Marrying to Divorce

Are we living in a disposable society; once we are bored of something or no longer “need” it, we throw it away and get a new one? Someway marriage has been personified as a sacred rite; the union of two souls traveling the pathway of life as one. This union is (suppose to be) one that should not be broken and the dissolution of such union are often frowned upon. The utterance, “until death do us part,” becomes an unbreachable contract!

Of all the changes in family life during the 20th century, perhaps the most dramatic- and the most far-reaching in its implications was increase in the rate of divorce. It was during my internship in Bench III, Thimphu District Court, Royal Court of Justice, I knew, one of the most litigated cases in Bhutan is matrimonial cases within which divorce case has been found rampant. It is an unfortunate reality of Bhutanese society today that divorce has become a completely commonplace thing. The piece I am writing, though may not be engaging, is intended to share some of the truths related to dissolution of marriage. Indeed, the accumulated thoughts on it suggest that marital dissolution has the potential to create considerable turmoil in people’s lives.

Not to say there shouldn’t be divorce, people like me however found it tough to witness tears in the eyes of ‘would-be left out’ spouses, ‘inconsolable’ cute-little children on mothers’ back playing and crying when he/she doesn’t know what is happening-Divorce-a matrimonial thunder that splits family! The sense of utter sadness, loneliness, hurt, bitterness, anger, disappointment, betrayal, fear, on innocent spouse to be ‘left-out’ are unbearably seen. What on earth will be worse than one gets betrayed by the person who you married taking absolutely positive that he/she was the one for you but found people are not always what you think and hope for them to be?
  What more Court can do when one spouse doesn’t agree to reconcile matrimonial breakdown than to pass down Divorce Decree? People wonder not able to understand how in the world things work in the court systems sometimes. They find it really sickening. But justice has to be delivered within the confines of law in black and white laid down by the law makers of the Nation.

This tragic-ridden social phenomenon that is seen growing menacingly in our society left me wondering, ‘Do people marry only to get divorced without considering how traumatic and devastating it will be to children from their wedlock, when they grow competent enough to understand that there is such social institution as ‘family’ webbed by the presence of ‘Apa’ and ‘Ama’, only to find one of them has inhumanely abandoned them long time ago?’

I can’t help lamenting and I almost wailed loudly to have noticed by someone near me!!!