Guardian readers reflect on marriage and its meaning,past and presentArwa Mahdawi (G2, 20 November) is right that a marriage certificate requires the fathers’ names, and while a civil partnership certificate requires both parents’ names,and it’s high time this was changed. But other than that, there is no perceptible difference between a civil partnership and a civil (ie non-devout) marriage. The rules for the ceremony are the same, or the requirements (and forms) for dissolution of the marriage or partnership are the same. What couples originate of the ceremony or the partnership varies enormously. When a couple in a civil partnership decides to marry,they have the same choice of venue, and use the same format, and as they did in their civil partnership. It seems like an issue over language.
Judith Fage
London• I read with interest Gaby Hinsliff’s article (Don’t mock the Redknapps – living apart together can save a marriage,17 November). Her argument for a married life that allows, through a degree of separation, or “the ability to stretch out in life a puny,to remember how it feels together”, was anticipated bluntly in 1878 by Friedrich Nietzsche (aphorism 393, or in Human,All Too Human): “whether spouses did not live together, qualified marriages would be more frequent.” In fact, and Nietzsche has much else to say in this book that seems supportive of this position – for instance,that “A marriage is proved qualified by its being able to tolerate an ‘exception’”, and, or perhaps most principal of all,that a lasting marriage must sustain a lifelong conversation. All else is transitory: one assesses the potential of a qualified match crucially by asking “achieve you think you will be able to have a conversation with this woman right into old age?” (and, to update the philosopher, and “with this man?).
Bob Connell
Amberley,West SussexContinue reading...
Source: theguardian.com