Marriage breakdown and divorce are now widespread in Ireland but still they are treated as social taboos. Róisín Ingle reports

It's an issue shrouded in shame and failure. An issue often whispered about but rarely openly discussed. And yet, according to the latest statistics, almost 134,000 of us are separated or divorced. When the children, friends and other loved ones of the people involved are taken into account, it makes up a huge chunk of our society that has been affected by the ending of relationships we all hoped would last for ever.

A new documentary series starting on RTÉ tonight, For Better Or Worse?, should be required viewing for anyone who has struggled, or is struggling still, with marriage breakdown.

Like one woman featured in the programme tonight, I remember going through the motions at work and with friends, pretending to the world that everything was perfect while in reality my marriage, my world, was falling apart. There was no road map. No guidebook on how to cope with the sense of loss and of failure.

As Joanne O'Regan, one of the participants in For Better Or Worse?, puts it: "I couldn't tell anybody . . . couldn't say the word. I felt I had a plastic smile on my face. It was like my husband put a big banner up saying: 'I don't want my wife. I don't want her.' "

Watching the programme, you can only admire the courage of the featured couples as they talk frankly and in detail about some of the most traumatic times of their lives. The series is full of searingly honest accounts of the emotional havoc wreaked by marriage breakdown. The participants come from all over Ireland and discuss every aspect of their relationships, from the marriage proposal to the eventual separation.

Series producer Kevin Cummins says the production team was determined to find couples that reflected the complexities of the issue. "Most of the couples have nothing in common except that their marriage ended," he says. Those who agreed to take part did so because they felt it was important that their stories were heard.

"There seemed to be a need that they had to speak out because, up until now, they hadn't heard people speaking openly about it," he says. "The participants felt there had been something traumatic in their lives and hoped that maybe someone going through it now could see, yes, you can get through this, even though it may not feel like that."

Helen Mortimer from Headford, Co Galway, is one of the people featured in the four-part series. She had been married for 20 years when she packed her things and left the family home to start a new life on her own. The couple had built a home together with their five children, and to the outside world everything looked perfect. It wasn't.

"I had a discontentment that I couldn't put my finger on," she says. "I started thinking there had to be more to life than this. I looked at my marriage and saw there was a lot about it I didn't like. My identity as a wife was in conflict with my sense of self and my place in the world. It was emotionally draining, constantly looking at the relationship, analysing it and wondering why everything didn't fit for me."

She says it was "a survival thing". She struggled for four years with the decision, trying to convince herself of all the reasons why she should stay, but in the end, she says, "I had to face the fact that my expectations weren't being met."

The result was emotional withdrawal. "I stopped giving him a goodnight kiss or sharing what was going on in my life," she remembers. "I began almost imperceptibly to move in a different direction; a lot of my needs for friendship and intimacy were being met outside the marriage with female friends. I found there was no emotional connection, and that was intolerable to me."

Reaction from outside was harsh, despite the fact that she negotiated an amicable custody agreement for the children with her husband to avoid a battle in the courts. They worked out a joint-custody arrangement in which the children stay alternate weeks with each parent. It is an arrangement that, Mortimer says seven years on, left the children, as far as possible, "emotionally intact".

"I was criticised at the time as someone who just wanted out for some arbitrary reason . . . . If I could have attributed my leaving to something specific it would have made leaving acceptable or socially legitimate. The hardest thing was that there was an assumption I had left the children, that I was out there gallivanting with another man . . . . It was like I violated something all society holds dear . . . . I couldn't say to people he is a gambler, an alcoholic or he abuses me. All I could say was that we grew apart and that wasn't enough grounds. It sounded to people like a very flimsy excuse to end the marriage. The absolute unmitigated sense of guilt and failure was hard to cope with."

Two of her children also agreed to be interviewed for the programme. One of her daughters says: "Mam didn't leave for another man, she left for herself."

For Better Or Worse? also features Traolach and Amanda, who met in their early 20s, when they worked at the same hairdressing salon. They married but split up after 13 years. Although there was a painful separation and legal battle for custody of their three children, the couple are now on good terms and talk candidly about how their marriage was a victim of their changing expectations. He felt they had children too early and wanted to spend more "quality time" with his wife. She flung herself into the role of motherhood, content to stay at home with the baby while her husband tried to convince her that they should be going out. The conflict proved more than their relationship could bear.

Joanne O'Regan was married for 20 years when her husband confessed he no longer loved her. It's almost painful to watch her describe the night he told her he wanted to leave. "Everything I had dreamed of went that night. My life was like a full blackboard, and it was like somebody got a duster, rubbed it out and said: 'Blank page, start again,' " she says.

Mortimer, who now trains voluntary groups on the issue of violence against women, says she took part in the programme in an effort to "vindicate" herself. She was vilified in her community for leaving the family home and putting her needs above those of the couple.

"There is a bigger picture. There are a lot of women like me, middle-class women, who look from the outside like they have everything but who are only staying in marriages because they don't have a choice. They stay for all the reasons I used to tell myself. In telling my story, I hope it will be an antidote to that, to show that there is a choice, that leaving and doing what is right for you doesn't have to be a doomsday scenario," says Mortimer, who is in the early stages of another relationship. "Life moves on and it's there for the living."

Cummins hopes the programme will lead to a wider understanding of marriage breakdown. "From talking to people it's clear they feel that sometimes family members and the community don't know how to deal with the issue; there are no agreed and shared traditions in how we as a community cope with marriage breakdown," he says.

"There are no answers. We as a society need to address how we establish new traditions, and to do this we need to hear about it from the horse's mouth."

For Better Or Worse? starts on RTÉ1 at 10.10 p.m.