Top online divorce service provider OnlineDivorce.com has conducted a study about the current remarriage tendencies in the U.S.
According to OnlineDivorce, the general recent years' trend of simplifying divorce procedures and encouraging non-conflict divorces at the legislative level may be among the reasons why the remarriage rate is steadily growing. Nowadays, about 80% of divorced spouses get married again.
But what else does affect these figures? What are the peculiarities of remarriage and its chances of success?
What Do the Statistics Say?
When two people say goodbye to loneliness when a new family is created, it is, in any case, good - both for statistics and the personal lives of two. But let's not deceive ourselves: the increase of remarriages is precisely due to the growing numbers of divorces, although largely smooths this depressing process out. Remarriage is very different from the first experience of creating a family. Perhaps, there is less romance and more pragmatism, more logical, and fewer emotions. But most importantly, there are a lot of pitfalls, including psychological ones, which cannot always be foreseen in advance.
As recent research has shown, more than 40% of all first marriages end in divorce. However, the majority of divorced people are not disappointed with the concept of marriage itself, so they do not despair and get married at least one more time. About 80% of divorced men and women remarry again; 75% of them - within the first five years after a divorce.
But in the end, is the second marriage that takes into account past experience, more successful? According to the statistics - it isn't. The gap between the divorce rate of first marriage and the second one is not very huge, but still significant. Studies show that about 60% of second marriages end in divorce.
As for the third try, about 70%of all third marriages end in divorce.
Second Marriage. All or Nothing
The second marriage either really succeeds (and the couple admits that they are happier than they were in their first marriage) or breaks up pretty quickly. The first and unsuccessful marriages can quite often last for years. For example, people are avoiding radical decisions for a long time, trying to understand how to distinguish an ordinary quarrel from a critical point, after which there can no longer be a common future. Also, some couples may prefer to wait until the children grow up, or while they pay joint loans. There are many reasons why people stay together despite difficulties and lack of love. Unfortunately, a mature and conscious desire to solve problems and work on oneself and not on "educating" a partner is not one of the most common ones.
In the second marriage, the breakup (if it occurs) usually occurs faster. There is already an experience of parting, and everyone survived, it's okay... Why endure? To some extent, this can be compared with a change of job. It's scary to change it only for the first time. But related to personal life, there is a certain danger - not only inability but also unwillingness to build relationships, to compromise, necessary in any family life.
Does Experience Really Help to Avoid Mistakes?
The paradox is that, on the one hand, experience helps to avoid some mistakes, and on the other hand, it leaves behind a trail that extends through a relationship with a second spouse.
In general, it all depends on how honestly and wisely a person acts and whether he or she wants to understand his/her history. Is he or she going to see their own blunders, or just blame the ex for everything? For a new relationship, this difference is fundamental.
The success of any second (or subsequent) marriage, besides plenty of personal circumstances and obstacles, also highly depends on whether this is the second marriage for both partners. Under the statistics, remarriage is more common among divorced men than women (65 and 50% percent respectively), though the gap is gradually and markedly decreasing since the 60s of the last century.
Of course, it is worth considering that remarriages are very different from each other. It's one thing when both a man and a woman went through their divorces 5-6 years ago, then met and decided to start a family. It's completely different when one of the spouses leaves, and remarriage is built on top of the fresh ruins of the previous. This is the most traumatic option, too acute, too painful, and not only for the abandoned spouse. Having decided on a radical change, having left the previous family, a person experiences, sometimes even unconsciously, a sense of guilt - both before his/her former spouse, and even more so, before the children. And it can be extremely difficult for the new partner to understand and accept these circumstances and emotions.
Sometimes, after a divorce, a person brings along the history of past relationships into a new marriage, as well as his claims to the ex-partner and dissatisfaction. Then, a certain idealization of the image can occur, the desire to find old feelings can arise, and everything that happens to a new partner may become a subject to comparison with the past. And any comparisons are rarely able to help build something new.
P. S.
Life experience is a useful thing if you learn to understand those around you, forgive their mistakes, and notice your own. Only in this case, the second and any subsequent attempt to find family happiness can be quite successful.
