Why remarry?

Nearly two of three second marriages end in divorce, and cohabitation is increasingly accepted. Why make a relationship official?

How to Make It Work This Time
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2010/12/19/why-remarry/how-to-make-a-second-marriage-work

Second marriages, on average, are slightly more likely to break up than first marriages, but the difference is quite modest. Twenty-seven percent of women in their second marriages divorce before their 10th wedding anniversary, compared with 23 percent of women in their first marriage.

First, you have to admit that your first marriage's failure wasn't all your ex-spouse's fault.
These averages hide big variations by class and educational level, with educated, economically secure couples having a much lower rate of divorce. Furthermore, they lump together those people who learn from their first marriages how to make a relationship succeed and those for whom the second marriage is simply a way station on their way to a second, third or even fourth divorce – none of them, of course, in any way their fault.

Interestingly, women initiate two-thirds of all divorces, and only half as many divorced women as men want to marry again. When women do decide to marry again, says Lawrence Ganong, a step-family expert at the University of Missouri, they usually seek more power in their new relationship than they had the first time around, and in successful remarriages husbands tend to be more willing to yield such power.

Over the years, I have taken oral histories of many couples whose second marriage had lasted longer than their first marriage and was still going strong. In almost every case, two things stood out. One was the willingness of these individuals to admit what they had done wrong the first time around, instead of putting all the blame on their former spouse. The second was that both spouses felt they had discarded older gender-stereotyped attitudes and behavior that had created problems in their first marriage.

But this occurred in different ways for each sex. The men I interviewed tended to attribute the success of their second marriage to their having learned to be a more involved father and a more egalitarian partner. The women, by contrast, usually reported that they had changed what they were looking for in a potential mate. The second time around, they said, they were drawn to men who listened to them rather than trying to impress them.

The psychologist Joshua Coleman, co-chairman of the Council on Contemporary Families, says he has found the same patterns in his work with clients. “When people take some responsibility for why and how the first marriage ended,” he says, “that allows them to work on the challenges of a new relationship in a more productive way, or decide to not take a problematic relationship any further.” And when they do establish those relationships, Coleman observes, "women in successful remarriages often become more independent than they were in their first marriages, while men learn to be less independent."

Breaking with traditional gender patterns is especially important when children are involved. Successful step-families are more flexible in their family boundaries than couples in a “traditional” nuclear family, and less rigid in assigning parenting roles by gender. A wise stepfather, for example, doesn’t try to become the family disciplinarian. (Note from Ms Maverick: This was the undoing of my last serious relationship- a judgemental partner who was outspoken and out of line when it came to my children) A stepmother may find it more effective to act like a friendly aunt than to try to become an instant “mom.”

But this doesn’t mean these relationships are “second best.” Second marriages can and do create “real” families.

Author of this article:
Stephanie Coontz teaches history and family studies at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., and wrote "Marriage, A History." Her new book, "A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s," will be out in January.