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Avoiding a Second Divorce

When a young couple gets married for the first time, they are often filled with hopes, dreams, and promises for the perfect future. Those dreams can carry a newly-married couple for a surprisingly long amount of time, but eventually the cracks start to form. Reality can be a brutal thing, and people often find that the person they agreed to spend the rest of their life with is more work than they’re worth.

This is where the divorce process comes in, trying its best to undo the years spent together, releasing you out the other side as a once-again single individual. You will likely never be that same hopeful dreamer that you once were, however. You have seen too much of what can go wrong and how painful it all can be.

What does this all mean, though?

In essence, it means that second marriages can be tougher than first ones. This is due to many different potential factors, such as getting married on the rebound, not allowing enough time to rebuild yourself emotionally, and even not having learned the right lesson the first time around.

There are a few less bleak possibilities as well: Individuals may be less afraid of the divorce process the second time around and are therefore less afraid to make mistakes, they could recognize danger signs earlier on and choose to pre-emptively minimize their own suffering, and more.

The simplest way to illustrate this point is to use statistics:

  • First marriages end in divorce roughly 50% of the time.
  • Second marriages end in divorce roughly 67% of the time.
  • Third marriages end in divorce roughly 73% of the time.

This may all seem scary, but there are some things you can do to minimize the risk of your second marriage ending in divorce too.

The first thing to do is to really internalize what went wrong in the first marriage, and understand your role in how it all fell apart. It is never easy to admit fault, even to ourselves, but to truly know how things can be better, we have to understand why they were bad in the first place.

The second thing you may want to look into is pre-marital counseling. Having a safe place to sit down and talk over concerns before they turn into disasters can itself change everything.

The third thing is to watch for red flags and tackle them head-on. Having a partner who is like-minded in this regard helps a lot, but everyone knows about the straw that broke the camel’s back, so don’t allow small problems to pile up.

In the same vein, the fourth suggestion is to remain committed. Obviously there is always a point of no return, where things are so bad that the only option is divorce, but do not go out of your way to find that line. The statistics shown above would imply that individuals on their second marriages tend to give up sooner, but that does not have to be the case. Your first marriage may have fallen apart, but you survived and learned through the process, so apply what you learned and make your second marriage even stronger.

If you ever have questions or concerns about divorce, or any other family law matter, do not hesitate to get in touch with a skilled attorney right away. They will be able to provide answers to your questions, and help get you started on the right path.

Source: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-intelligent-divorce/201202/the-high-failure-rate-second-and-third-marriages

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