What should love have to do with it? The Japanese are embroiled in a craze of marriage hunting, or konkatsu, so The Herald reported yesterday, and it's a craze that has government and commercial support. Government is keen to increase the nation's low birth rate and falling marriage rate, and business has spied an opportunity. One example that struck me as having immediate potential in Australia was a baseball stadium that sets aside special seating for people looking for a spouse. How would that go at the football?
Apparently a typical konkatsu event is people standing around clutching drinks in a themed hall as they scan the room for likely looking partners, and that is precisely what happens here every night of the week. I cannot see much that is different.
One less obvious difference may be the western myth that people should be in the grip of romantic love to be successfully married, and I believe also that the notion of romantic love is itself a myth created by novelists, filmmakers, soapie concocters and songwriters.
The very last person who should be assessing the worth of a prospective partner in marriage is someone who believes he or she is in love, even if the reality is nothing more than infatuation. The arranged marriages that many new and old Australians choose must begin at a much better base than the impossible expectations of a romantic marriage. By new Australians I mean those who return to their home country to meet a prospective wife or husband chosen by family and/or friends, and by old Australians I mean the increasing number of men who go through commercial brokers to find a bride in a country of Asia or Eastern Europe. Even the latter allows a degree of objectivity unlikely to be found in the delusion of romantic love.
Researchers at the ANU have discovered that it is shared vices rather than shared education, background or religion that give a marriage its best chance of survival. In a report titled What's Love Got To Do With It, the researchers tell how two people who smoke or who don't smoke, and who drink similar amounts of alcohol, are less likely to separate than couples comprising smoker and non-smoker, drinker and teetotaller. Naturally, given the expense, a marriage is in strife when the wife drinks considerably more than the husband.
I'm surprised, now, that I and others have been surprised by this finding. Our vices have a much greater impact on our relationships, I would say, than our virtues. And it's a pity that the research, which looked at 2500 couples for seven years, didn't take into account other vices.
And it's a wonder that my marriage has survived 30 years. I smoked, she never smoked; I'm a guzzler, she's a teetotaller; I frequent brothels (even if I stay in the waiting room, yeah right!), she doesn't; I think tits on toast is a wonderful innovation, she doesn't.
Maybe there's more to this business of predicting the success or otherwise of marriage. Any ideas? And do you think vice trumps virtue as a guide to a marriage's longevity?
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