On behalf of Stange Law Firm, PC posted in divorce on Tuesday, June 2, 2020.
Divorces happen all the time, so you chalked your first divorce up to nothing more than inexperience, a bad match, immaturity or something similar.
When your second divorce (or third) came around, however, you started to question things. Are you unlucky in love? Are you just bad at being married?
Probably nothing of the kind. The reality is first marriages still fail roughly 50% of the time and every subsequent marriage you’re in has an ever greater chance of divorce. A second marriage, for example, is likely to fail about 67% of the time. Roughly 74% of third marriages will crumble.
People aren’t refusing to “learn from their mistakes” and picking bad spouses again and again. Instead, second and third marriages generally suffer from specific, predictable fault lines:
- One or both spouses may still carry emotional wounds from their previous relationships that haven’t healed. This can color their reactions to events in their new marriage and become a toxic element that the relationship can’t overcome.
- They are “rebound” marriages that people enter into without really thinking far into the future. Many newly divorced people struggle with loneliness and a sense that life is “passing them by.” When they react by plunging headlong into a new marriage, that marriage often isn’t on a solid foundation from the start.
- Couples on their second or third marriage may be less inclined to work things out because they’re already less afraid of divorce. If you’ve never been there before, divorce is a scary “unknown.” Once you’ve done it, it isn’t so terrifying — so couples that don’t have a lot of time invested in each other and no shared children may just simply walk away when things get tough.
If you’re approaching a second or third divorce, it’s important not to waste time feeling guilty. There’s no failure in admitting that something simply doesn’t work — whatever the reason.
