Why the ‘secret’ to marriage is sometimes getting a divorce

Dolly Parton has been sharing the “secret” to her almost 60-year marriage again. She does this approximately once every few years. Not unprompted, obviously. She’s far too classy for that, but it seems that every time she sits down to do an interview she gets asked, and so Dolly graciously answers.

Over the years, she’s told reporters that her 57-year marriage (plus the two years of dating prior to it) to Carl Dean boils down to honesty, respect, sharing a sense of humour and... wait for it... liking each other. Sweet as this sounds, it’s hardly a scoop. Who among us is not looking for honesty, humour, and conviviality in our relationships? I’d wager you’d see these traits listed in some form or another on the majority of people’s dating profiles. Yet journalists can’t stop asking the question: how have you made it work?

Our collective fascination with how two people stay together for nearly 60 years reveals two things, I think. It’s an acknowledgment of the fact that in 2023 it’s unusual to encounter a marriage that has lasted so long. But alongside that there remains the internalised belief that it should.

Society equates longevity with “good” and lauds couples that “make it work.” But arguably, recognising when a relationship has come to an end and navigating a way through that is just as healthy and happy an outcome. This is certainly how Anna Whitehouse, better known as parenting influencer and employment rights activist, Mother Pukka, felt when she and her husband decided to split. “There’s a gratitude [...] and a mutual respect for getting out before we blew the whole thing up,” she wrote last month. “Our divorce is on some level a success story, a rebuilding not a deconstructing.”

I agree. As a child of divorced parents, I am very much of the mindset that breaking up is sometimes how you “make it work.” I struggle to believe this is a controversial viewpoint. With no-fault divorce coming into force last year, it’s clear the law has caught up with the reality of modern relationships. It’s time we stopped idealising longevity.

Why is the idea of having a reasonably nice time with one person for six decades so much more inspiring to us than the idea of having lots of different sorts of times with lots of different people? There are, after all, so many forms a relationship can take, whether platonic, creative, collegiate, collaborative, romantic, or sexual. Even if we do decide to get married, we don’t have to conform to any set notions about the shape it should take or how long it should last. As in all areas of life, “success” can mean whatever you want it to mean.

In her book On Marriage, writer and filmmaker Devorah Baum observes that “the happily married are the ones who’ve simultaneously killed and reinforced the institution by making it suit themselves.” Ironically, I think this is exactly what Dolly Parton and her husband have done. Over the years, Dolly’s career has taken her all around the world while Carl Dean has stayed home. She has even joked in the past that the real secret to a happy marriage is to “stay gone.” Being away with work a lot has meant that Dolly and her husband “are not in each other’s face all the time,” she explained in 2020.

There’s definitely merit to this approach. The intensity of cohabiting coupledom can be suffocating, and I cannot countenance a situation in which my husband and I did not have different friends, different interests, separate social lives to attend to and, yes, in our case, other partners to go and see. I believe we’ve created a marriage that “suits ourselves” and I hope it will continue that way for many years. But even if it doesn’t, I would never dream of viewing that as a failure.

That said, it’s hard not to love Dolly Parton’s attitude to her marriage. Speaking to radio presenter Zoe Ball about her partner, she said, “I would have liked him if he wasn’t my husband. If he was somebody else’s husband I’d say, ‘You know that Carl Dean, ain’t he funny? Ain’t he a good guy?’”

If we’re talking relationship goals, I’d say liking the person you’re in a relationship with independently of your relationship with them is a good one! But we need to stop holding up “long-lasting” as the ultimate aspiration.