Second Weddings

Cold feet?

Hello ladies....

I'm not engaged yet, but have been dating a truly wonderful man for some time now. We've been talking about getting married. Now, I've been eagerly waiting for the marriage talk. In fact, the first time we really hung out, I caught myself thinking, "THIS is what marriage is SUPPOSED to be like."

The thing is... now that it's somewhat of a reality, I find myself getting really scared. My first marriage was a train wreck. My ex-husband deceived me completely during our courtship and engagement. After the vows were said, he let his true self shine through and it was not at all the person I thought I was marrying.

My BF has done nothing to make me believe he would do anything  like that to me and we've been dating far longer than I dated my ex-husband, but I still find myself scared at times to commit my life to someone again.
Anyone else go through this? Is this pretty normal for divorced women?

Re: Cold feet?

  • edited December 2011
    I honestly think it's normal, no one wants to be divorced and no one wants to be divorced twice or more! We all want the fairy tale. I would watch out for any other red flags though!!!
    Baby Birthday Ticker Ticker
  • edited December 2011

    For some insight to the "normal" nature of your fears, scroll down to the post titled:  "It's Normal".  ~Donna

  • LesPaulLesPaul member
    First Anniversary Combo Breaker First Comment
    edited December 2011
    Yes, it's completely normal.  I have the same fears - someone else told me "I'll love you forever" and didn't follow through, so there's a tiny voice that wonders if it will happen again.  Agree w/ Donna - read the "it's normal" post on page 2 of this board and you will feel better.
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  • SoulMistressSoulMistress member
    First Comment
    edited December 2011
    Oh my gosh. THANK YOU for telling me to read the "it's normal" post. I feel 10 times better now. Amazing what being married to jerks will do to us, isn't it?
  • edited December 2011
    Hi SoulMistress! welcome to the board. Glad you found some relief here.

    It is completely normal to be scared to marry again, after all, love is a total leap of faith isn't it? 

    If you have known your current love a long time, and you feel you know his character, then don't second guess it all.

    Love is a verb. It not what he says, it's what he does that you have to pay attention to.

    all the best, keep us posted.
  • 2dBride2dBride member
    5 Love Its First Anniversary Combo Breaker First Comment
    edited December 2011
    I can definitely relate.  At the time of my first marriage, I had already known my husband for seven years.  When he left me, I had a lot of feelings of how could I ever be sure someone was "the one," if seven years hadn't done it?

    Part of this is a realistic fear.  After all, the divorce rate in America for a first marriage is 41%, but the divorce rate for a second marriage is 60%.  Every single person on this board will say that she has found the right one this time around, but over half of them will end up divorced again.

    I struggled with this particularly since at the time of my second wedding, same-sex marriage was not legal in my state--which meant that it was impossible to get a divorce from a same-sex marriage.  So without a change in law, I could have ended up married for life, even if she left me.

    At the same time, if you rule out any marriage based on those fears, you deny yourself a chance of lifetime happiness with someone you love.  I would advise anyone contemplating marriage (and particularly anyone contemplating a second or subsequent marriage) to think carefully about the issue.  However, if you have known him a long time, love him, and want to be with him, it seems to me that the risks are worth taking.
  • edited December 2011
    that's a sobering statistic... sigh. I think those feelings are so normal though and it's good to just talk it out sometimes. I'm having those same issues and I haven't even been officially proposed to yet.
  • edited December 2011
    To 2d's point, I think encore brides ARE more prone to anxiety - because we know that a marriage that is healthy and viable can die on the vine, we know that our minds can trick us into believing that aberrant behavior is "just a bad temper", "all MY fault", "the stress of <fill in the blank>, and we know that despite what we believed once before- we can be WRONG. In part, that is why I firmly believe that you should not get married again if you have not dealt with the issues in your first marriage, usually through counselling.  Anyone who says, "I did NOTHING wrong, I don't need counseling" is very deeply in denial.  Even when an abusive or addicted or mentally ill person is the partner we left- its good to figure out why we were there in the first place, or why we stayed as long as we did.  ~Donna
  • edited December 2011
    Here Here Donna!!!! I spend a lot of time trying to figure out why I ended up with my first husband, who was abusive, and mentally ill. I wasn't savy enough at the time to know about his mental illness and how it affected his behavior in total. 
    I thought he was just "high strung" and had a bad temper.

    When I got that figured out... I still made one more choice that was not good for me, and that relationship ended. 
    But I figured that out too (why I chose to be with him) and FINALLY bingo, I found my dream man. 
    I finally realized that I am a catch, and I deserve way better than I had been choosing.

    I chose a man who fit my written criteria (yes, I went this far) and it has been blissful for the last 5 years. I can count on one hand the number of times we had a serious disaggrement. We argue very well. Follow the rules of engagement, and either solve the problem, or agree to disagree.

    Many times the bad choices are from low self esteem, when it comes to men and relationships. That is what happened with me. I was successful in each and every part of my life with the exception of relationships. 



     
  • 2dBride2dBride member
    5 Love Its First Anniversary Combo Breaker First Comment
    edited December 2011
    I would definitely agree with Donna.  I originally went into therapy to try to save my first marriage.  That obviously didn't work.  However, in the course of that therapy, I got a much better idea of why I had been attracted to someone who would end up leaving me.  My therapist from that time describes my wife as "the best thing that ever happened to you," which I consider a good sign.  Wink
  • edited December 2011
    ...Not to be a Debbie-Downer, but I actually think the statistics for divorce are highter than that... I think it's 49% for first marriages, and 75% for second.  There's also a whole slew of stats dependent on living together and who knows what else. It doesn't really make much difference, either way, though. It's still a HUGE leap of faith, and you just have to jump and hope for the best.
    Baby Birthday Ticker Ticker
  • 2dBride2dBride member
    5 Love Its First Anniversary Combo Breaker First Comment
    edited December 2011
    Well, there is really no way to measure precisely how many first, second, third, etc.  marriages will end in divorce.  If someone is currently in a marriage, you won't know until they or their spouse dies whether there was every going to be a divorce.  And if you limit your research to people who have already died, you are really reflecting what divorce rates were over, say, the past 80 years, not what they are now.  Thus, all of the statistics are projections, based on looking at how many people divorced this year and then assuming that rate will continue.

    That is the reason that the often quoted statistic that 50% of marriages will end in divorce really is not true.  What happened was that in the early 1970s, divorce became much more accepted than it had been before.  So you had a whole bunch of people who would have been divorced years or decades before if they had dared to do so, who all got divorced within a short period.  Statisticians calculated how many people were going to end up divorced by projections that assumed that the artificially high divorce rate of the early 1970s would continue indefinitely.

    That being said, here are a couple of educated guesses about the likelihood of divorce:

    Fifty percent of first marriages, 67 percent of second and 74 percent of third marriages end in divorce. (Source: Jennifer Baker, Director of the Post-Graduate Program in Marriage and Family Therapy at Forest Institute of Professional Psychology in Springfield, MO)

    Second and third marriages are more likely than first marriages to end in divorce. The statistics say the 54% of American women and 61% of American men who wed a second time eventually go through divorce again. (Source: Study published by Bellarmine College)

    So, you take your pick on the statistics.  What is clear is that the rate of divorce for first marriages is less than that for second marriages, which in turn is less than that for third marriages.

    And all of this is complicated by age.  A woman who marries for the first time when younger than age 20 is more likely to end up divorced than one who marries at an older age.  Similarly, a woman who remarries before age 25 is more likely to divorce than a woman who remarries at a later age.  So to some extent, the greater rate of divorces in a second, third, etc. marriages is a function of a group of women who marry early and never have very long marriages.  Obviously, that group is a small percentage of women in first marriages, because they don't stay married for the first time very long.  It's a bigger percentage of women in second marriages, and a bigger still percentage of women in third marriages, etc.

    So, your personal likelihood of a second divorce could be a lot higher or lower than the statistics would suggest.  Intuitively, I suspect that someone like me--remarrying at the age of 56 after being in a first marriage for 20 years and dating the new partner for 9 years before the second marriage--is much less likely to end up divorced than someone who is first married at 19, divorced at 20, and remarrying at 21.  But you're never going to get a level of detail in the statistics that will cover your personal situation.

    This message brought to you by your local statistics geek. Wink
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