`It doesn't matter if you ate the wedding cake, posed for the photo album or even went on the honeymoon to Hawaii, the fact is, son, you're not legally married and that's it." The clerk in the Register Office of Births, Marriage and Deaths closed a ledger the size of a tombstone with all the finality of St Peter on Judgment Day slamming shut the great Book of Life.
So that was it: 16 years of married life had, in a twinkling, become 16 years of living in sin. Well not quite. We had, after all, been married in a church before God and said the words: "Till death do us part", it's just that somewhere along the line a piece of paper with names and addresses went missing, and the supreme authority, the State, had not been informed of our newly-wed status. When my - what should I call her now? my partner? my live-in lover? my ex-spouse? - came home from work and asked why the dinner was late, I said: "Listen miss, just be thankful that it is ready at all." I then told her of my day spent looking for documentary proof that we had indeed "tied the knot" all those years ago.
She listened in silence. By way of consolation I told her that this was not the first time that something like this had occurred. On one occasion a parish priest had found an envelope behind a church radiator containing the marriage certs of 93 couples that had never been sent to the Registry Office. Apparently there was holy hell to pay in the parish when it came to light and disputes over wills that went on for years. My wife laughed at this and then in quick after-thought said: "Oh my God, I've been washing a bachelor's socks for years." That night in bed, between many bouts of laughter prompted by the absurdity of the situation, we discussed what our options might be.
Marry again for the "first" time with all the razzamatazz and ceremony and cost that that would entail? No, been there, done that. Marry again "retrospectively" as it were but only - and this is what is strictly laid down by law - only if we could re-assemble the original cast of characters, best man, bridesmaid and celebrant, from the first flawed production, to re-enact the whole show over again. The third option was to stay single and live together, while making sure that everything was now labelled "his" and "hers" instead of "ours" in case one of us flew the coop. Our final choice was really a non-starter, it was to go our separate ways. Sure, at our age, who would have us? "Why bother getting married at all? It's no big deal," chorused a cool collective of my nieces and nephews when they heard the story for the first time. "Couples co-habit, divorce is increasing and single parent families are considered the norm." They reeled off the information like statiticians in a government department.
"Listen oh greatest asset of our nation," I said, "if gay and lesbian couples all over Europe and America are fighting for the right to get married, then there has to be something in it." "Oh my God," they chimed back in unison like a badly-cloned version of Friends, "what about all those naff marriage vows, like `I pledge thee all my wordly goods and having to promise to honour, cherish and obey. Come on, obey? No way!" "You've been watching too many royal weddings," I tell them. "Nobody insists that you have to use any formula of words at a wedding. They are only there because people couldn't be bothered to think of constructing any thing better. Marriage, after all, is an agreement between two people freely entered into and based on mutual understanding and consent.
"Anyway, as Sam Goldwyn might have said, marriage vows, like verbal contracts, are not worth the paper they are written on. Except of course for the one relating to "in sickness and in health". That one is like a government health warning on a pack of cigarettes: a timely reminder at the altar for all about-to-be-weds, that the bed they will lie on might not always be rosy. It is also a remarkable phenomenon of married life that men are much more likely to develop an illness of empathy with their sick wives than happens the other way round. This has the beneficial effect of taking the wife's mind off her own symptoms so she can worry about her husband instead. "The promise `for better or for worse' is the acid test for any marriage. The golden wedding ring that binds together can be stretched to its limit during hard times but those that come through those `for worse' periods and are still best friends will have their marriage hall-marked forever.
"Why do you think it is that we admire swans so much and hold the cuckoo in such complete contempt?" The young band of siblings gathered at my feet gaped in amazement at this total nonsequiter.
Because as we all know, swans mate for life and cuckoos couldn't care less if the Irish Times Letters Editor never answered their first call of summer. However some men would like to think that swans and cuckoos can interbreed and Hank Wangford's song, I Ain't Married but the Wife Is, sums it up. Night clubs thrive on the cuckoos who, as the dawn breaks, get into their cars and drive home to their wives. "You're cuckoo uncle," was the clarion response from the young neophytes who share my genetic code. "It's a wonder auntie didn't have you committed years ago." `Well," I reply, "Maybe it's because we are both committed that we don't drive each other insane - insane with silly rage over small things that annoy, like squeezing the tootpaste tube in the middle or clearing out the current account with a Laser card instead of using a slow haemhorrage of cheques; insane with jealousy over the other's success or the attention they may receive from colleagues or friends; insane from over-possessiveness." "Yeah, yeah, yeah," said the juvenile assembly, who have a very low boredom threshold. "You are more likely to fall out over who gets to operate the TV remote control than over anything really serious like life," they glibly remark.
Oh these children of the generation next, they have a way to cutting to the quick as well as to the chase. I don't blame their parents or their teachers, I blame the Simpsons and the Royle Family for giving impressionable youngsters too much of an insight into the true machinations of the adult mind. In my generation's formative years, the TV family role models on Bealach a Seacht were Donna Reed and Robert Young in Father Knows Best. After years of living in a close relationship it is easy to see with hindsight what dangerous and false perceptions of marriage these old TV programmes laid down. Life portrayed in black and white is never ever black and white. When Robinson Crusoe met Friday for the first time, each of them instantly had their freedom halved and their responsibility doubled. Marriage is a bit like that but with far more perks.
The baggage that each partner brings to a marriage - and the older you are when you marry the more baggage you will bring - it must be gone through thoroughly, the good extracted and preserved, the dross disposed of forever.
Most of my married friends are happily married and nearly all of them married quite young, though none that I know of married in their teens. It would seem to me that if young love can face adversity together without blaming each other for their plight, then the heat and pressure of shared experience will forge an unbreakable bond.
Oh, by the way, my wife and I did eventually re-marry. "Weddings are for women but marriage is definitely for men."
Joe Taylor is an actor and broadcaster and currently can be heard in the recreation of the Flood and Moriarty Tribunals on Tonight with Vincent Browne on RTE Radio One
Series concluded
Is the beginning of the affair the end of the marriage? asks Kathryn Holmquist in next Saturday's Weekend supplement
