Love and Marriage

'Child,' said the Director, 'it is not a question of how you or I look on marriage but how my Masters look on it.'

'Someone said they were very old-fashioned. But –'

'That was a joke. They are not old-fashioned; but they are very, very old.'

'They would never think of finding out first whether Mark and I believed in the ideas of marriage?'

'Well – no,' said the Director with a curious smile. 'No. Quite definitely they wouldn't think of doing that.'

'And it would make no difference to them what a marriage was actually like – whether it was a success? Whether the woman loved her husband?'

Jane had not exactly intended to say this: much less to say it in the cheaply pathetic tone which, it now seemed to her, she had used. Hating herself, and fearing the Director's silence, she added, 'But I suppose you will say I oughtn't to have told you that.'

'My dear child,' said the Directory, 'you have been telling me that ever since your husband was mentioned.'

'Does it make no difference?'

'I suppose,' said the Director, 'it would depend on how he lost your love.'

Jane was silent. Though she could not tell the Director the truth, and indeed did not know it herself, yet when she tried to explore her inarticulate grievance against Mark, a novel sense of her own injustice, and even of pity for her husband, arose in her mind. And her heart sank, for now it seemed to her that this conversation, to which she had vaguely looked for some sort of deliverance from all problems, was in fact involving her in new ones.

'It was not his fault,' she said at last. 'I suppose our marriage was just a mistake.'

The Director said nothing.

'What would you – what would the people you are talking of – say about a case like that?'

'I will tell you if you really want to know,' said the Director.

'Please,' said Jane reluctantly.

'They would say,' he answered, 'that you do not fail in obedience through lack of love, but have lost love because you never attempted obedience.'

from That Hideous Strength, by C. S. Lewis.

Marriage and Suicide

In a report published yesterday, the Office for National Statistics shows that married people have a substantially lower risk of suicide than non-marrieds.

The key findings of the report are (emphasis mine):

• People who are married still have a substantially lower risk of
  suicide than those who are not, despite changes in marriage
  patterns over the last 25 years.


• Despite an overall reduction in suicide rates, there has been no
  narrowing of the gap in suicide rates between those who are
  married and those who are single or divorced. Rates for single
  and divorced men and divorced women were around three times
  higher than for married men and women throughout. For single
  women, the differential widened from just over two times to
  around three times between 1983 and 2004


• There was a small decrease in the differential between single and
  married men aged 25 to 44. Suicide rates were three times higher
  for single men in 1984 but two and a half times higher in 2004


• Among men aged 45 and over, the gap in suicide rates between
  widowed and married men fell from just over four times to around
  three times between 1983 and 2004. For widowed women, the
  differential was around two and a half times throughout