Читать книгу Deadly Divorces - Tammy Cohen - Страница 4

Few things decimate a person quite like divorce. The oft-quoted statistic that divorce is the second most traumatic life event after the death of a member of one’s family is misleading, for with death comes its own inevitable closure. Divorce, which can feel like the slow, tortuous disembowelling of a marriage, has no such finality. Though you might grieve for the life you had, for the person you lost, there is no body to bury ritualistically and no gravestone at which to unleash your feelings and weep. Instead the once-loved partner who has carved up your finances, your family life, your sense of self-worth, your very heart is still walking and breathing and a daily testament to the failure of your dreams.

Two out of five marriages currently end in divorce but it would be dangerous to allow the commonplaceness of divorce to negate its terrifying power and impact. It’s a battlefield in which the three most primordial human obsessions – love, sex and money – become inextricably and dangerously intertwined. The stakes are high and the spoils of war deeply symbolic: children sometimes, not to mention status and home.

The truth is that divorce cuts to the very bone of a relationship exposing the ugly, bleeding flesh we normally try so hard to cover up. Marital homes purchased with hope and optimism become pressure cookers of building tension as accusations fly and barely formed emotions are ripped from deep within us in all their raw, howling intensity.

A recent poll by insidedivorce.com found that nearly one in five British couples admit to being on the brink of splitting up. That’s a huge percentage of people riding the emotional rollercoaster of marital breakdown. When you factor in the discovery that infidelity, with its poisonous legacy of betrayal and bitterness, is the biggest single trigger for divorce, you start to build up some understanding of the extent of the devastation currently taking place behind closed doors.

Divorce tears at the very fabric of who we are and how – sometimes even why – we live. It’s like a giant shredder from which our past life emerges in tatters; it pits lover against lover, parent against parent in a battle in which there are no rules, no protective clothing, no referees and no real winners. Recent years have seen some acrimonious and very public celebrity break-ups from Sir Paul and Heather McCartney to Britney Spears and Kevin Federline. These high-profile divorce cases merely prove fame is no protection against the vitriol released when a marriage is in meltdown. Divorce is, if nothing else, a great leveller.

With emotions running high, it’s not surprising that the breakdown of a marriage can result in violence and sometimes even in death. Crimes of passion may no longer be recognised in law but would certainly be understood by many people who have undergone a traumatic split. Less easy to identify with are crimes that are planned out meticulously and methodically over the time it takes for a relationship to unravel. Do these count as temporary insanity or cold-blooded execution?

‘Each man kills the thing he loves,’ Oscar Wilde tellingly wrote. Certainly most of the crimes detailed in this book bear testament to that most poignant of sentiments. Love isn’t always selfless or benign. It can be violent, possessive, exclusive and even predatory – and when it is threatened, it can also be deadly.