The people who pen letters in The Times against divorce are people who are happily married or at least think they are, persons who vowed celibacy or people who, for reasons best known to themselves, do not tie the knot. I am absolutely sure that if they went through any problems, they will not speak this way, no matter how staunch Catholics they may be.

The people who volunteer to be fed to hungry tigers and lions are nowadays no more. When a relationship is dead, divorce or no divorce, children or no children, nothing stands in the way. The couple go their own way. It is not the undoing of a bond as some firebrands are saying. The bond is already dead and buried. Divorce would enable the broken parties to re-marry and that is what the opposition does not want.

Divorce would regularise illegitimate relationships or cohabitation, call it what you like.

What needs to be done is that divorce, separation or whatever you would like to call it would not be accessible to people who sleep on the wrong side of the bed and in the morning feel like calling it a day. Or people who decide to leave their partner just for the fun of an adventure.

Those who have been in misery for a long time need a legal solution, no matter what. This legal solution must be provided by politicians who should make it impossible for adventure seekers but possible for those who really need it.

It is unfair to skirt the problem by bringing in the suffering of children. The children of the people I know who went through any of this would have suffered already. In school, young children talk to each other and tell their mates what is going on in their homes and their mates would then tell their own parents and so the news spreads.

The Church should protect vulnerable children and ensure that it accepts to tie the knot only once it ensures that the couple are worthy of going for it. Broken marriages do not just happen. Such relationships were wobbly before the marriage was celebrated.