I don’t agree with those who say that so many people’s marriages are breaking down because of financial problems.

If that were the case, how do you explain the high number of marital breakdowns between Hollywood celebrities who earn millions and for whom money, truly, is no object?

The financial stress argument doesn’t hold for another reason – compared to our parents and grandparents we lead fairly comfortable lives, and yet, as cash-strapped as they were, those couples all managed to stay together. True to their vows, often enough it was really “for better or for worse”. You made your bed, you sleep in it, as the old saying goes.

So what is it about marriage these days that has rendered it so fragile? I have often wondered about this and this week, with the death of the world’s most famous divorcee, I think I have found a possible answer. Like Elizabeth Taylor, we are addicted to love. Famous as much for her eight marriages as for her beauty, the screen idol was the eternal optimist when it came to falling in love again... and again, and again.

Her track record when it came to marriage makes her sound like the perfect poster girl for the anti-divorce lobby: she worked her way through eight husbands (marrying and divorcing one of them twice), and had children with three of them. But the reality is that when one examines her relationships more closely, it becomes apparent that Ms Taylor was probably more addicted to the romantic notion of getting married.

The perpetual bride

In 1950, at the tender age of 18, she married Nicky Hilton – it lasted eight months. “A month after our wedding I knew I’d made a mistake,” she was later quoted as saying.

“The honeymoon in Europe lasted two weeks,” Taylor wrote in a 1965 memoir. “I should say the marriage lasted for two weeks. Then came, yours sincerely, disillusionment – rude and brutal.” Hilton began drinking and became abusive on their wedding night and things only got worse after that. After the honeymoon Taylor went home to her mother and filed for divorce.

For five years, between 1952 and 1957, she was married to Michael Wilding with whom she had two children. “This, to me, is the beginning of a happy ending,” she said at first. But eventually “The strains on our marriage were too much for it to survive. We were so very different,” she said about that relationship.

In 1957 she married Michael Todd with whom she had a daughter, but a year later he was sadly killed in a plane crash. Denying that she was promiscuous, she said in an interview that she didn’t believe in having lovers – she married them. “I couldn’t just have a romance; it had to be marriage.”

Finding herself a widow at the age of 27, Elizabeth broke all the rules, taking up with Eddie Fisher who was married to Debbie Reynolds at the time. They tied the knot in 1959 and the marriage lasted six years until 1964.

While still married to Eddie Fisher, Taylor met and fell in love with her Cleopatra co-star Richard Burton, who was also married. Despite the public uproar and scandal, they wed in 1964. The tempestuous and passionate relationship with Richard was probably the most important of Elizabeth’s life: “From those first moments... we were always madly and powerfully in love.” Together they adopted a daughter, and she was hopeful again, “this marriage will last forever,” but it only lasted 10 years. However, a mere 16 months after they divorced they were married again in 1975. The magic could not be recaptured it seems because after a mere nine months it was definitely over and they divorced again in 1976.

She once said, “If Richard and I divorce, I swear I will never marry anyone again. I love him insanely.”

And yet, in 1976, she married politician John Warner and became actively involved in his campaign to be elected to the Senate. He won the election but she found that being a senator’s wife was too lonely, “I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.” They divorced six years later in 1982.

Her final and perhaps most bizarre marriage came to construction worker Larry Fortensky (she was 59 and he was 20 years younger) whom she met while undergoing rehab. This was a five-year marriage, which lasted from 1991 – 1996. “Marriage does give a sense of oneness that just being together can’t,” she said.

Fortunately for her friends who were probably fed up with buying her constant wedding presents, that turned out to be the last time that Elizabeth Taylor said “I do”.

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Now, before people start getting all excited and pointing out triumphantly that, ‘you see, this is exactly what’s wrong with the concept of divorce’, let’s all agree that Elizabeth Taylor is an extreme example. Even by Hollywood standards, her eight marriages are considered legendary.

The woman, by her own admission, needed to be married. When one looks at how so many of her relationship-marriages rashly followed the other with barely a break in between, it is also obvious that she was in constant search for an elusive kind of love; an all-consuming love which doesn’t exist outside of fairytales.

Placing such impossibly high expectations on the idea of marriage as well as on her successive husbands, it’s probably no wonder her marriages were doomed to fail. Each time she got married, it was always on a wave of giddy, girlish enthusiasm which would inevitably be dampened by the cold, hard light of everyday life.

Unfortunately, her lack of judgement when it came to choosing her husbands contributed to her downfall. Instead of marrying every man she met, she could have tried getting to really know them first. It also never seemed to occur to her that, for all her desire to be married, maybe the problem was, in fact, her – perhaps at some point between husband four and five she should have taken a deep breath and admitted that she was just not cut out for monogamy. She just got a thrill out of that feeling of constantly falling in love.

To come back to my original point, this is what I think is happening with so many of today’s marriages. Decades after feminism, young girls are still being fed the myth of a ‘happily ever after’ ending. I hear too many brides talking about wanting to be a princess as they describe elaborate, mind-boggling preparations for their ‘fairytale wedding’. No one seems brave enough to burst their bubble, shake them out of their self-induced stupor and point out that no, two dozen doves flying out of the church belfry as you walk down the aisle will not mean you and your new husband will be madly in love every single day for the rest of your lives.

There will be wonderful days, and terrible days, and lots of days which are just okay.

Ultimately however, once the excitement of the wedding day is over, your life will fall into a new routine – with bills to pay, dinners to cook, pots to scrub and clothes to wash and iron. That doesn’t mean you can’t still have excitement, enjoyment and laughs in your married life but, let’s face it, most of the time will be spent settling down to what is known as ‘normal’.

I have a feeling that people are no longer satisfied with normal though, because their heads have been stuffed with distorted notions and, like Liz Taylor, they are continuously yearning for that indescribable feeling of light-headiness which comes with a new conquest.

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