Judge says couples should accept all relationships are flawed—but that's not enough

“However wonderful and exciting a relationship is, you can’t sustain it at that level; and that is the reality. Soon you find the new partner is as flawed as the last.” If this is the new messiah for marriage, I’d hate to hear a critic. Sir Paul Coleridge, a senior High Court judge, was talking about his new campaign to promote marriage: which you do, apparently, not by extolling the virtues of matrimony but by ramping up the futility of seeking the happy-ever-after with anybody at all.

Sir Paul is keen to stress that his approach to the marriage question is not “moralistic,” but “practical.” But how is it even possible to have a campaign promoting marriage without engaging with the moral question? If you’re going to convince people to stay in marriages that they feel like leaving,