Allison Pearson
Why ‘perfect’ couples have the worst divorces
There was a poignant flashback in the Poldark finale on Sunday. The young Francis Poldark and George Warleggan looked on wistfully as Elizabeth, the girl they worshipped from afar, twirled away with her beloved Captain Ross. Aunt Agatha (how we miss her magnificent tetchiness!) was playing tarot cards and predicted that Elizabeth would marry and have beautiful children. Naturally, Francis and George assumed those children would be Ross’s. As Poldark fans know, it wasn’t that simple. Elizabeth eventually had two unsatisfactory husbands, neither of them Ross. And she had three offspring, one by each of the besotted beaux. Her devastating, premature death came about as a direct consequence of trying to quell George’s unappeasable jealousy of her first love. If Elizabeth had only married Ross instead of the other two, one on the rebound, the second out of prudence, might the story have had a less tragic ending?
Marriage guidance sadly not being available in the 1790s, we will never know. And yet, viewers of BBC One’s hit drama could certainly have told Elizabeth that coupling up (as they say on Love Island) with poisonous, scheming George, however advantageous the match, was unlikely to go well. Not when Aidan Turner is still galloping his black stallion through your faked marital orgasms.
As for poor Morwenna, forbidden to plight her troth with lowly, but adorable, blacksmith
Drake Carne, her advantageous marriage made her the abused wife of the Reverend “Ossie” Whitworth, a suckling pig in human form.
More than 300 years later, at a time when women are blessed with infinitely greater choice than the Poldark ladies, you would hope that things had got a bit easier in the happilyever-after stakes. Apparently not. The stiletto being on the other foot has only introduced a whole new set of problems.
According to a recent study carried out by social scientists in the US, high-flying professional women are struggling to find enough eligible men to marry. Put crudely, if you’re a female solicitor or accountant, you don’t want to walk down the aisle with a Cornish blacksmith, even if he does have melting chocolate-button eyes, rampant poodle curls and a pleasing, manly protectiveness. Why be so picky and status-conscious? As the young bucks on Love Island prove, ordinary blokes in 2018 are more emotionally intelligent and helpful than previous generations of mates. Not only can they locate the G-spot, they may even find the J-cloth. What’s not to like?
A lack of education and cash is what. “Unmarried women, on average, are looking for a man who has an income that is about 66 per cent higher and a likelihood of having a college degree that is about 49 per cent higher than what is available,” the study found. For women, marriage has traditionally involved hypergamy – the process of marrying up – while men have tended to “marry down”. Now that more women are queens of the castle, there simply aren’t enough kings to go around. The academics say that some successful women may be prepared to “marry down”, but research suggests that, if they fail to bag Mr Absolutely Right, most choose to remain single. “Better educated women, quite rightly, means the bar is rising,” one researcher observed. “Smarter women deserve smarter men.” Hang on, what does smarter even mean when it comes to making a life together? The best-suited-on-paper couple that I know ended up in blood-curdling divorce (the pug counted itself lucky not to be torn in half), while there are more and more examples of successful relationships where the man has the less-impressive CV. When she was prime minister of Australia, Julia Gillard could count on her hairdresser partner, Tim Mathieson. (Perfect for that confidence-boosting blow-dry! I’d love to be married to Fred, my French hairdresser, but, malheureusement, he’s spoken for.) Dame Helena Morrissey manages a stellar City career and nine children, thanks to the support of her stay-at-home husband Richard. That’s what I call smarter. Such women haven’t “married down”, they’ve “married wide”; that is, they’ve found a man who is confident enough in his own skin to cede the traditional breadwinner role and allow his wife to shine.
Nowadays, when I go into a firm to talk to young professional women, I tell them there is one secret to combining work and motherhood: choose the right husband. A mate who will be kind and understanding about their career, as well as able to figure out which way up the baby goes, is invaluable. They may have set their heart on a Harvard MBA, but plenty of those turn out to have Neanderthal domestic attitudes once they’ve put a ring on your finger.
The most contented mother of small children I know has a carpenter husband who earns well enough, but can finish work early so she doesn’t feel stressed if she has to stay late at the office. (Good with his hands too, ahem.) The loneliest mother I know has a husband on a seven-figure salary who is rarely seen in daylight and would struggle to pick out his own kids in the school photograph.
It’s high time that the shopping list for desirable attributes in a spouse was updated. Fiona Shackleton, one of the UK’S most celebrated divorce lawyers, has called on schools to teach children to be more practical about marriage so the union lasts. “It’s not just about the heart,” insists Baroness Shackleton, “it’s about finding a partner with whom to rear children”; and “to realise that you can’t change people even if you marry them… you can’t make a mean person fundamentally generous”. As she says, this is the most important decision a young person will ever make.
I like her thinking, but I can’t see teenagers, who are living through the Cape Canaveral of hormones, absorbing the fact that, in 30 years’ time, they’ll be grateful they picked someone who likes gardening, Sudoku and is still their friend. As Love Island proves, attraction will always owe more to chemistry and biology than philosophy, although it’s telling that the viewers voted for Dani and Jack, the couple most likely to make it to their golden wedding. We know a good match when we see one, and by “good” we mean loyal and funny and kind.
Women today can rejoice that we don’t have to wind up like Poldark’s poor poisoned Elizabeth, whose head overruled her heart to guarantee her children’s future. Girls no longer have to enter into contractual arrangements with brutes like George Warleggan to shore up social position and wealth. We can make our own money and choose whatever partner suits us best, especially if he happens to be an adorable Cornish blacksmith.
In the closing moments of Poldark, the widowed Morwenna gladly and gratefully married beneath her. For our daughters’ generation, eligible men should be valued not for their degree certificates or bank balances, but for the content of their characters (plus the ability to rustle up fish fingers and peas for two under-fives). There are plenty of good husbands and fathers-to-be out there, if women are prepared to open their minds and marry wide instead of up.