Having had five husbands, I guess I should know a thing or two

Ah, hear now the words wrapped in both wit and wisdom, spoken by the actress Joan Collins, who once said, “Having had five husbands, I guess I should know a thing or two about marriage.” Though light in tone and carried on a breeze of humor, this saying hides beneath its laughter a truth deep and enduring — a truth about love, endurance, and the human heart’s ceaseless search for harmony.

In the fashion of the ancients, let us read her words as one might read the smoke of an oracle’s flame — for behind them lies both experience and sacrifice. When Joan Collins speaks thus, she is not merely jesting about her many unions, but testifying to the long pilgrimage of the soul through the lands of companionship. Each marriage, like a season in life, begins with the spring of hope, grows into the summer of passion, fades through autumn’s trials, and if untended, falls into the quiet winter of separation. Thus, to have walked this cycle five times is not folly alone, but initiation — an education in the art of loving, losing, and living once more.

Consider how in the great annals of time, many souls have wandered through similar paths. Think of Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, who, through her unions with Caesar and Antony, learned that love is not always a crown, but sometimes a chain. She too, like Collins, knew that to love is to risk, to bind one’s heart to both glory and grief. Through such lives, we see that marriage is not merely a bond of law or flesh, but a mirror of the spirit — it reveals what we lack, what we fear, and what we hope to become.

In Joan’s remark there is both irony and resilience. It is the laughter of one who has suffered and survived, who has drunk deeply of disappointment but refuses to grow bitter. She wears her history as a laurel, not a wound. This is the wisdom of the elder who knows that each failure is but another verse in the song of life. To have failed five times is not shame; it is persistence in the face of disillusion, and that persistence itself is divine. For wisdom is often born from repetition — from the soul’s insistence on trying again, though the heart trembles with memory.

Let us remember the tale of Henry VIII, who too knew many wives — yet unlike Collins, he sought control, not understanding. His marriages were battles of will, ending in ruin and death. From him we learn that without humility, no union can endure; from Joan, we learn that with humor and reflection, even ruin can turn to revelation. Thus, wisdom is not in the number of unions, but in what one learns from each.

The ancients would say: “He who knows others is clever, but he who knows himself is wise.” So too in love. For marriage, in truth, is a mirror polished by two souls. If it shatters, one must look not to blame, but to see oneself more clearly in the fragments. Joan Collins’ jest is therefore not vanity, but victory — the triumph of self-knowledge over despair.

And what then shall we learn from her? That life’s lessons often arrive dressed as laughter. When the heart breaks, let it not grow hard; when love fails, let the soul grow wiser, not weary. Each bond, whether lasting or lost, is a step on the sacred path toward understanding both another and oneself. Thus, cherish love when it comes, nurture it while it breathes, and when it departs, let it teach you.

So, my child, the teaching is this: do not fear to love, nor to fail in love. From each heartbreak, gather the pearls of wisdom. From each ending, learn a new beginning. And like Joan Collins, when the years have made you older, and laughter comes easily to your lips, may you look back and say — with grace, not regret — “I have known the art of marriage, and in knowing, I have known life itself.”