Till Divorce Do Us Part

When I first arrived in the Caucasus, I stayed at a guesthouse run by a Georgian man in his late forties or fifties. Over a dinner of potatoes, alcohol, coffee, and cigarettes, he popped the question.

“So, when’s your wedding going to be?”

I answered as I always do. A noncommittal shrug and a “No idea.”

It struck a nerve.

“You have to get married! When I was your age, I already had my daughter! You’re 23 already! If you don’t hurry up, you’ll never get married!”

What does one say to this stuff? Fortunately, it didn’t matter. After telling me that the end of my period of eligibility was nigh for a while, he asked a question that I could answer.

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

“No. No boyfriend.”

He looked crestfallen.

“Have you ever had a boyfriend?”

Fortunately I have had a few boyfriends and was able to assure him that my current lack of prospects has little to do with my ability to attract men in general. I then explained that none of my boyfriends had worked out and that if I did marry I would want to be with somebody that I would be happy to call the father of my children because, if I have them, it’s important to me that I give them the best.

Suddenly, the entire tone of the conversation changed. He said, “Good for you!”

It was a first conversation in a series about the culture of marriage and divorce in the Caucasus. I get asked if I’m married and when I plan to marry a lot here, much more than I do in Turkey. From what I have gathered, people in Georgia and Armenia tend to marry young – around 20 – and women are considered rather old to be married around the age of 25. But people who refuse to live in a bad marriage appear to be respected. It’s strange.

In Tbilisi, I met a woman at a guesthouse I was staying at. I would have pegged her at around 32. A man around my own age came into the kitchen. Since this woman lived with her parents, I took him to be a brother.

“This is my son,” she said.

I looked confusedly from one to the other, and then curiosity got the better of me.

“How old are you?”

“I’m 36,” she said. “And my son is 22. I got married when I was 13 and had him when I was 14.”

“Are you still married?” I asked.

“No!” she said. “I only lived with that husband for about one year, but it was enough time to have a baby. When I got married, it was the old days. Everybody got married very young. And I didn’t know nothing – about sex, about being a mother, about love. The marriage was arranged, so I just went and then I hated it. But – and now it is not like this – in those days people talked. If I left my husband people would say that I wasn’t a virgin and that nobody else would marry me. But I was so unhappy that I called my parents and said, ‘If you don’t let me come back home, I will take my baby and move to Europe.’ So they said that I could come back home. It used to be very bad. Even when I asked my mother if she loved my father when she got married, she said no. But now I have a second husband and he is younger than I am and he has helped me live like I’m younger.”

In Yerevan, I met a woman at the post office. She asked me where I was from and then started telling me about her children. One of them lived in Brazil, the other in Moscow. “I love to travel,” she said. “And it’s hard when you have kids, but now that my kids are grown up I can. And it’s so good that you are travelling now and that you are able to take advantage of your youth.”

I asked, “Are you married?”

She said, “I’m divorced,” as though it were a point of pride.

“I married my husband when I was 20, and I was far too young, but in our society we got married that young. A girl that young – she wants to go to the theatre, to go travel, but I was just married. And I divorced my husband when my kids were 8 and 6. I took them by myself and it was hard – very hard. But I gave them a very good education, and now they both speak English very well and have very good jobs. My daughter went to the American University, which was the best university she could go to, and she is married but she is waiting longer to have children. She is only 28. She has some time. It is better, I think. When my kids tell me that now I can have my own life, I tell them that I am older and it’s not the same as having a life when you’re young. I still feel like I missed out on having youth.”

In Ijevan, I met a two women, neither Armenian. One was Swiss but lives in Armenia; the other, Lena, was on vacation from her home in Moscow. The two reported also being frequently asked about whether they would soon be married.

Lena said, “At first I would say no, and they would say, ‘No! You shouldn’t think like that! You’ll be happier if you’re married and it’s getting late for you. Why don’t you want to be married?’ So then I started telling them I was divorced, which I am, and the conversation completely changed. People reacted more like ‘respect for getting out of your shitty marriage’ or ‘men are such complete morons,’ or ‘we understand you.’”

These three conversations were fascinating to me. I wouldn’t have expected the two attitudes to coexist in this way, nor do I understand how a society where people seem to understand why living in a bad marriage is not ideal seem to still promote young marriage. Or perhaps they don’t. Perhaps these conversations are the natural outcome of a society in transition, where people cannot figure out whether their culture is in favour of the old way of doing things or the new.