In a recent report, Anthony Roberts, the Minister of Social Development, noted the astonishing statistic that the divorce rate in T&T stood at 67 per cent.

I’ve seen no commentary on this phenomenon from any quarter. Was the figure a one-time affair, or did it represent a trend, I wondered. It was more the latter, I found out, after some inquiry.

That divorce rates on the whole are high is usually no surprise. Have we ever heard differently? But you sit up and take notice when the issue comes so close to home.

Why do two out of three couples, who pledge the substantive commitment of marriage, fail to remain together? I should like to explore the matter a little, but before doing so, one preliminary observation.

Reflection on marriage today falls, it seems, into one of two camps: marriage is either an oppressive, outdated institution, which is usually the stance on the left, or beset by a variety of pernicious developments, which is usually the stance on the right.

Meanwhile, the institution, like ole man river, just keeps rolling along, from romance to break-up.

What constitutes the integrity of the marital commitment? This is not the same question as asking why do people get married? The only answer to the latter is that people marry for a variety of reasons, love today being perhaps the most important.

The issue of the integrity of the commitment, however, looks not so much to the reasons for marrying as to what one enters into, and what new condition arises, when one gets married.

I may be drawing too sharp a separation between reasons for marrying and actual marriage. The importance of a closer connection is one of the reasons that churches, for instance, have “marriage preparation” programmes. Such programmes have an obvious utility, though by the time couples today say they want to get married, the die is already cast.

The number of those who postpone marriage, or change their minds, is minuscule. Couples hardly ever say: “I think we need more time.” Or, “I’m not sure we’re right for each another.” Ninety-nine point nine per cent go right ahead.

Religious implications aside, the marriage vow, if one stops and thinks about it, is a remarkable form of words. A promise is made that is explicitly intended to be lifelong. It is a promise unlike any other promise we make. The interesting question from the perspective of integrity is: just how different is it?

One difference is that sometimes promises in marriage have a religious character and are exchanged in a religious context. The moral force of the commitment, however—and this is something too little recognised—does not depend on its religious character or context. The latter gives it a distinctive depth, not its “raison d’etre.”

Even where there is no need for priestly or rabbinic sanction, as in Judaism, for instance, duties and obligations flow from the promise itself, as in any marriage before a JP, not from the context.

The promise is thus key, and it makes marriage unique among human institutions. When a couple enters into it, the primary consequence, unlike what ensues from other promises, simple or grave, is that they assume new identities. Each says to the other: “I am the one who will be there for you.” Much like what Yahweh says to Moses.

Too often, however, this turns out to mean “I will be there for you as long as you provide me with all the satisfaction I have coming.” Or, what is so depressingly familiar, “I will be there for you until I fall in love with someone else.”

I do not mean to imply by any of this that marriages cannot for understandable reasons fail. I am looking, as I said earlier, at what constitutes integrity of commitment. And the most obvious thing one can say in that light is that those who freely exchange vows of marriage should mean what they say when they utter its defining words.

There are people who think the vows too absolutely framed. But what would a vow framed in terms of temporariness look like? I will love you until...when? Or, I will love you subject to…what? Anyone who says, for instance, “I will love you for five years” doesn’t love in the present, because no one who loves ever imagines (or wishes) that a day will come when they will cease to love. The internal dynamic of love is clearly a dynamic of permanence.

What’s required then by the commitment to love are people who are not only able to understand its terms, but able also to meet its challenges and demands. Which takes us back to “preparation.”

I don’t have much to say on this subject, except to observe that in my estimation the most influential preparation is what a person grows up experiencing, whether in their own household or in the households of others who are close.

Marriage limits the future of all those who undertake it. In choosing this partner, I rule out the possibility of other partners, as long as I live. I consider the sacrifice well worth it, because I think a future of enhancement and happiness for me lies here as it does nowhere else in the same measure.

The vow I make, however, is no insulation against the tug of attraction for other people, or protection against an unexpected love for another. Vows plainly do not eliminate these possibilities. What they do is reduce my freedom to indulge them. Not only the freedom to run off and have affairs, but the freedom to spend dangerous amounts of time contemplating such action.

That said, it’s interesting to note that the commonest reason given for desiring to end a marriage is that one of the parties falls in love with someone else. Love—the experience itself—is presented as sufficient reason for a breach of promise, sufficient to override the (justified) claims of the other spouse, and the unspoken interests of children.

There can be ethically justifiable reasons for ending a marriage—relationships can become impossible, even toxic, for one partner or both; and commitments can lose their meaning. But turning one’s back on one’s commitment should not come too easily or cheaply, without hard wrestling with questions of cost, consequences, and honour.