Mark and Nargess got married for the first time in 1971. Nargess says that for her it was a case of love at first sight and they married soon after meeting. They'd been together for some 12 years when Nargess' mother died and Mark says she became very withdrawn. For him this "was more a final straw on a rather doubtful contract".
Nargess says that at the time of their first marriage she was rather young and immature and "didn't understand the subtleties of the British character." She describes the Mark of that time as "a rather reserved, cold Englishman" and says they clashed because she was "a young bouncy American struggling against this reserve all the time". She says she tried to fill the house with fun and ran into difficulties because Mark didn't have they same sense of enjoyment.
They had a son, Alistair, and for Nargess this changed things dramatically "I now had someone on whom I could shower my natural ebullience and affection and good nature and so Alistair got the full brunt of this and Mark held back more and more." Mark agrees "I felt slightly alienated, Nargess wasn't working and so they were at home all day having fun and I was out there working in a stressful job."
They decided to separate and Mark moved out "I didn't want to leave, what I wanted to do was change how things had been set up in 1971 and start again, but I didn't know how." At this point they divorced and lived apart for three years, seeing each other on the standard fortnightly visit for Mark to see their son.
Mark always had a hope that they would get back together "for the first time in my life I wanted something but couldn't achieve it." He was given some ballet tickets and he called Nargess to ask her to join him. She was surprised "it proved to me that Mark had changed, he'd never taken me to the ballet in 15 years of marriage so I knew something was up!"
When they did decide to marry again they decided to rewrite the contract between them completely. Mark says "I feel that people set up the rules and the guidelines fairly early on and whether a husband is looking for a mother figure or a soul mate...you make the guidelines very early and they are very difficult to change, in fact they are almost impossible to change. I felt that if somehow there was a way to change this radically, breaking it and remolding it, it could work and that's what we managed to do."
Nargess adds "this second marriage has been a huge success, it's been wonderful to have been able to start again right from day one and go along the path that we wanted to this time. We said that this time we'd talk about everything, nothing would fester and it's been fantastic and there's no topics we won't talk about now."
Mark and Nargess celebrated the eleventh anniversary of their second marriage last week.
