The day that your soon-to-be-second husband proposed to you was greater than the first time you were proposed to. Excitement about the ring, the dress, and the honeymoon made it feel better than the first marriage because your much smarter about relationships and you don’t have the pressures of life, family and friends telling you that you have to get married and have a family. There isn’t a book, pamplet, or clff notes to guide you through marriage nor prepare you for failure.
As a child growing up, we fell on the concrete and scraped our knee, which sometimes led to scars that show up til this day. There is one thing that we all do when we fall. We get back up. We have to! Otherwise, people would think we need to be in a straight jacket for staying on the ground just because we didn’t want to fall again.
The question to be answered each time you fall. Why get back up? Because you have to prove to yourself that falling provides for time to reflect on why and how you had fallen so that you can correct it. I’m sure there is a laundry list of reasons why and how you fell in your first marriage and a laundry list of reasons why you fell in the marriages following.
Are the issues on the laundry list of personal past issues or are they the issues of the husband? No matter who’s responsible, they possibly stem from childhood. We are creatures of habit, good and bad, which means we can make a bad habit a good habit.
There is a famous song, The Second Time Around, by Shalamar. It says that the second time around is always better than the first time; yet, when it comes to second marriages the success rate is less than 40%. I would almost bet the last dollar in my pocket that the laundry list of personal issues were repeated bad habits that if analyzed stemmed from childhood. Someone could have had a bad habit as a child that no one ever corrected them on and it festered in the relationship as an adult. So the first marriage ends in divorce, then, the second marriage ends in divorce. Why?
The first marriage was quite detrimental. Is it safe to say that there was more pressure than love itself? Meeting the demands of those around us is more important than our own demands. You probably cannot think of what your demands were that were unrelated to what someone else wanted for you. Also, in the first marriage, you weren’t as smart about life issues as your were during your second marriage. So shouldn’t the second marriage ratings be higher?
They should be, but, they are not because of these three reasons:
1. One reason that a second marriage did not work is because of repeated bad habits in the second marriage as in the first marriage; or, the new husband has his own bad habits unrelated to the first husband that were not taken into account. The second laundry list was not vetted against the first laundry list so not to repeat history.
2. The next reason that a second marriage did not work is because after the first fall at anything, it is easier to get back up. It is easier after the shell-shock of the first divorce to walk away from the second, and so on. The first divorce was as frightening as walking across a busy highway with blinders on. It took on more pressure of what others think than answering any Double Jeopardy question. During the second marriage, all executive decisions, now, are up to you to make without the pressure of outside influences. The initial shock of anything is over, which makes leaving the second marriage seem like a breeze compared to the first. It is easier to walk away the second time around!
3. Lastly, the representative. You married the representative of the husband or he married the representative for you The representative must say and do everything right to lure the other person into a persuasive position, then, after getting what the heart desires the real character comes out. Everone is caught in the headlights like a deer that says, “Oh $!#@!
The second time around can be better than the first time after ridding the relationship of the represenative, reducing the personal bad habits on the laundry list because we are not perfect enough to be perfect and not making it easy to walk away from any fault in the marriage when creative critical thinking has not been assessed and applied.
What a load of crap!!