Sir Paul Coleridge was interviewed in the Daily Mail today saying that young people enter marriage with expectations that are unrealistic. He cites Hallo magazine as setting up idyllic marriage scenarios which people buy into and then get disappointed that life is in fact, not like that.
I’m not sure how true that is. We can all see that many celebrity marriages end badly and last for less time than it takes to eat the wedding cake. I don’t think the population is fooled into believing that marriage is a bed of roses, just like we know when we watch Downton Abbey that life isn’t like that. No-one who comes to our groups has had unrealistic expectations of love and romance. They have tried hard to make their marriages work and often have had no voice in the decision to end it. We may as a society like looking at glossy pictures of fairy tale weddings. It is a form of escapism not a method of learning what marriage looks like. Sir Paul Coleridge I feel, needs to give people some credit.