The Eighth Year: A Vital Problem of Married Life

“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.
But why the Eighth Year? Why not the twelfth, fourteenth, or eighteenth year? The answer is not to be found in any old superstition. There is nothing uncanny about the number eight. The problem is not to be shrugged off by people who despise the foolish old tradition which clings to thirteen, and imagine this to be in the same class of folly. By the law of averages and by undeniable statistics it has been proved that it brings many broken-hearted men and women to the Divorce Court. For instance, taking the annual average of divorces in England between 1904 and 1908, one finds that there were only six divorces between husbands and wives who had been married less than a year, and only eighteen divorces between those married less than two years. Between the second and the fifth years the number increases to a hundred and seventeen. Then there is a tremendous jump, and the numbers between the fifth and tenth years are two hundred and ninety-two. The period of the Eighth Year is the most productive of divorce. The figures are more startling and more significant when they cover a longer period. But apart from statistics and apart altogether from the Divorce Court, which is only one house of trouble, by using one’s own eyes in one’s own circle of friends one may see that young married couples who started happily enough show signs of stress and strain as this year approaches. The fact is undeniable. What is the cause behind the fact?