Jennifer Horgan: How do you save someone you love from marrying the wrong person?

Let’s be up front about it — modern marriage has the potential to last a very, very long time. My grandmother had a short one. She met someone she liked, tied the knot, and had three baby girls. They were still children, two of them barely into their teens, when she died.

Nowadays, there are people celebrating seventy years together. People are meeting their great-grandchildren for God’s sake! Seventy years! Seventy years of the same body in the bed, at the dinner table, on every single holiday. You could squeeze seven sexy Hollywood-type relationships into that time, easy.

Poet Mary Oliver asks: ‘What is it you want to do with your one wild and precious life?’ 

Might she also ask: ‘Really? With him? You plan to spend all of it, ALL OF IT, with him?’

It helps that we live with a great unknowing. Life could also end tomorrow — that’s one trick of fate that helps us get past the sheer madness of matrimony.

And some get very lucky. My mother, unlike my grandmother, has enjoyed a very long marriage — over fifty years and counting. He is still her favourite. It’s like they’ve grown into one another, like two trees, side by side, sharing the same roots on the same patch of land, weathering the same storms, looking forward to spring.

They are incredibly lucky, but we all start our marriages hoping for what they have, without any kind of guarantee. We join hands motivated by a faith in one another and the world. I would say when I met my would-be husband, I had a feeling it was right. Something clicked. As corny as it sounds, he felt like home. But a feeling is just a feeling. Circa 1999, I also wore runners with a six-inch foam platform heel. I felt they were cool — striking. I’ve been known to be very wrong in my feelings.

So, I am incredibly thankful that my idiotic 22-year-old self managed to make a good choice on the life partner front at least

Marriage is a tough sell when change is so inevitable. Still, we hope, put faith in the fact that we might change together, loving one another enough to keep the connection. Honing ourselves to take the bend and thrust of time passing, our bodies and minds changing — growing, failing, together.

Some of us stick to logic and common sense and stay single. I know quite a few couples who, for different reasons, don’t bother with the marriage bit. For a few, it’s a God thing. For others, even a humanist ceremony doesn’t appeal. Maybe because they don’t want to make a promise they are not certain they can keep. Maybe because they like their promises to be made in private — solid positions all.

There is something nice about sharing a wedding day though. I was at a beautiful wedding last summer where the celebrant acknowledged the challenges of marriage. He asked the people gathered to be a support to the couple, to help them protect what can be so easily broken. I thought it was lovely, retaining the optimism of marriage whilst acknowledging the huge work involved. Our gathering on the grass suddenly became two soft hands, curling in, cradling the small flame of the couple’s commitment and hope.

But God, we really don’t have a clue what we’re doing, do we, when we exchange those vows? 

I’ve even felt complicit at the weddings of really young, bright-eyed couples. Like we should all give them a pre-ceremony shake, a walk through love’s “lonely and austere offices,” before gathering around them in sheer and giddy delight.

Whatever about other people’s decisions to marry, I’m thinking this week of the prospective partners of my three children. I have no idea why. Maybe because it’s silly season and we’re deciding how to navigate our extended families over Christmas — the joyous, occasionally bumpy baggage of any long relationship. What happens when we extend again?

And specifically how on earth am I going to manage my children making the initial decision to marry?

I will be delighted for them but what if, for whatever semi-psychic ‘because a mother knows’ reason, they look like they’re making the wrong choice? How will I stay silent? Because I know that I should stay silent. But what a disaster to marry the wrong person, to navigate the turbulence of potentially having children with the wrong co-pilot. It is such a hugely important decision. I’m used to a discussing everything from toileting to sock choices with my children. How will I stay silent while they make such a bamboozling bazooka of a decision?

I know I will have to — if I want a relationship with them at all. If they are at that stage of a marriage proposal — actually preparing to marry — their loyalty will be to their partner.

I had a friend, not even a parent, who told another friend they were making a mistake. The two of them never spoke again. Never again. The marriage is still perfectly intact

 I’ve even dipped my toe in the ‘slight criticism of a spouse’ pool with my own friends. Icy waters, I assure you. It is a complete no-go zone. Even if I meet a friend ready to launch into a bitch-fest about their partner, I keep to comforting eye contact and reassuring nods. There is never a good time to reveal that you think a friend’s spouse is a total dose. Nod and smile. Nod and smile. Because when they make up, and he is the love of her life again, your words will ring in her ear. She’ll never forget what you said — never.

But here and now, at the comfortable distance of at least a decade, I can take a breath and think about the kind of person I want my child to marry. It’s pretty basic really. I don’t want them to marry someone who is mean. Who doesn’t trust them. Who doesn’t look for the best in them. I would much rather they stay single and happy and intact.

I’ve heard stories of mothers who have known the truth of a bad choice before the divorce happened — poor souls. In one instance, the chosen bride was from a far wealthier family. The mother, quietly worried that her son would try to provide for her in a traditional way but always fall short of his bride’s expectations. She was right, but she passed away before the divorce happened.

I hope I don’t know. I hope I’m blissfully ignorant and go along on the tide of pre-marital joy alongside my child. It’s all part of the letting go, isn’t it? Our children are not our own. They have their own wild and precious lives to live.

And I would say this — if my children choose to marry or not marry, I know they know love, what it is to be loved. At least we’ve given them that. Hopefully, as a kind of blueprint. What else can we do? Only cross our fingers and hope they get lucky. Hope they are alert to the red flags of meanness. Hope they are gentle with themselves and with others. Hope they grow into their lives with the thickest, sturdiest roots of belonging, single or not — it doesn’t matter.

As I write this it strikes me that I have these thoughts, these little wishes, almost every day, every time they close the front door behind them. Maybe I need not worry. Maybe I’m already in training.