking to each other, flirting, exchanging numbers, but totally and self-evidently incompatible.

INthe past, however, the idea that there is no single perfect partner didn't stop spouses from sticking to a single person and making it work. Many people, when questioned hard enough, will admit they don't think the man or woman they are with is "the one".

My mother says as much about my father, yet has remained welded to him for the past 35 years. One married friend told me she had met several people who she thought possibly could have been "the one" - but it wasn't "the time".

"I have a knee-jerk reaction to this idea of soulmates, " said another. "You will meet your soulmate and fall in love and it will all work because you have known each other for eternity - that idea that you don't have to work at it. Any relationship, whether it's soulmate or not, you have to work at."

Often it seems "the one" is at best, just shorthand for someone, anyone, who might have some of the qualities we find acceptable in a mate. If there really were just "one", the human race might have died out long ago. "A lot of people think, " says Oliver James, "that they have the wrong person when in fact, they've probably got the best they're going to get. Statistics show that if you say, 'right, I've had enough of this I'm out of here, ' you'll just go and repeat the whole thing again with someone else. Because people who divorce are much more likely to divorce again if they remarry."

In addition, there is plenty of evidence that people whose parents divorced during their childhood are more likely to see their own first cohabiting relationship break down.

Oliver James appears to view the divorce rate as symptomatic of the screwed up society he depicted in his latest book, They F*** You Up. It's not insignificant, he says, that the prevalence of serious depression is now between three and 10 times higher than in 1950 - when the divorce rate was one-fifth of the current level.

It's certainly true that in previous, seemingly more golden ages, divorce was less common and most marriages ended in death. It's easy to paint a gloomy picture of our current society as one in which men and women fail to create long-term relationships - yet curiously, the duration of marriages has not in fact decreased, but remained a constant.

There is a formula here: the less death, the more divorce. As Roiphe puts it: "Our family values are no worse than ever. We just live long enough to wear them out." Historian Beatrice Gottlieb, who researched marriage from 1400 to 1800, found that marriages rarely lasted more than 20 years, almost all breaking up, "not because of legal action, but because of death . . . The fragility of marriage was deeply embedded in the consciousness . . . Hardly anyone grew up with a full set of parents or grandparents. From the point of view of the married couple, this meant that, however fond they were of each other, they were likely to feel it necessary to make provisions for a future without the other. Marriage 'contracts' were primarily provisions for widowhood. For couples who were not particularly fond of each other, it was not unrealistic to dream of deliverance by death."

In other words, till-death-do-us-part worked while death still carried out its fair share of parting. It was not until the 1970s that divorce became a common endpoint. In a twist on conventional gender stereotyping, it has been suggested that the cause of the Aniston-Pitt rift was his desire for children, and her desire to focus on her career.

"I'll tell you truthfully, " Pitt told a magazine in November 2001, "I am completely bored with myself in films. I have other interests I want to pursue that mean more to me. I find myself looking forward to a family."

For some, it is simply that they fall for another person, another "one". For others it can just be the desire to break things up, take a breath of a different air, follow a repressed whim. And according to Oliver James, people's reasons for wanting to stray haven't changed all that much. "Many women, " he says cynically, "have been led to believe that men have become new men - interested in them as people rather than what they look like. So they are doubly upset when the man goes off with the 22-year-old secretary, because of course, men are tremendously interested in what women look like.

Equally, men are incredibly upset when they're in a marriage and the woman goes off with a man who has more power, status or wealth. That's a good example of the way in which expectations have become unreal, because the truth is that men and women are like that."

Arguably, divorce is now so common that it is ridiculous to view it as a terrible failure. It could even be construed as a rite of passage. Yet despite the gloomy statistics, marriage continues to be the aspiration of most young people. A recent survey found that 90per cent of 18 to 25-year-old women wanted to marry. Meanwhile, 60per cent of cohabiting couples eventually wed. The majority of the population still see the companionship marriage offers as an ideal and the creation of a traditional family as a goal. "Maybe it's the fact that no-one has figured out a better way to raise children, " argues Anne Roiphe. "Think of it - two parents, one roof, a family. The idea still stirs us, inspires wistful sighs and, cynical as we may be, it touches something deep and corny within."

People continue both to marry, and to remarry.

As Oscar Wilde wrote: "Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience." You might think it was difficult to run through the same routine again, but countless people do.

Mark, in his early 40s, married two years ago for the second time. His first marriage began with a [pounds]60,000 white wedding, and ended in court. The second time round he had a small "cosy, family affair". His attitude was: "Just because I had a dud the first time round it won't always be that way."

Surviving divorce, he said, was a bit like winning at Russian roulette: "The marriage was a near-death experience. I came out of it, thinking, 'Wow, that was a pretty damn close shave.' It's like all bad things. It makes you appreciate life more if you've been through all that shit."

For him, second marriage was about "low expectations and high hopes". Marriage says a lot about hope. People do it in the full awareness that there may be troubles ahead; that there's a good chance they may be grounded on the rocks and possibly maimed. They do it in spite of all the bad news.

After all, we've all been told that marriage isn't easy.

If James is right, then part of the reason marriage has become so difficult is that its demands run counter to the self-centred spirit of our times: we are constantly told to seek personal development and focused authorship of our own lives. Hence we find ourselves in the battleground of two clashing drives: the need for companionship and constancy, and the need to create our own destinies.

For those who still yearn for the permanence of marriage, there is hope. Divorce may be rocketing among the stars, but there is evidence that, down in the real world, the rate may be slowing. In 2001, the number of divorces in Scotland fell to 10,631 in 2001 - the lowest since 1982. The number of marriages also dropped slightly, and it may be that these factors are linked: that couples who don't rush to tie the knot in Britney-style haste, are less likely to repent at leisure. According to Oliver James, a woman who marries at 20 is four times more likely to divorce than one who weds after 25.

And after all, many marriages survive. Some even contain more than their fair share of happiness. It may be, in fact, that the "till- deathdo-us-part" business is exactly what most people want from marriage. They want security; a reliable companionship; a balm to human loneliness.

"There is no substitute for the comfort supplied by the utterly taken-for-granted relationship, " wrote Iris Murdoch, whose marriage to John Bayley lasted despite the onset of Alzheimer's disease.

And none of the people I talked to wanted to remove this clause from the vows.

Over the past three years, I have attended four weddings, and all of the participants believed what they were doing was for life. "Obviously I'm aware that there's the chance we might both change, " said one groom. "You just don't know what fate's going to throw you."

In theatre and stories, a wedding has always provided a good ending. It suggests harmony and order. Over the past 50 years, we have been trying to rewrite the fairytale. We want to believe an alternative version. "Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston separated. And they all lived happily ever after . . ." "Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston cohabited for a few years, then split up before going on to a series of other monogamous relationships, and they all lived happily ever after . . ."

We all know, however, that happily ever after doesn't exist, whichever way you write it:

cohabitation, marriage, a vow of celibacy, till-deathus-do-part, divorce. Even for Brad and Jen.

Oliver James's latest book, They F*** You Up, is published by Bloomsbury, 7.99

A TEMPORARY UNION?

Denise Knowles, relationship expert, Relate At a cynical level, it would be easier to think of marriage in temporary terms but I don't believe anyone who walks up that aisle thinks: "Yeah, we'll give it a shot, and if it doesn't work we'll get a divorce." I believe, and I want to believe, in the happy-ever-after, as most people do. Although things may change over time, I refuse to believe that two people who want to get married, will do so expecting to separate later.

Rev Peter Donald, convener, Church of Scotland Panel on Doctrine I conduct a lot of weddings and the couples I meet do have that hope in and commitment to a lifelong marriage. They marry because they want to be together forever. If a marriage fails, it is not because the couple never believed in it but because they realise later that maybe they didn't know each other or even themselves as well as they thought.

Paul Watson, Fathers 4 Justice I don't believe marriage is outdated. It is best for children to be brought up in a loving, caring environment where their parents are married and there is that commitment and stability.Everyone goes through difficult patches, but if you are married and have children then you try that bit harder to save what you have.

Ivan Middleton, spokesperson for the Humanist Society of Scotland I've performed over 100 humanist weddings, each couple already living together in a stable, loving relationship, but seeking a humanist ceremony usually because they'd arrived at a point of certainty about their commitment. Not all couples manage to stay together for life, however. In the past, couples sometimes lived under the same roof but had reached the point of loathing each other.

Nowadays couples intend to stay together for as long as it makes sense and it works for their benefit.

Dr Cynthia McVey, psychology lecturer, Glasgow Caledonian University When people who are splitting up say they didn't expect it to last forever, they are partly trying to hide their suffering.

They don't want people to know they're vulnerable, or think that they've failed at something everyone assumed they would be successful in. Of course there is less pressure on a marriage if you've both gone into it thinking you'll just give it a shot. If you enter marriage with the intention that it will last forever, you will work harder to survive the bad patches.

John Fotheringham, family law specialist, Ross & Connel If people don't want to make that commitment, they can live together then simply separate. Therefore now, more than ever, those who marry are in it for life. The change in attitude is not because the divorce process is easier, it's not, but because people have more options post-divorce.

Bishop John Cunningham, former head of the Scottish Catholic Tribunal By nature, marriage is a commitment and if you accept that commitment, you also accept that it is for the rest of your life. And it's very rewarding. It is from the stability of marriage that we draw stability in society. The increase in the breakdown of marriages is connected with the breakdown in modern society.

Copyright 2005 SMG Sunday Newspapers Ltd.
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