When One Marries for Reasons Other Than Love

Marrying for love is divine,
Marrying for reputation – i.e. the girl got pregnant and marrying “is the right thing to do” – is honorable,
Marrying for convenience is a breeze to understand,
Marrying on the rebound is both imprudent and risky,
Marrying for companionship – i.e. mature couple, either both divorced or both widowed, or one is divorced and the other widowed, whose children have left the coop – is sympathetic,
Marrying for companionship, if just a ruse, is doubly pathetic;
But marrying for one other reason not mentioned above is –

I don’t know what to say!
(please read on to see what I mean)

SEVEN or so years ago, I was asked, as a favor, to meet up with a Filipino woman who I would call Gardenia. The request came from the friend of a friend. The latter, an Englishman, let me call him Reginald, was a very good family friend. His friend, who I would call Garfield, was also English. I have never met Garfield – fortunately for me. Both men lived outside metropolitan London.

The request was unusual if not weird. I was to interview Gardenia in my house; I was to plumb from her the details of her very recent “extraordinary” experiences, namely, (1) her having lost her passport twice, (2) her being swindled by a travel agent who had ran off with the money she had paid for her one-way ticket to England, (3) her failure to board the subsequent flight booked for her by Garfield in Britain. After extracting the facts from her, Garfield was supposed to call me; I was expected to relate to him the details of my interview with Gardenia.

I thought the whole thing sucks! Or let me clarify: I thought it would have been quite transparent to Garfield that Gardenia was just being creative in making him part with his money. And then I was told that yes, Garfield was already suspicious of that. He had already spent a lot of money for Gardenia’s “misadventures” in the Philippines, and one way to curb that was to get her to England. When she gets there, Garfield can strictly monitor Gardenia’s constant need and request for money.

However, her UK visa’s must-fly-within-this-date provision was about to expire, and Garfield, desperate to have Gardenia by his side, had already booked another flight. It was first-class, no less, since all the economy and business class seats were all taken.

I was to take on an important role, I was cheekily informed, in pushing Gardenia make that flight. Also, the first-class ticket had to be paid in the local airline office. I was to get the money and pay for it.

GARFIELD and Gardenia were married in the Philippines less than a year ago. It was a whirlwind courtship the likes of which I have only heard of and written about, as fiction, of course.

This 56-year old man met the 27-year old woman during his two-week holiday in the Philippines. They got engaged during that period. Shocking, indeed, even for a romance writer who had thrived on romance of all sorts (but not this sort apparently). Gardenia had never been married while Garfield was awaiting his divorce decree from his second wife who happened to be a Filipina.

A few months later, with his second marriage dissolved in England, he returned to the Philippines with a certificate of no impediment (to marry yet again). He stayed long enough to meet the required three-week continuous stay before filing for license, and the obligatory 15-day waiting period for the issuance of marriage license, and then married Gardenia. He left immediately for England while his new bride stayed behind to work on the processes involved in UK visa application.

Needless to say, that was when her streak of unfortunate experiences began…

THE lost passports and the travel ticket swindle were mere deceptions, obviously, so Garfield would cough up more money for the new wife. When Gardenia came to my house, rather unenthusiastically, and I started asking about which travel agent or agency ran off with her (Garfield’s actually) money, she hemmed and hewed about it.

When I asked her what her problem was that made her miss the flight to England, she gave an answer that was patently ridiculous and a lie! Ten minutes of interview with Gardenia and I was ready to pull my hair in exasperation. I might have an endless patience for listening to people wanting their life stories written about, but I don’t always suffer fools and liars easily.

[I had a pressing deadline at the time so maybe, my vexation was compounded with stress if I would be unable to submit my book and collect my cheque :)]

Fortunately, Garfield called Gardenia’s cell phone while she was in my house. Garfield spoke to me and I told him without mincing words that he should not send any money to me as I refuse to take responsibility for purchasing Gardenia’s ticket. I also said that based upon my interview, I gathered that his wife was not very keen to fly to England.

He then spoke to Gardenia, and it was agreed that the money would be wired for the ticket and that she must fly before her visa provisions expired. I saw the wily smile in Gardenia’s face as she left, her eyes a-twinkling with ₤₤₤ signs.

SEVERAL months later, Reginald flew to the country for his annual holiday. He was profuse with his apologies for having inflicted Garfield and Gardenia on me, and added that Garfield was not a close friend.

“He just tagged along with me when I had my holiday here two years ago,” he explained with a wry smile. “But I bet you could make a good yarn out of their story.”

I made a face, and said, “She looked spaced out when I spoke to her.”

Reginald became serious. “The word I got from her friends was that she’s a drug user.”

“So, she only married Garfield to finance her drug habit?”

“That would appear so.”

“Have you told your friend?”

“He would not listen to me. He loves Gardenia very much.”

“Between us,” I said after a moment’s pause, “and please don’t think me as being uppity and judgmental, Gardenia isn’t pleasing to the eye.”

Our family friend laughed, and said, “You mean, she’s ugly as sin?”

“Well, you said that, not I.”

“In the dark, her being homely would not matter,” Reginald said, again, with that wry smile. “But she has a body, according to Garfield, to die for.”

“Oh, yes?” I blurted out, in disbelief. I did not see nor look at Gardenia that way. I remembered her being a 5-foot slim woman, perhaps a girl’s body not yet destroyed with drug abuse.

“Would you like to know in full what Garfield said to me when I asked him why he was marrying Gardenia?”

I nodded.

“He said he loves Gardenia and that he will marry her because she gives him the greatest sex of his life.”

MARRYING for sex may not be that odd a reason for settling down to a few. It is an unsettling reason for me though, and quite distant from the other side of romance.

As for Gardenia, she took all the money she could wring from Garfield to support her habit, and never flew to England.

Garfield, broke, begged the second ex-wife to let him live in her house until he could sort his finances again.

Marrying for reasons other than love, obviously, has karmic consequences.