F- CLINICAL ASPECTS OF SPINAL CORD INJURIES
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Divorce.
This brings me to the interesting problem of divorce. At the time ofthe statistic,
22 paraplegics and tetraplegics of the 74 mentioned above had since remarried, thus
bringing the total number remaining divorced to 52 or 5-1 per cent of the total number
married. This, I feel, is infinitely smaller than one would expect in people with such a
profound disablement. In fact, it is only slightly higher than the percentage of divorces
among the general population in Great Britain, which according to the last census in
1961 was about i per cent. It is interesting to compare these figures with that of 412
out of 858 married paraplegics and tetraplegics given by Comarr in his statistics of 1962.
The divorce rate after injury was 27-39 per cent. Although this figure is higher than that
of the general population of the U.S.A. (26 per cent), it is below that of the population
in Los Angeles, County of California (45-49 per cent), the highest in the U.S.A. How
ever, the divorce rate of patients who were married for the first time after injury varied
between 10 per cent for the non-military service-connected patients and 24 per cent for
the military service-connected ones.
What are the motives for divorce ? It can first be stated that revulsion to the para
plegia, as such was, as a rule, not found to be a significant reason for divorce, whatever
the level and completeness of the lesion. Actually, one woman married to a man with
a low cauda equina lesion who regained his walking abilities ran away with a man with a
complete paraplegia below Tn. In some cases, especially those where marriage took
place in haste or when the normal partner was perhaps motivated by reasons other than
love and affection—such as pity, financial reasons, etc.—when faced with realities the
marriage broke up. Incompatibility was also a reason, especially in young and immature
people who married hastily or in psychopathic individuals. For instance, one young woman
who was already divorced from an actor before her paraplegia married a writer, but the
marriage broke up after she became a paraplegic, when she fell in love with a R.A.F.
officer with a very incomplete cauda equina lesion. She married the officer from whom,
however, she became separated when her mental condition deteriorated. However,
she has been married again for a number of years now. Another example is that of a
Yugoslav paraplegic, who came to Stoke Mandeville and who, on return to his own
country, left his normal wife to marry a British paraplegic girl, whom he met at Stoke
Mandeville. They married and lived in Yugoslavia, but the paraplegic wife left him
because she said he became intolerable. She returned to England, obtained a divorce and
is now married to an able-bodied man. A further instance of incompatibility is that of a
woman with a partial paraplegia who had a 17 year old daughter from her first marriage.
She married a man 20 years younger than herself. Naturally, the marriage did not last.
Sexual frustration of the wife, regardless of whether it concerns a woman who had
children by her husband before his paraplegia or after marrying a paraplegic, certainly
accounts for divorce in some cases, especially if the normal woman becomes involved
with another man and becomes pregnant. Sexual desire outside marriage has accounted
for several of the divorces. One extreme case in this respect is that of a woman who, after
having had no less than 11 children, left her paraplegic husband to live with another man.
This may also apply to paraplegic women, although more rarely. One paraplegic woman
left her husband to live with another man, by whom she had an illegitimate child. The
most tragic case in this group is the case of a young tetraplegic woman with a lesion
