'Everything that I had planned or dreamed for my life just went one night. There was not going to be another tree planted in the garden. There was not going to be the time the two of us would go to Paris. It was as if my life was a full blackboard and someone got a duster and rubbed it all out and said 'Blank page start again', writes Breda O'Brien
With these stark words Joanne, one of the interviewees in the new RTÉ series, For Better Or Worse, described how it felt to realise that your marriage was over. Joanne's comments were heart-wrenching, but there were other moments which were striking in a different way.
For example, it was clear that Patricia and Alan, who were involved in scouting together and who married when Patricia became pregnant, had both had significant doubts about the advisability of getting married which they never managed to communicate to each other.
It came as an obvious shock to Patricia when Alan revealed during the interview that he thought he was doing the "decent thing" by marrying her. Equally, she told of how she felt that she almost had to go through with the ceremony, because they were getting married in Germany, and so many people "had their tickets booked".
Some have made the valid point that we need to talk much more openly about the experience of divorce and separation.
Yet surely we also need to ask why marital distress and breakdown have become more common, and what we can do about it?
Some parents may be reeling in shock at the findings of The Irish Times poll on sexual behaviour. However, a randomised poll conducted anywhere in Ireland among young people would still find that they rank marriage, or at the very least a long-term committed relationship, very highly.
Yet what exactly are we doing to help them achieve that goal? The British organisation CARE brought out an educational programme for teenagers entitled The M-word, a humorous reference to the fact that we have become much more embarrassed about speaking about marriage, much less endorsing it.
Part of that embarrassment stems from a praiseworthy sensitivity to the feelings of those whose relationships have foundered, or who are raising children outside marriage.
Yet the overwhelming findings of two decades of social science research are that on balance people in stable marriages are happier, suffer less illness and are better off financially than those who are unmarried, divorced or separated.
Many of the social science findings on marriage reflect common sense, but sometimes they are counterintuitive. For example, living together before marriage, except when it is for a very short period as an immediate precursor to marriage, significantly damages your chances of having a successful marital relationship.
People often end up "backing into marriage". A couple has a mortgage and children and it just seems the next logical step to marry. This is very different from thrashing out together exactly what it is you want and expect from marriage. Also, a decision to live together rather than marry may signal an escape clause written into the relationship, and commitment to building a secure future together is a prerequisite for a successful marriage.
Another fascinating research finding is that the No 1 predictor of divorce is habitual avoidance of conflict. Again, this does not seem to make sense, but couples who have withdrawn from each other emotionally, perhaps because fighting with each other has become too painful, may as well start saving for a divorce.
It is not what couples fight about that matters. It is how they handle conflict, and how they build a buffer zone of mutual enjoyment and pleasure which is most important.
In the US bestseller, Fighting For Your Marriage, the authors Markman, Stanley and Blumberg outline the stages in the death of a marriage. People meet, they are attracted to each other, fall in love, get attached and get married.
Problems arise, as they do for everyone. This is where the crunch comes. Either people already know how to, or they learn how to, work as a team on problems, to negotiate conflicts, to keep on building a zone of security and comfort with each other, or else conflicts escalate and become more nasty.
The number of times together which are painful starts to increase markedly. One or other partner, most often the man, starts to withdraw.
One or both partners begin to wonder whether it is worth sticking with this painful mess. By this time, danger signs are flashing everywhere.
Markman, Stanley and Blumberg designed a marriage education programme, called PREP, a very specific, skills-orientated model to help people negotiate predictable difficulties and build solid relationships, preferably before problems arise at all. (It can help, too, when things get rocky.)
The interviewees in For Better Or Worse were not bad or abusive people in obviously damaging relationships. They were ordinary people who started out with the same high hopes as the rest of us. For these couples it is too late, but it was impossible not to wonder whether the relationships would have foundered if help in the form of skills-based training had become the norm years ago.
Two Irish women are passionate about the idea that young people in particular need to be taught the skills of a good relationship. Isobel Morgan and Pamela van der Poll travelled to the US to train as PREP instructors, to my knowledge, the only Irish people to do so. Both of them talk about how the US has moved far ahead of us in terms of researching and instructing in this area.
For example, Diane Sollee, through her website, www.smartmarriages.com, has become a virtual clearing house for every exciting new development, and the annual conference which she runs every year in a different American city allows direct access to the best minds working in this area.
Isobel and Pamela have started working in schools and in premarriage courses under the auspices of Media Multinational Training.
A drop in the ocean? It may be, but it is an important drop, because it has the potential to help people avoid the emotional trauma so bleakly described by Joanne and others in For Better Or Worse.