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We’ve legalised divorce, so why is our relationship with it still so awkward? And why do we punish couples who don’t succeed at love by making them wait four years to legally split?

For Irish audiences in the 1990s, The War of the Roses wasn’t just a glamorous Hollywood film about divorce, it was the stuff of science-fiction Pic: REX

‘I’m on my third marriage. Who wants me?” bellowed the golfer.

He was a rotund, cheery American, with wads of money spilling out of his pockets and a dress sense as flamboyant as his manner. As his fellow US golfers and chums grinned, all of us 16-year-old caddies looked uncertainly at each other, and then stared at our feet. One of us would be nominated to carry his bag of clubs around the ...