Is love that hard to find?

Stacey Collins

Why is it that news programmes never report any positive news? Riots, deaths, recession and other such subjects leave news watchers everywhere feeling depressed and disheartened and wondering if the cliché ‘no news is good news’ should perhaps be changed to ‘no news on good news’.

 This is why hearing about a drop in divorce rates has come as such a surprise; some news on good news.

The Office for National Statistics showed that divorce rates are at their lowest since 1974. The question is does this mean that fewer people are getting divorced or fewer people are getting married?

Well a recent study by the London Fertility Centre which surveyed 2,000 women suggests another reason why the divorce rates have gone down six consecutive years in a row. One in ten of the women they asked said that they stayed and settled with their partner purely because of their maternal urges; their want for a baby. This reason almost seems justified as the study highlights that four out of ten women are scared of the expiration date on their ever-ticking biological clock.

60 per cent of the women did admit that they wished they had waited for Mr Right rather than coupling up with a partner that didn’t tick all the boxes on their husband wish list. It seems that people are losing their faith in the Hollywood portrayal of love, i.e. the leg pop, the chirping birds, the instantaneous burst of colour after a kiss. Should women be happy to settle with ‘Mr He’ll Do’ because of their lack of faith in that blissful, butterflies in stomach, completely besotted type of love?

As well as rubbing ‘true love’ in the faces of watchers, Hollywood also does a good job of reuniting separated couples and reigniting their love for one another. They place emphasis on nostalgia rather than promoting change, The Parent Trap being a typical example of this. Perhaps Hollywood should invest in marriage counselling business’ seeing as though they somehow always manage to get their characters a happily ever after.

If Demi Moore’s character, Molly Jensen, can re-experience love again with her dead husband, then surely it is possible for a broken couple to feel love again in a once-dead marriage.