RSS

Contact us

FAQs

Friday 10 February 2012

Ding-dong the bells are goin' ter chime

‘I’ve always wanted to do a wedding,’ the mother said. ‘And as there’s only Becky I really hope she and Sam will get engaged soon.’

Sam is a junior doctor. He and Becky met at university and have had a fairly ongoing relationship for six years – ‘fairly’ meaning there has been some of the usual blowing hot and cold and Sam has been working too hard this year to see much of her. Becky’s parents are pushing her into Sam’s arms and up the aisle not so much because they like him and he is a nice young man – they do and he is, but because they have always had social aspirations and a doctor in the family represents quite a few ladder-rungs to them. That sounds appallingly patronising and snobbish but it is no more than the plain truth and the fact that Becky’s mother has always wanted to ‘do a wedding’ is only part of the whole scheme. But she has and she has been saving for, oh, ever, and getting Bridal magazines secretly for two years. All very harmless you may think. Is it?

Whether Sam and Becky love one another enough to commit to spending the rest of their lives together, ‘forsaking all other’ I do not know. I do know that neither has had another serious relationship. But given time and growing up they would be perfectly capable of reaching their own decision. They just need to be left alone to do it, and they are not being left alone. There is pressure, sometimes subtle, usually not, from Becky’s parents – the Bridal magazines are not always well hidden. Sam’s family are apparently far less keen, not because they don`t like Becky – they probably do, but because he is very young, has a lot of time and energy-consuming years ahead of him making his way as a surgeon, and because they worry that he has somehow slipped into a sort of easy groove along which he will glide without much thought, to marriage. They feel that he ought to see something of the world and of other girls too. They may or may not be right. Whether they also feel that Sam is marrying beneath him or could do better for himself I don`t know – they’re a medical family, both parents consultants and Dad has a Knighthood,  two other children in the profession, well-heeled. Those snobbish attitudes are not as common as they used to be but they are not rare either.

The worst-case scenario is that Sam and Becky for want of the strength or cleverness to resist, will allow themselves to be pushed by her parents into a marriage they think they want for themselves but will discover, a year or five down the line, was not actually their own choice. They will be unhappy, they will separate and then divorce - hopefully before they have any children.

Well, this is a common enough story and unremarkable save for the fact that at least in certain respects I fear it might be the story of Prince William and his long term girlfriend Kate Middleton. Every week I see the headline or sub-line in a social gossip magazine or on a tabloid newspaper– even occasionally a broadsheet, shame on them, which tells me that these two are secretly engaged, that an announcement is imminent, the wedding is pencilled in for 2011, it will /won’t be Westminster Abbey/St Paul’s/Scotland. I am glad that I have not held my breath for the last few years. I certainly don`t plan to start holding it now. Are they secretly engaged? I have no idea Will they marry, in 2011 or any other year ? No idea about that, either. Do I care? No. Well, no, except that I think it is quite wrong of the media to add any pressure to what might – or might not – already be pressure of the family sort. I heard from someone very much ‘in the know’ that Mrs Middleton is desperate for her daughter to marry and be a Princess. I heard from someone else in a different ‘know’ that Prince Charles is extremely worried about the relationship and anxious that William should not marry this girl. Do either of these know-alls really know anything? No idea again and none of it matters a two penny damn either, though I do wonder if the British public would be happy about the amount of public money that would have to be spent on this putative royal wedding in these straitened times. Still, then again, there’s always a few as loves a jamboree.

My point is not personal. It is that here are two young people, like Becky and Sam, in a long-term relationship, with neither having apparently had any other serious ones before, and who are being pressurised non-stop by the media to name the day. They may, they may not but it will be very hard for them to go on resisting if they stay together at all, and that does not bode well, in a family whose recent marital track record is so poor.

The royal life is a miserable one, and aspiring to it is bizarre in any human being – save for one proviso, which is that the aspirant loves the royal personage so much that the way of life is shouldered gladly not for itself, but as a sine qua none of the relationship.

A seemingly nice, ordinary young Swedish man, Daniel Westerling, recently married Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden in the Wedding of the Millennium, and became Prince (though not Crown Prince – the Swedish are quite feminist) Daniel.  Two things struck me when watching some of the wedding footage – that they were both overwhelmingly happy and that this was a love match to end all love matches. They too have known one another for some years but whether there was any pressure on them to marry from the Swedish media I do not know. It would have been irrelevant because they looked so happy on their wedding day that it was clear they would have eloped and become non-royals in a second rather than lose one another, if they had not been given the family blessing.  They seem very well able to withstand any sort of outside pressure and their joy was a joy to behold.

Marriage is a difficult enough relationship even between two people who love one another as much as this. Being royal and in the media spotlight for life makes succeeding at it far more difficult. I really do think that only the greatest love and determination can make it survive.

A lot of people have responsibility to help not hinder here, whether we are talking about William and Kate or Sam and Becky. It’s easy enough - just leave them alone, do not try and organise their future lives or their weddings for them and if the weddings never take place at all, just shut up about it.

Some hope.

Actions: Print this article  |  Email to a friend  |  Permalink   |   Comments (11)

Post this entry to:   del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

Post comment

Back to top

Advertisement

Apollo Magazine | Corporate | Advertising | Privacy | Terms

Spectator, 22 Old Queen Street, London, SW1H 9HP

All Articles and Content Copyright ©2012 by The Spectator | All Rights Reserved