Anybody who is considering divorce should first take a look at the new BBC2 series Mr v Mrs: Call the Mediator, which goes behind the doors of a string of national family mediation centres.
It is an object lesson in the realities of love when it turns sour. Certain patterns seem constant with all the participating couples – not merely their palpable lack of mutual goodwill but in some cases their positive rejection of the whole concept. One imagines that after what is sometimes years of estrangement, a degree of positivity will emerge, if only for the sake of the children who suffer through the hostility.
Love starts with a sense of communication, hence the biblical term for union, “to know”. But how easily and comprehensively that ecstatic knowledge seems to corrode. What one sees instead is war conducted in trenches so deeply dug that each side cuts themselves off from the communication that they once exalted in. It’s awful – and sometimes darkly comic. It brought to mind the Rodgers and Hart lyric from I Wish I Were in Love Again. “When love congeals / it soon reveals /the faint aroma of performing seals.”
The failure to listen is a consistent fact of marriage breakup. I sometimes wonder if we ever listen in the first place. The egocentric nature of humans often means they can only hear the voice in their heads – and that chatter drowns out anything coming in through their ears.
But even in the case of the few who are receptive, exhaustion, despair, vanity and erosion of trust take a toll – along with the fundamental flaw of dogmatically believing ourselves to be in the right.
What one sees particularly in this series is the narcissism of bitterness. The bitterness of the women seems to be consistently that the men haven’t pulled their weight during the marriage, and the bitterness from the men seems to be that the women are not there to come to an amicable agreement but to continue punishing them.
Call the Mediator shows clearly how rigid our masks are – how contingent, in fact, on the presence of other people our very selves are. For many of the participants turned out to be one person talking to camera alone and another entirely when inside with their former partners and the mediator. They were more human and vulnerable out of the room. The moment they faced their old lovers, though, that humanity sank into the depths again of stubbornness and fury.
I do not put myself above these people who have bravely subjected themselves to public scrutiny. I have been through a divorce and am all too familiar with the ugly habits that develop after separation. And, of course, throughout the process, I believed firmly and passionately that I was in the right – that I was the one with justice on my side and the children’s best interests at heart. So my anger sometimes took on a self-righteous aspect – the most dangerous kind.
I felt conflict only truly ended when love – often the true source of hate – had been exhausted on both sides. Now my ex-wife and I are on perfectly good terms and I wish her the best. But here, on camera in the mediation room, there was not even the prospect of future peace, only the stench of betrayal and revenge.
Lately, I have got into the (probably bad) habit of drawing parallels with just about everything to help me understand Brexit. Call the Mediator underlined the fact that people will readily act selfishly, or, conversely, against their own interest in favour of punishment when they feel deeply wronged. Whether in the world at large, or behind these institutional doors, the same lesson can be drawn – without a spirit of kindness and reconciliation, chaos and hatred ensues.
