The JOY of marriage & the REALITY of divorce

Marriage is without doubt an incredibly tough nut to crack. If you choose well, listen to your mother and marry your perfect match it can be the best thing since Google. But even if you choose well, listen to your mother and marry your perfect match, marriage can still push all your buttons and drive you up the wall, make you question your judgement, and sometimes render you completely insane.

Unfortunately for the majority of people who pay a small fortune to merrily skip up the aisle and say ‘I Do’, a few short years later they will likely find themselves slinking into a solicitors office, handing over their life savings and 3 pints of blood, and snarling ‘What was I thinking, no I bloody well don’t’.

Divorce is everywhere, it’s a sad fact of life. It has probably joined ‘death’ and ‘taxes’ to become the 3 things in life that are depressingly inevitable. In many countries, 1 in 3 marriages now end up in costly court battles – fighting over child custody rights, the dog and the CD collection.  On the upside, now that CD’s have all but been been outed by the MP3, this particular dilemma will become easier to solve.

It is sad that so many marriages don’t even last long enough for the dishwasher to remove the last traces of the sticky label from the new dinner service. Or for the extortionately priced wedding albums to be filled with photos from the happy day. But hey, this is the reality of it all, and, as someone who has already trodden down that particular path, I can’t say that it necessarily a bad thing to be able to get out before the ’till death’ vows have a chance to kick in.

Maybe I have a very cynical view on marriage, (though I like to see it as being realistic) but I strongly believe that if something is really not right, then nothing is going to fix it. Not even hours of counselling, or resigning yourself to a lifetime of ‘doing the right thing.’

And yes, even if children are involved, I still believe that it’s better to be out than in. Nothing interferes with happy childhood memories more than miserable parents, slamming doors and death stares across the breakfast table. I think any child would plump for smiling parents and less fighting if given half the chance.

In the run up to my wedding, and that would be the first one that didn’t work, not the second one that is ticking along just perfectly, I told my then husband-to-be that I was a great believer in divorce. Romantic? No. Honest? Probably a little too much, given the money already spent out on the hot buffet for 50. But then what’s the point in mincing words.

Coming from a family history based in divorce and bad feelings, I knew that I would never be able to stick something out if I wasn’t happy. After all, life’s just too damn short to be depressed and hating the person you wake up next to. Luckily for me my ex was a very understanding man, both then and 4 years later, when we agreed it was never meant to be, called it quits and went our separate ways. Luckily for me we also had the friendliest divorce in history, with not one ounce of bad feeling or back stabbing bitterness in sight.

Some people of course aren’t so lucky, especially when the ‘injured’ party goes hell for leather to try and make life as difficult and complicated as possible. Whether this involves cutting up clothes, hiding rotting fish around the house before leaving or just trying to suck every last bit of energy, life and money out of the person doing the leaving. Some people simply refuse to draw a line under the past and ever let it go.

Of course now that I am older, wiser and blessed with hindsight, I can now admit that I knew at the time that I should never have got married in the first place. But that’s one of those things that’s hard to voice out loud, especially when the wedding ball is rolling at breakneck speed and you’re clinging on by your fingertips for dear life. Or when you’ve already had your dress altered 5 times to accommodate your diminishing weight (through the stress of knowing it’s not a good idea) and haven’t the heart to tell the seamstress her work was all in vain.

So all that aside. Knowing how hard a marriage can be to hold together behind closed doors, where no one can witness the pointless hypothetical arguments and the bread knife whizzing through the air, what hope has anyone in the public eye got of actually lasting the distance.

None really. Celebrity marriages are pretty much doomed to fail from the start. From the young and stupid who hotfoot it Vegas, 13 hours after falling desperately in love at an MTV after-party, to the veterans of the screen, such as the once lovely Mel Gibson, who hook up with someone young enough to be their granddaughter, and then flaunt them down the red carpet.

So when Katie ‘Jordon’ Price and Peter ‘One hit wonder’ Andre announced they were separating, it was hardly much of a surprise. Yet the celebrity watching world went “Noooooo, how can this be?”

Hmnmm, now lets think. They met on screen, they fought on screen. They married on screen, they fought on screen. They had kids on screen, they fought on screen. They moved to the States, they fought on screen.

The common denominator here? Well that would be the fighting.

Add that to the fact that every day of their life together was docu-soaped. And every word, thought and insecurity they felt was no doubt taken, twisted and exaggerated, just to up the viewing figures and satisfy the drama hungry audience.

So did they stand a chance? The words hope and hell spring to mind. I would have had more chance of winning the Lotto – and I don’t even buy any tickets.

Still at least they can now both guarantee a 10 page spread in Hello magazine, to discuss, dissect and detail their marriage breakdown. And then they can both star in their own new reality shows about how to bounce back, recover from a broken heart and go on to make pot loads of money.

Cynical? Me? Never.

All things IKEA

On Valentines Day this year the population of Perth sent up a collective cheer when the new IKEA (the old store was barely large enough to swing an oven mitt and matching tea towel) opened its doors to the Allen Key loving masses. It did seem rather an odd date to open, given that this shop is surely responsible for more arguments between couples than any other. God knows how many couples actually fell out over their meatballs that day and whose relationship never even made it past the lighting section. If Cupid had even been stupid enough to try and make it through the doors, he would never have stood a chance and was no doubt trampled underfoot in the stampede.

I always wonder what percentage of the homes on this planet have something in them from IKEA. Of course who’s to say there isn’t an intergalactic franchise out there somewhere, it’s not beyond the unimaginable.

I know that there isn’t a room in our house that hasn’t got something from IKEA in it. Take my office for instance. I am sitting in my IKEA cream swivel chair, at my glass ‘scripted’ IKEA desk, underneath 2 IKEA glass shelves and between 2 IKEA white book cases. That’s before I even turn around to face the set of IKEA glass topped drawers behind me, which sit underneath 3 IKEA orchid canvas prints. I hasten to add that the other rooms in the house aren’t quite so Swedish in their design and I have never had anyone come to visit and have them ask for a yellow bag and a tape measure at the door.

It’s actually quite incredible if you think that the shop, founded back in 1943 by Inggar Kamprad, a 17 year old Swedish boy  who started off by selling pens, watches, jewellery and nylon stockings, has since gone on to become the world’s largest furniture store, with 120,000 employees based in more than 29 countries, selling just under 11,000 products.

Incidentally the name IKEA is an abbreviation for “Ingvar Kamprad Elmtaryd Agunnaryd” which is the initial letters of his first and last name, the farm where he grew up and the town he lived in.

Despite claiming that the reason you can never find a member of staff is so that the prices can be kept low, IKEA must surely be making more money per second than their customers can pocket the free pencils. But that said, it is unofficially the world’s largest charitable organization, so can be forgiven for mercilessly emptying out our bank accounts time after time.

I have to say I do love IKEA. There’s no where else quite like it. There’s certainly no other shop that has the power to convince me that I simply have to have something, that half an hour before I never even knew existed. Every time I go there I spot another weird and wonderful gadget designed to save me time and space. I discover a new and improved way to arrange my clothes, display my books and stack my spices and I always find a new range of crockery that’s just crying out to be bought.

It’s the sort of shop where you go with the intention of buying some bag clips and a couple of candles and then somehow find yourself coming through the checkout (or should I say slinking through, while silently praying that your credit card can take the battering) with a Billy Book book case, an assortment of glasses that you have no place to store, a single mattress, a new bathroom sink, 8 large wicker baskets that will now need filling and a ceiling light. One that comes in a box the size of a pack of cards and requires an advanced diploma in origami  to put together.

The fact that all of these flat packed and bulky items are highly unlikely to even make it into your car is neither here no there, unless of course your small 4 door hatchback has somehow  magically metamorphasised into a horsebox whilst you have been shopping. Then again, I have seen someone squeeze a single mattress into a Mini Cooper before and we once fitted an entire kitchen into our 7 seater, so the impossible it seems, can sometimes be done.

For all these reasons above I have to say that I also hate IKEA. OK, so maybe not hate. I could never hate it, I just wish that I had more resistance to the hypnotic hold that it seems to have over me once I walk underneath the blue and yellow flags.

On so many visits I have walked the entire way through the store (few people dare stray off the arrows and cut through the displays), written endless lists on multiple bits of paper and spent hours agonising over what will go where. Then I reach the warehouse and find that, surprise surprise, 10/15 items on the list are currently ‘Out of Stock’. Worse still there is no known delivery date and I am not allowed to reserve whatever it is I need when it arrives.

A classic example is when I brought the desk that I am at now. There was only 1 of the leg supports (I needed 2) left in the store. I ask you, why 1? Do they sell many tables without legs, or legs without tables? Why did someone else only buy 1 leg? It took 2 more trips to the store before the elusive leg finally appeared and my desk, which was wedged up on a bedside table, stopped wobbling.

Still can’t complain, where else allows you to kit out a whole house in around 4 hours.

That’s allowing 30 minutes to pick out the items you want from the catalogue, an hour to find them as you slowly walk behind other people ‘display shopping’ at a snails pace, another 30 minutes struggling to get the flat pack boxes off the top shelf in the ‘help yourself’ warehouse and then the final 2 hours, stuck in a queue waiting for your ‘too big to carry’ items to be wheeled out from within the belly of the IKEA beast.

Of course this estimated time doesn’t allow for the additional 3 hours that you will later spend driving back to the shop, to buy the bag clips and candles that you forgot to buy the last time. Then queue up for that all important screw that happened to be missing from the original bookcase. The one that is now in several unusual looking pieces and is scattered across your living room floor.

Arhhh, what a store. You’ve got to love the way they just make you keep coming back for more.

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One for the ladies…

THE RULES

1. The FEMALE always makes The Rules.
2. The Rules are subject to change at any time without prior notification.
3. No MALE can possibly know all The Rules.
4. If the FEMALE suspects the MALE knows all The Rules she must immediately change some or all of The Rules.
5. The FEMALE is never wrong.
6. If the FEMALE is wrong, it is due to a misunderstanding, which was a direct result of something the MALE did or said wrong.
7. The MALE must apologise immediately for causing said misunderstanding.
8. The FEMALE may change her mind at any time.
9. The MALE must never change his mind, without the express written consent of the FEMALE.
10. The FEMALE has every right to be angry or upset at any time.
11. The MALE must remain calm at all times, unless the FEMALE wants him to be angry and/or upset.
12. The FEMALE must, under no circumstances, let the MALE know whether or not she wants him to be angry and/or upset.
13. The MALE is expected to mind read at all times.
14. The FEMALE is ready when she is ready.
15. The MALE must be ready at all times.
16. Any attempt to document The Rules could result in bodily harm.
17. The MALE who doesn’t abide by The Rules can’t take the heat, lacks backbone and is a wimp.

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