Introducing: Forever is a Long Time

When I decided to get married, every living member of my family who had ever been married had also gotten divorced. Apparently, I thought my marriage would end differently. Listen to Personally: Forever is a Long Time starting June 16, 2025.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  This is a CBC Podcast.

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  Ten years ago, I asked my partner Kelsey if she would marry me. I did that despite the fact that every living member of my family who had ever been married had also gotten divorced.

• 0:19Speaker 01

  My parents, all my aunts and uncles on both sides, my only living great uncle, my only living grandparent, not to mention some of my great grandparents, all had been married and all had been divorced, some of them twice.

• 0:37Speaker 01

  It's certainly not an encouraging track record. And the deeper I got into my own marriage, the more questions I had about the examples I had grown up with and my own capacity for commitment. So I started asking.

• 0:54Speaker 02

  Hello?

• 0:54Speaker 03

  Hey, Ian.

• 0:55Speaker 01

  I talked to every one of those relatives.

• 0:57Speaker 03

  Hey there, how you doing?

• 0:58Speaker 02

  Hello? How are you?

• 0:59Speaker 03

  Oh, hi, Ian. Hi, how are you?

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  About their marriages.

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  They really thought I would be with him for the rest of my life.

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  And their divorces.

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  I was just expecting it to be more fulfilling.

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  The stories they told were at once more bizarre.

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  The whole courtroom, it was like a reverse wedding.

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  And also more relatable, more familiar than I had ever imagined.

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  There was so much compensating, really on both sides, for the other person not being the person that you really wanted them to be.

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  Familiar enough that I can only hope that by asking and listening, I won't have to repeat those stories myself.

• 1:39Speaker 02

  Oh, God, marriage really doesn't mean a thing to me. He didn't find me attractive, like that really, it got to me after a while. She picked up the phone and said, "That's it, I'm gonna call the cops."

• 1:51Speaker 01

  We've lost respect for each other. Yeah, I mean, it seems like kind of a red flag in hindsight. Doesn't it? But we stayed married for thirty something years.

• 1:59Speaker 02

  They did a lot of stuff to fuck you up, but you also get gifts.

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  I didn't want to pass that legacy on to my kids.

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  He was really, really afraid of being his dad. I'd be perfectly happy to be that woman at the end of the street with fifteen cats. I wouldn't have any issues with that at all.

• 2:13Speaker 04

  You sort of start to feel like you're good and sufficient reasons. Maybe they really weren't so good and sufficient for who you actually become.

• 2:33Speaker 01

  My name is Ian Coss. The show is called Forever is a Long Time. It's a five-part series of conversations and also songs about divorce. But really, about the meaning of lifetime commitment and the patterns of behaviour that we all inherit from our families, whether we realise it or not. That's coming soon from CBC's Personally.

• 3:34Speaker 00

  For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca/podcasts.