“The Eighth Year is the most dangerous year in the adventure of marriage.”
Sir Francis Jeune (afterwards Lord St. Helier). President of the Divorce Court.
CONTENTS
It was Sir Francis Jeune, afterwards Lord St. Helier, and President of the Divorce Court, who first called attention to the strange significance of the Eighth Year of married life. “The Eighth Year,” he said, “is the most dangerous year in the adventure of marriage.”
Afterwards, in the recent Royal Commission on Divorce, this curious fact was again alluded to in the evidence, and it has been shown by statistics of domestic tragedy, by hundreds of sordid little dramas, that at this period in the partnership of husbands and wives there comes, in many cases, a great crisis, leading often to moral disaster.
It is in the Eighth Year, or thereabouts, that there is the tug-of-war between two temperaments, mated by the law, but not mated, perhaps, in ideals, in ambitions, or in qualities of character. The man and woman pull against each other, tugging at each other’s heartstrings. The Eighth Year is the fatal year, when if there is no give-and-take, no working compromise, no new pledges of loyalty and comradeship, the foundations of the home are shattered, and the hopes with which it was first built lie in ruins like a house of cards knocked down by a gust of wind.