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While the divorce rate of first marriages in the U.S. is 43%, the rate for second marriages is 67%, and for third marriages, a whopping 73%. Sounds pretty grim. But like any life event, second and third marriages come with both dangers and opportunities.
Here are 5 of the most common ones:
1: You’re carrying over wounds from your past relationships.
We all bring our childhood wounds into a committed relationship. Still, if you’ve been divorced, another layer is added: You’re ex cheated on you or was emotionally abusive or a control freak that you bring into your new relationship.
Dangers: You’re understandably hypersensitive to these issues, easily triggered, and maybe overreactive—obsessively jealous or fiery about control, creating a new set of problems in your new relationship.
Opportunity: We often don’t drift that far from home base. Our new partners are often similar to our past ones, with some of the rough spots smoothed down—flirtatious but not cheating, can get angry but never abusive. Sometimes, these upgraded partners make just enough difference to help break the old cycles. You get triggered but feel safe enough to speak up or push back and do what you couldn’t in the past. And this changes not only the relationship but also you. You stop repeating history; your old wounds begin to heal.
2: You fall into a rebound relationship.
If you settle into a committed relationship less than a year out from the first, the danger is that you are rebounding. If you begin dating soon after your divorce, you tend to be myopic, drawn to those who are the opposite of what most bothered you in the first—for example, drawn to someone calm and passive compared to the hot-tempered or controlling ex.
Danger: Understandable, but if you settle into a committed relationship within a year, this rebound is likely to collapse eventually. As you move out of the fog of your grief, those qualities that initially attracted you are no longer as important or attractive; you begin to see a more complex person before you and find other issues that upset you.
Opportunity: Obviously, you can avoid falling into rebound dangers by not going exclusive too quickly, potentially expanding your dating options. If you do commit quickly but hold off getting remarried and give time for the relationship to evolve, you can get over this hump and move forward with a more realistic perspective.
3: Adapting to a new family culture.
You grew up in a family or experienced in your past marriage where you didn’t talk much, or everyone was always talking and engaging in foie arguments—or one where everyone did everything together, or one where individual time was a priority. Like your wounds, you’re bringing your family culture into a new one.
Danger: While the newness may feel invigorating at first, over time, it can feel one-sided—we’re doing more your lifestyle than mine, and conflicts arise.
Opportunity: You can change your view of the world, relationships, and priorities and step outside your comfort zone by speaking up when the relationship is unbalanced and you feel dismissed.
4: Adapting to new people.
This is a big one—combining families. You need to step into the stepparenting role suddenly, meld together those different family traditions and cultures, spread your time between your kids and step-ones, and do your best not to show preferences.
Danger: This is the biggest challenge that most undermines second and third marriages. The key to starting out as a good stepparent is not coming on too strong to try and reshape the kids or family culture. If you do, be heavy-handed before you’ve built a relationship with the stepchildren; you’ll likely get a rebellion. Instead, you need to focus on building a good relationship with each of the children and working together as a team with your partner.
Opportunity: There’s an opportunity here to not only expand your skills as a parent but also start from scratch in shaping a parent-child relationship differently. Maybe this offers a second chance to redo what you didn’t with your own children. But wait, there’s more—often, this challenge forces you to do what you may not have done in your past relationship.
5: You miss what you had before.
This seems like an afterthought or a never-thought. Still, for some, it is real about powerful: Even if your past relationships were difficult in so many ways, there are likely to be precious moments that you remember and hold onto—good times, great sex, the simple way the other person’s skin felt that is so different from now. These are powerful and normal.
Danger: You only hold on to these memories and can’t move on.
Opportunity: These memories tell you what’s important and what you need to bring into your new relationship.
The moral of the story.
What to do with all these challenges and opportunities? The best you can do is be aware of them—the over-reactions, the rebound, the challenges of settling into a new culture and family, and the fact that there are things you will miss. By being aware, you’re less surprised and likely to take them in stride, seeing them as part of your transition to a new chapter rather than criticizing yourself for repeating history, feeling discouraged, or blaming the new partner for your old problems.
But after that, it’s about working together as a team. You both come in with baggage, and the goal you want to have is to help each other heal, feel safe, and get now what you didn’t get before.
The attitude is this: It’s you and me against our problems, and we’ve got each other’s backs.
