The average sentence served for murder in the UK according to a study in 2013 is around 16.5 years although according to sentencing academy.org since the Criminal Justice Act 2003 the level of minimum sentencing term for murder has risen from 12 to 21 years. As an aside, that kind of puts a hole in the “soft on crime” lobby.

I have been with my wife for 54 years. Taking into account time off for good behaviour this equates to roughly three life sentences for your average non-psychotic murderer.

On the other hand my wife has offered to murder me periodically but more from a; discursive, theoretical perspective, usually due to some  kind of outrageous fault or omission on my behalf, such as  continuous household failures. The most recent related to pumping up the car tyres. On reflection it is easy to see how that might result in an episode of advanced criminality, its a short step from the marriage bed to the garage, though problematic for us – we don’t have a garage and murder on the drive is rather obvious. But the principle is the same.

By the by in my research I found it interesting that marriages ending in divorce usually last (median) around 12.7 years for opposite sex couples 7.2 years for male couples and 6.3 years for female couples. It might not be the only deciding factor but heterosexuality seems to be cost effective by that analysis. So in considering the longevity of our relationship, I wondered about our drivers? I guess only statisticians and auditors chose their life partners by statistics (my wife is an auditor so is rather keen on value for money). Otherwise I think using a calculator to chose partners is probably not an approach a marriage guidance counsellor would suggest. It’s hard to see in those circumstances what advice they could give and that rather dents their business model. “Ah you see you should have used the square root of misery rather than the cosine of satisfaction” doesn’t really explain why your partner never cleans the toilet. Even less why it affects you to the point of divorce. Of course a statistical approach also assumes you have perfect access to all the data…read on.

The good news is that looking at; divorce death and other cheery subjects the average length of a marriage is around 38 – 40 years in the UK, i.e. there are lots of people in the UK “doing time” presumably with a degree of satisfaction. Although it would be interesting to have some kind of survey on measuring marriage satisfaction perhaps with the extremes being “blinding passion” and at the other end “yeah whatever”. Our own “making up techniques” usually reflect the statement “who else would have us ?” or “who gets the dog ?”

That brings me to a comment made by a friend recently and the main point of this article,

“Does anyone really know everything about their partner?”

I’m not sure why he asked it. I don’t think he or his wife is considering spousal homicide ? Check back with me in a week. Was it a question born out of frustration? Was it a heart felt desire to more closely meet the needs of his life partner, or had he forgotten to pump up the car tyres ? We will never know.

Perhaps Alexa knows ? The only entity that has un-fettered access to our private lives is a virtual assistant, she listens  to EVERYTHING ….we even have one in our bedroom …….but thus far “she” hasn’t provided marriage guidance ….or offered technical assistance in the bedroom. But then again we haven’t asked “her” ….maybe I should ask “her” to set up a schedule for pumping up the tyres ? Do you think this is an obsession with me now? Does this bring on dark thoughts ?

All of us have our challenges in relationships. At one level it is far more complex if your partner turns out to be a criminal.

At another level it is exactly the same, because it is still a relationship and unless you came into the relationship with full disclosure,  perhaps a Vulcan brain meld if you like, (and if you like Star Trek) can you really be held responsible for that person’s future or past behaviour ?

Having worked in criminal justice I have seen the devastation of families after the realisation that one of the partners is not what they seemed to be.

If there are two things that irk me, one is the notion that any form of repentance or enlightenment religious or otherwise can excuse someone or render them immune for accountability for historical offending, however long ago. The other is that ages ago, I gave  up listening to the words “ah well they must have known” about the partners of criminals.

Some partners will have known, because it became evident over time and they made a choice to live with it but to presume that for everyone  is to jump to an entirely un-evidenced  conclusion.

The fate of the world will not be affected by our personal marital awareness failings  but perhaps in a different scenario, a more challenging one, this is a call for a little bit of humanity ?

In looking at ourselves and the fact that, in my opinion at least, I will never know exactly everything my wife thinks (thankfully) it makes me consider what any of us knows is in the mind of those closest to us.

My wife and I occasionally commit to better communication and even more rarely achieve it. The will is there but perhaps it’s our differences that actually make life together worthwhile? Once you even out the car tyre pressures of course. Now this spousal confusion is not based around major crime but we do seem to forget that major crimes are committed by people who are related to people. In recognising our own failings in understanding a partner it is  sheer hubris and hypocrisy to assume this is not true  for relationships where one of the partners does something heinous.

I’m astonished that when hideous things happen there is a held belief  of the spouse  that “s/he must have known !” Thus adding to the pain of their own betrayal. By the way it is usually “she” and especially where the crime relates to abuse there seems to be a singular lack of irony that this is a form of abuse too.

Our personal  negatives are not on the scale that anyone else would be even vaguely interested (unless she really does murder me in which case “this is exhibit one for the prosecution your honour”). We don’t live our lives in the public gaze. But there are those that do. I’m not going to dignify criminal or alleged criminal behaviour by rehearsing their names, but all of us will have had thrust into our awareness the appalling and criminal behaviour of certain very public people.

I think it is perfectly reasonable to ask the question “how on earth could anyone give time to that creep?” As an example having once met him I never felt a strong urge to take Jimmy Saville to meet my mother. I kind of thought that there was a non specific self evident malignity, e.g. if it quacks and waddles, it’s probably a duck. I can recount in my private life a moment when it wasn’t a shock that an acquaintance was proved to be a crook. They had concerned me for years but there was nothing evidential, until there was. To most people they were socially adept, successful, fun, easy to be around. Their family was shocked, a cupboard they had no idea was even there, opened, their life was devastated. Expectations, assumptions, plans, shattered.

In my professional life I have thought  people to be “wrong” and I shared, reported, my concerns. I have also seen them protected by their position, and wondered what those protecting them were gaining by so doing. The reality, probably, was that they were usually just gulled by a projected persona that was easy to believe, if you wanted to believe it or perhaps if you were not invested to believe the alternative.

In my experience there is a lot of the latter going on.

But in relationships it could also be  the alternative was just too outrageous to consider based on 98% of their normal behaviour and if it applies to someone you chose to love for entirely different reasons.

By the way my thinking the way I do doesn’t make me a better character, it makes me a naturally suspicious one, which isn’t that attractive and has its own challenges. The disadvantage of thinking like that is that there is rarely anything you can do about your suspicions and if you are right it is just really frustrating when it comes to light usually after the event.

They say love is blind, I’d say sometime it is also deaf and lacking in common sense. But it is still love.

What I saw in my professional life was the devastation of someone’s criminality becoming public knowledge  and to their shock to their own families. But I also saw a kind of atavistic societal predilection to blame others. Particularly family, particularly loved ones.

The reality is that someone’s selfish criminality has already devastated the lives of their victims. They’ve blighted the lives of brave people who did report  the fact some times in systems that make it difficult or impossible to be dealt with appropriately and sensitively and in circumstances  in which you are routinely ignored or degraded with victim blaming  rife and evident, even institutionalised.

Yet we, through; the papers, the media , social media feel the need to add more victims, because “they must have known” without any evidence that they did, and without any self reflection on the limits of our own mind reading. At the pub, down the road, with our friends in moments when our own self reflection slips we may even rehearse the same thoughts. I include myself.

Our humanity should cause us to reflect on the impact for everyone  but our humanity also makes us weak and the rather pathetic nature of humanity is that  all too often we look to place blame.

We would have done better …wouldn’t we?

I hasten to add that I don’t think my wife capable of high crimes, unless possibly it relates to me and tyres.

…….ok Alexa , I’m on it

………..Alexa don’t judge me .

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