With Megan Markle’s ‘messy up-do’ still singed on our retinas, let us hark back to 1972, when holy matrimony was all the rage.
‘The astonishing fact is that despite the revolution which has taken place in this country in sexual mores and in the status of women, marriage seems to be as popular as ever,’ reports our writer Catherine Storr.
Regardless of safe contraception, the emancipation of women and the change in sexual morality in 1972, there was a lower percentage of unmarried people in Britain than ever before. Why could this be? Well, by the sounds of things because marriage vows were pretty much redundant. The Observer Magazine spoke to a happily married couple to find out the secret.
Meet Jennifer and Paul Rolland, married at 19; these childhood sweethearts live on a wooded private estate for ‘up-the-market people’. So far so fancy. But what does Jennifer make of Paul?
‘Very recently I threw his trousers in a swimming pool because he was playing about with a girl… she was too big to push into the pool so I threw his trousers instead. It cooled him off.’
Would Jennifer ever divorce Paul? ‘I can’t imagine anything ending our marriage. Perhaps if he turned homosexual, it would put me off a bit.’
But what of trouserless, presently heterosexual Paul?
‘If one is going to have affairs, the worst thing that could possibly happen is for her to find out what is happening. It is quite unforgivable to let that happen, because it hurts them. Otherwise you’re doing no harm at all.’
In light of the Rollands’ revelations, the Observer Magazine spoke to a doctor to find out his thoughts on fidelity: ‘Monogamy is not a natural state, however much the tendency of the young is to mate; it is physiologically quite unsuitable. The male animal isn’t made to mate for life like a dove or a swan.’
Don Draper would be so pleased.
