More on that couple…and others
Yesterday’s post on the couple who met while married to others, fell in love, left their spouses, got married, and then had the whole thing written up in the NY Times generated a lot of chat in the comments section on this blog. And many of the commenters predicted that their new and “improved” marriage will have a very short duration.
The odds are that this is correct: statistics on second marriages are not good, with 60% of them ending in divorce, a higher percentage than first marriages. And it stands to reason, doesn’t it? The people involved have sometimes—as in the case of our Times second-time-around lovers—demonstrated their propensity to have affairs. What’s more, even if no infidelity has been involved in the dissolution of the first marriage, those in second marriages have already learned that, whatever grief they may have endured in the first breakup, life went on and love entered the scene again.
But I’ve seen a lot of divorces and remarriages over my lifetime, and a number of the people I know have had an experience roughly similar to that of the Times featured couple, without the publicity. That is, they had an affair while married to one person and then divorced that spouse and married their lover. Perhaps the people I know are an atypical bunch, but all of those second marriages have endured for several decades so far, and look to be on track to endure till death do them part.
I’m not one to advocate this course of action. I certainly think affairs are wrong, and I’m proud to say that while I was married I never had one. But too many times I’ve seen people trapped in deeply unhappy marriages contracted when young and foolish, to a person with whom they had little in common emotionally or otherwise. And then I’ve seen that person meet another with whom they shared so much—including not just sexual attraction, but joy and companionship and interests—and visibly blossomed in that person’s company.
Was there grief and pain, especially for those innocents, the children? Yes, absolutely. Was that grief and pain worse for those children than they would have endured had the original bad marriages continued? I don’t know, but I don’t necessarily think so. Were the first spouses hurt? You bet, although several of them (not all) have remarried and seem quite happy now.
Do we have a “right” to happiness? Not exactly; not a right. But we are constructed to pursue it, especially in matters so deeply personal, and many of us will do so no matter what the moralists say.
Divorce is now accepted and commonplace, and those two things go together. Society used to frown far more mightily on divorce, and divorcing couples were therefore often ostracized. This had, as one might expect, a chilling effect on the divorce rate. But many people were still unfaithful, and I have no idea whether straying occurred more often or less often back then.
As commenter Tatyana mentioned here, there is a group of John Updike short stories about suburban infidelity, divorce, and remarriage, some of them in the “Maples” series. I read these long ago and have always remembered them because they struck me as reflecting the almost overwhelming complexity of human beings, with their desires and their moral dilemmas, their passions and their guilt. Although Updike was apparently using his own life as model, he was hard on the lovers and compassionate to those left behind, those first spouses and the kids, and didn’t whitewash the pain they endured. In the end, as I recall, his remarried lovers often found themselves nostalgic for the family they’d left behind, and laden with a fair amount of regret.
Sometimes we just end up exchanging one problem for another of similar magnitude, sometimes through boredom and inattention and self-centeredness. But sometimes the exchange is for something much much better. And yet we must make our decisions without knowing which one it will be, or how much those we hurt will suffer, or whether in the end they will be happier too (a not-unheard-of result, as well).
Are we just kidding ourselves when we say everything will be all right, and go forward to do what we want to do anyway? After all, life must be lived, and decisions made, without knowing the effect they will ultimately have. Even looking back afterward, with the perspective of years—as I do with my friends, long ensconced in those second marriages—it often can be very difficult to really know the results and to evaluate them. Fortunately or unfortunately, we don’t have matched lives to compare this one with as controls.
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What I take away from this that leaving a marriage is an awful lot like leaving a job: it really helps to have a landing pad waiting for you so you can just get on with life and not worry about picking up the pieces.
Yeah, I’m working on becoming an amoral bastard…
Heh.
Got ya covered on this one. Seems there IS an actual marriage strike from men in terms of SECOND marriages:
http://dalrock.wordpress.com/2010/10/26/post-marital-spinsterhood-part-two-the-data/
And now, with a spring in my step, and joy in my heart, I go off to get some coffee.
Life really is a crap shoot. And it’s all like a directed movie that we aren’t really directing.
Marriage and the family, when the basic bloc of society, provides the most flexibility. One can rebel against a marriage or a family. Rebelling against the state is much more dangerous. The problem with this whole discussion is that it is framed wrong, framed just the way progressives and feminists want it framed: so that the end result is a breakdown of marriage and family and a chance for the state to provide the necessary order from the chaos that is produced.
There is a direct link from “divorce is here to stay” to universal health care and big government and the loss of individual liberties. Sure its a bummer when two unfit people are married. But to consider marriage and family as so low on the priority pole that it is trumped by personal happiness by a people who consider their needs must be provided for by others as a a God given right and have no sense of duty but sure can raise a scorning finger against any moral statement as intolerant is a victory for the atheists and communists.
Consider the plight of the urban black male baby. He has a 40% chance of going to prison? He has a 20% chance of having a father who will provide for the family. The state is necessary for him but I wouldn’t call his life happy. No, the alternative isn’t perfect and there will be many who suffer when society enforces marriage and family. But the alternative to that is so black and so grotesque, why would anyone even want to consider it?
Its interesting, but now those ‘oppressive’ cultural oddities informing one of how to behave, and having a chaperon, and so on…
actually wasn’t so oppressive after all, it was just a culture supporting the institution of marriage, by controlling situations, rather than rely on controlling people or peoples self control.
funny thing but if society recognizes the lack of self control in tempting situations, and the fall of those who think they ‘can handle it’, its going to normalize customs that make proper behavior protect one from outcomes one didn’t want.
its real easy not to cheat, avoid the situations that are conducive to it like they were the plague. while we all can recognize the exception that proves this the rule, in the few situations where one cant do so. but the VAST majority of outcomes could have easily been avoided in the past because one knew what proper behavior would have negated it.
but such behaviors were explained to be forced on people, and so on, and were oppressive. we shrugged them off, and now misery on tap has us entertaining the same political system that just a half century before we fought tooth and nail to prevent.
When one is greedy one whips because the carrot costs too much.
how do you change a happy and productive people into something else? you make them hate themselves, and hate their under-performing, and remove the institutions they love, and defile what was sacred, remove any place to retreat to, confuse them, etc…
how do you do that? you change the cultural habits that made them happy and productive and tempt them with a future that never comes that is more happy and productive.
you remove the foundations that hold up these things that they never learned from parents that weren’t around to pass down such. you make that stuff oppressive in their minds so that they never ever ever try to go back to any of that voluntarily.
you tell them they can ‘have it all’, you treat people unequally for equality. you make laws that favor unjust outcomes for one side, make protected classes, foment discord copying Germany in re-inventing disparate impact, destroy merit, say morals are arbitrary (while making up morals to justify something else).
you select articles about couples that either show the futility of the goal, or you select articles about the other extreme, which is too good to hope for. but never ever ever select middle articles that actual give real positive non bs ways that help, and that help marriage. there actually used to be a whole industry around that before the politicos made women’s magazines to capture the hearts, minds, and tell women that that stuff was not what they wanted.
one you start selecting articles it don’t take long before writers figure out what will ‘sell’, and so it kind of self perpetuates as the few other kinds don’t get presentation time.
the internet has been the biggest sudden show stopper for them… so if they are totalitarians what will they do? get control of it by any means.
before the internet any one who knew about Sanger, and all this ‘social engineering’ games, would be a tin hatter. now you can look it up and read their words and have access to books that were long out of print, and had long been stolen from libraries. (old version of flash mobbing book ratings on amazon today)
those people that understand what culture means, are the ones who we see as nut cases trying to preserve something we think isn’t all that important.
if outcomes are important, you don’t have to force the outcome, just change thoughts and demographics, redistribute wealth, protect classes, mis-educate and misinform, and then let the rest happen on its own. in this way, you never get blamed, no one can fight against it as that would mean conserving and preserving the ‘status quo’ of the oppressive culture
its all about beliefs and what we are willing to behave like to reinforce them and keep that which we want, against others who find it more conducive to their goals if we believe other things and were more convenient to use.
Brad’s data shows that second marriages are *less* likely to end in divorce, which is what I thought I remembered reading before this post. It may just point up that old saw about lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Besides, if love is lovelier the second time around what is it the thirty-second?
BTW: that is 32nd, not 0:00:30.
My sister’s kids were actually relieved when my sister and her husband were divorced, because they fought constantly, and the marriage, good at first (though it started when my sister broke his first marriage; they were in their 20s then), had gone very sour. Both tried hard, and they did on some level still love each other, but they couldn’t live together.
They had a suburban two-story house in Nashville. My sister lived in the upstairs BR on the west end, my niece in the upstairs BR on the east end, my BIL in the remade garage on the east end, and my nephew in the basement. IOW, they were all as far apart physically as they could get without sleeping outside. The house had an uncared-for air about it that went beyond indifferent housekeeping. The poor dog lived at the end of a chain on a stake in the backyard, mostly ignored.
Hell for all. 25 years of it.
After they divorced, they became great friends; in fact, they were even talking about remarrying last year when my sister died of cancer. My BIL was with her for every chemo session and doctor’s appointment. He was an angel. (But still a hothead.)
Not everyone can make it, with the best will in the world.
Gary Rosen:
You misread chart 38. Chart 38 is a ten year time scale, Chart 18 (for first marriages) is a 15 year time scale. If you take he data on Chart 38 and plot it on chart 18 you’d easily see that second marriages are more likely to break up than first marriages.
What makes ME happy about this data is it kills the dreams of many women who think they will easily remarry, esp. if they are dumb enough to divorce when they have children or are older than say, 35. Apparently a lot of men are saying “If the kitten didn’t want me, I don’t want the cat”. To be honest, lots of men are utterly financially and emotionally devastated by a divorce, do you think many of the would want to risk that again?
THE ONES WHO SUFFER FOR THE PLEASURE OF THE SPOUSES AFTER THE DIVORCE ARE THE CHILDREN AND GRANDPARENTS.
A son who divorces his wife and leaves her the children always leaves a disgruntled woman scorned and vindictive behind, the courts protect the rights of visits by the two divorced parents to see their children but totally shafts the grandparents of the man who does not get the children but four times a month then will not share with his parents. The disgruntled wife gets pay back by denying the mans’s parents their grandchildren.
Then when Christmas rolls around you find yourself in a different home, your son married to a different and hostile wife who has kids of their own from one or more other starnge men that they’ve traded for your own grand kids.
Kills the spirit of family to have to embrace two strangers kids and not see your own grandchildren.
Nothing quite says narrcistic bass turd like that.
Brad – I didn’t notice that. But looking at it again it looks like it’s about the same for black second marriages, higher for white second marriages and lower for Hispanic second marriages. Of course since whites are in the majority it means the overall rate is slightly higher.
Gary Rosen:
This is at the same time when the vast majority of african americans never marry. Marriage is becoming a “white” and “hispanic” thing, and *while this post doesn’t show the data it’s on his site* and starting to collapse among the low income strata of all the races as well. Within a generation, or at the most, two, I predict marriage will go back to being an “elite” institution again as it was during parts of the middle ages.
Thank globalization and its race to the bottom in terms of incomes and feminism with its mucking about with marriage laws for this. For the subset of feminists who wanted to “destroy” marriage- congratulations on your success.