There’s a theory propounded by some historians that modern divorce is a substitute for death. In the past, so the theory goes, most people died young and so hardly any couples lived on together for many years. One – or both of them – died.

These days, where lots of us are lucky enough to have a good chance of living to three score years and ten, we spend a great deal more time in couples, and so have a much greater chance of getting thoroughly sick of each other. Your partner will probably not die, and nor will you, so the next best thing is divorce. Not very consoling, you might think.

But maybe it is. It shows that relationships are trickier than we admit, and that the fact they might end doesn’t mean they weren’t worthwhile.

All relationships are failures

The first thing to remember is that relationships don’t just fail by ending. Even the best relationships are riddled with failure, just as the best person is. Human desire and need are limitless, and even the kind of life that looks the best and most successful is, from the inner perspective, botched. We spend a great deal of time trying to pretend this isn’t so, but I have yet to meet anyone, however successful, who isn’t just as confused as the rest of us. Whenever I have had a glimpse into any other couple’s relationship it has always seemed to me as confused in its own way as mine have been, however good otherwise. So: it’s the nature of relationships to be failures, and the fact that so many of them go wrong by ending is hardly surprising.