Okay . . . this is just wrong. This girl is screwed up and needs some real help. The guy is also screwed up. This is one of the reasons I advocate premarital cohabitation and premarital sex, you really need to know if you are completely compatible with someone before taking the long road of committment. I am a strong advocate of marriage, big time. I believe strongly that if something is wrong with your marriage, you should work your ass off to fix it before bailing and running off and calling it quits. However, I also believe that in some cases divorce is the way to go . . .
DPA, TAIPEI, Monday, Feb 12, 2007, Page 2 . . .
A Tainan court has granted a man’s request for divorce because his wife was “too shy” to consummate their marriage, a newspaper said yesterday. The man surnamed Chen (陳), a 38-year-old teacher from Tainan County was introduced to a woman surnamed Lin (林), 29, also a teacher, by a matchmaker. After the couple dated for three months, they married a year ago, but Lin refused to consummate the marriage, the Chinese-language daily China Times reported. On the wedding night, Lin slept fully dressed and wrapped with a quilt, the daily said, without citing any sources. When Chen tried to sleep with her, the report said, she pushed him away shouting: “You are ridiculous!” The next morning Lin returned to her mother’s home saying she was ill, and would not live with her husband again, the paper said. Through the matchmaker’s mediation, Lin signed a contract agreeing to consummate the marriage but only for the purpose of procreation, and demanded to sleep separately. However, she did not live up to the pledge, the paper said. In June, Chen filed for divorce with the Tainan District Court. Lin contested the divorce, claiming that she refused to consummate the marriage on the wedding night because she was too tired and was ill. But the judge said it was strange for Lin to refuse to consummate the marriage for one year, so he granted the divorce on Saturday and ruled that Lin must compensate Chen NT$300,000 for buying an apartment, giving Lin’s family a dowry and losing face because she did not consummate the marriage.
That’s quite sad, when you think about how these are real people with real problems. Note, it doesn’t say what sort of illness she had or whether it was ongoing for the entire time of their marriage. We don’t have all of the information, just the headline so we can’t really know if the report slant is completely accurate or if it’s just a twist to sell newspapers. Either way, these folks did not explore their compatibilities at the get-go and were obviously more in love with the idea of being married than with one another (arranged matchmaking relationship at the get-go so they may have been looking for marriage more than a compatible life partner). At a certain point in life, some folks give up on happiness and settle for being married.
