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Toddlers: 12 - 24 Months
Those on your third or fourth marriages....
Ok so I have a question. If the first two or three didn't work out, how do you stay optimistic that the third or fourth will make it too?
I enrolled a person today that had been married and divorced four times. And all were within just a few years of each other.
I also would like to know how you can jump into a marriage so quickly after so many failed marriages.
Can anyone explain this?
This discussion has been closed.
Re: Those on your third or fourth marriages....
I really think that people like that just look at marriage the same way they look at dating. I can't imagine getting married for the third time (after the second one failed shortly before) thinking, wow, this is really going to be the one I'm with for the rest of my life.
I really think it's more looked at as just the next step.
some people like weddings :P
idk, i was engaged (twice) before i met dh. i was young, dumb, and loved being in love. it made me feel like an adult. probably because i was on my own by age 16. i looked at marriage like it was something i needed to cross off the list to be complete.
i broke up both of those engagements when it started to get too real. then i spent a long time single before i met my H. phew, thank goodness...
This is the part that gets me. For instance, my mom and step dad are getting divorced. This is my mom's third marriage. She said something to me about "what if she gets married again" type crap, and I wanted to say "YOU WANT TO GET MARRIED AGAIN?!?!" I mean, after three failed marriages, three children out of two of them, and she is 50 now, I just don't get it.
I understand not wanting to be alone for your whole life, but when your longest relationship prior to your third marriage was only a year or two long, based off track records your chances of finding "the one" are slim don't you think?
My SIL is one of "those", I suppose.
I think if you can't prove that you (a) know the difference between a man you love & who treats you well vs one who doesn't, and (b) aren't willing to work at making a marriage work when things start getting tough, that you probably are better off not making that commitment again until you've grown substantially.
FWIW a lifetime is a long time. My Mom married for the first time at 21 and was with my father for 9 years. She divorced him (because he is a drunk) and married my step father a couple of years later. They were married for 20 years before getting divorced (personal issues). That leaves her in her mid 50s with a long life in front of her. She said that she would never marry again, but then met her current husband and had to eat her words. I have never seen her so happy- her new husband calls her the love of his life and she giggles like a little girl.
My Dad married someone else and they were married for 17 years. She threw his butt out (still a drunk) and he moved back to his hometown where he ran into his high school sweetheart that his parents wouldn't let him see at the time because she was Catholic. They are now married and very happy. He still drinks but has mellowed way down and I am able to have a relationship with him for the first time in a long time.
I don't know where I am going with this...I just know that before I would have judged someone who was on marriage #3, but now that it has happened to my parents and I know the whole back story, I have a hard time judging.
i know a guy who was married and divorced 4 times by the age of 30.
that's all i have to contribute to this discussion:)
say whaaaaaa? were they all sugar mommas? lol.
you know i love yo.
surprisingly no! he basically just married any girl he was in a relationship with. has a little girl with one of them too, then got snipped. i know all of this about him because he was trying to date me before H and i met. lolol...could you imagine!
we ran into him at a bar last time we went back home, he said he's taking a hiatus from girls, but to let him know if we have any cute friends in houston. lolol. serial marrier.
My MIL has been married three times. She was married to DH's dad for 30 years when he died suddenly. She got married fairly quickly (grief rebound and fear of being alone I think) after that to a total loser and stayed with him for 7ish years. Finally realized it was a giant mistake and got divorced. Met and married the sweetest guy 1.5 years ago.
It can happen to even normal people.
A lady I used to work with with got married for the 5th time the year she turned 50. When DH and I got engaged, she looked at my ring and said, "Wow, you did really well for your first marriage."
I tried not to be insulted based on where the comment came from.
yeah...i think i'd have to stifle laughter for that one.
My mom is on her fifth marriage. Yup.
Honestly, my mom just has issues. I love her very much, but she makes bad decisions, and has no self esteem at all. Actually, these marriages caused a pretty major strain on her relationship with me for a very long time, but that's another story entirely.
Funny thing, though. Before her current husband she was living with/bought a house with a guy who just didn't believe in marriage. When she was with him, she was all "I don't think I could get up and say those words again." Oh, but she did. In Vegas, no less. Second time she got married in Vegas. (I wasn't at either Vegas wedding.)
My silly Lily is almost 4.
BFP #2 12/31/2010 (EDD 9/1/11) -- Natrual m/c 1/9/10
BFP #3 12/20/2011 - EDD 8/25/12
u/s 1/6/12 - HB & beautiful bean
A/S 4/2 - It's a Girl!!!
RCS on 8/20/12
There are two groups you are referring too. My step-mother is my father's 3rd wife. His first wife was when he was young and stupid. His second wife was my mom, she is an alcoholic and just wanted to be married and have kids, hence when she had the kids she bailed on the marriage (not that my dad made it easy on her, there were not good together). Then 4 or 5 years later he met my step-mom (he was in his 40's) and they have been married for 20+ years now. I see nothing wrong there.
On the other hand, you have my old co-worker. Got pregnant in her teens, married the guy. Told stories of running through the backyard trying not to get shot by him cause he was mad she stabbed him. Her second husband was in her 20's. Only married for a few years and a few more kids. Third husband was in her later 20's early 30's. Didn't last. Fourth husband was a nice guy, but she divorced him before she was 40. I will bet that in time she will marry atleast 2 more times. She gets married for financial security and partnership, not love. Hence when it gets tough, she bails.
I used to work with a girl that was married 3 times all before she was 30. She got married to husband 1 after living with him for 3 years, cheated on him with husband 2. Husband 2 and husband 3 worked together and she cheated on husband 2 with husband 3. You would think that husband 3 would be concerned, but it has worked out for a while and they are still married and now have 2 children.
I think some of the habitual marrying kind are unhappy with themselves and are looking for happiness , however I think they need to be happy with themselves before you can find happiness with someone else.
Okay, I'm DH's third wife (it's my first marriage). He married the first time when he was 19 and desperate to re-create a family after his parents' ugly divorce. She cheated on him and they separated after 6 months. Second marriage was a couple of years later when he was in the Army and about to be deployed to the middle east. Again, he admits it was for the wrong reason - desperate to have 'someone at home' to return to.
I met him nearly 10 years after his second marriage ended. We were together a year and a half before we got married, which was longer than both of his marriages. We went to pre-marital counseling and did all the stuff he didn't do the first two times to make sure this was well thought out. It wasn't something we "jumped into" by any stretch. But I would have been this cautious regardless if he'd been married before.
I'll also add that DH's dad married sMIL - a woman who has had 4 or 5 husbands and they've been together nearly 20 years. Sometimes it does work.
I got nothing. I am on my first and last marriage hopefully. I am DH's 2nd.
My one friend used to date this guy. His dad is a serial marrier. He can't get married again in the state he lives in because he got divorced a 5th time and that is all that state allows. Crazy stuff.
Ok, I'll bite. It's 6 am, let's hope this doesn't set the tone for the day
I got married for the first time at 19. With horrible misgivings. I was Catholic and knocked up, and he was also Catholic and pushed me pretty hard to get married. I said yes mostly because I was scared of either alternative. I pretty much hyperventilated the entire way to the ceremony. We were married for 3 years. We decided to have another child and got two. The funny thing is that things might have gone on sort of okay forever because he was in the military and was deployed so often that it was hard to see the day-to-day issues... but he got shore leave and it quickly fell apart after that. Probably because we'd never been even remotely right for each other. I left when the kids were 2.5 yrs and 8 mo/8mo.
I met my second husband a couple of months after I left my first. We dated off and on for a very long time. He didn't even meet my kids until we'd dated for a year. I can't remember at what point it got more serious, but we had been dating for 5 years before he proposed (we had lived together for a year before that, though, so it had been quite some time earlier). We had a couple of good years of marriage and had the girls. But, in that case, his mother died and he started drinking. He'd never been a drinker at all before that. Drinking turned into online "cheating," which turned into meeting a co-worker and cheating for real. He'd never cheated before, either, that I'm aware of. I went through the ringer with that. Trying everything I knew how to try, and then some. It seemed impossible to throw away 8 years. We separated after I discovered yet another bout of cheating/lies, and "worked" on the marriage for another year. But, during that year he was actually living with the same girl. So, all of the counseling and everything was clearly a waste of time since he was WITH someone else. Anyway, at a certain point I knew that there was nothing left to try. He might have still loved me, but he wasn't in love with me, and even if he was, he wasn't capable of being a good husband. So I filed for divorce. It broke my heart, but I think it broke my heart over the million times the 1.5 years that I'd been dealing with it all with him. By the time I filed, I was done and it was over.
I didn't have any expectation of ever really dating, much less getting married again after that. I mean, I work, go to law school, and have five kids. I didn't have a lot of time to meet people, and I'm not exactly a supermodel or something
But, it turned out that a couple of guys I'd known for a long time were interested in dating me, so I dated a little mostly just to get out and have fun once in awhile. But, one of the guys I was dating stood out. He shared a lot of the same values and goals as me. He was an amazing communicator. I have said before that I wouldn't have even been able to write a hero in a novel as good as him (for me) because I had never met anyone quite so right for me before. I've been in good relationships before, but this relationship has been completely different from any of them. He proposed after 6 months, in my first ever real proposal with a ring. In Greece! We got married about 6 months later quietly, and we're having my first ever real wedding this summer.
I guess there are a lot of ways to look at it, most of them judgmental. My friends and family were leery at first, but everyone has been completely supportive once they got to know him. The funny thing, though, is that the only people who really knew us both were co-workers and none of them were ever surprised. Maybe we should've had them matchmake us long ago
My grandpa has been married three times. It's always so weird when I think about it that way! He and my grandma divorced when their (7!!!) kids were still young. From what my mom says, their marriage was really really terrible for a long time though. My grandma lost two infants and was never the same, my grandpa cheated and got another woman pregnant. I think it's just a very sad situation.
He married the "other woman" after divorcing my grandma and they were very happy. My mom looooved her step mom. Unfortunately she died of cancer after about 11 yrs of marriage I think. After that my grandpa married one of her really good friends and they are still married today. She is one of the best woman I know and I have grown up with her as my grandma.
I do see a big difference between something like this which all plays out over the course of decades, and someone who seems to hop in and out of marriage like it's nothing more than a dating relationship.
My grandmother has been married 3 times. I think she married my biological grandfather at 18. Regardless, she had my father a few months after her 19th birthday, and my aunt and uncle (who died before I was born) a few years later, all to him. But he was abusive, and they eventually divorced.
Then she married her second husband, and I don't know for how long, but I know they were married for at least some of my dad's teen years. He had drug problems I'm pretty sure, and I believe that's why they divorced.
She married my Poppy Arnie, who I consider my grandfather more than my biological grandfather, either before I was born or slightly after. They were married before I visited them at 18 months. She finally found a good one... he is awesome.
When she told me she didn't think my boyfriend (now DH) was a good match for me when I was 17, I rolled my eyes. With her relationship track record, how can you not?
Sarah - 12/23/2008
Alex - 9/30/2011
"I say embrace the total geek in yourself and just enjoy it. Life is too short to be cool." - Shirley Manson, Garbage
it seems like being super young is an underlying theme in poor judgment in the stories posted above.
i also have to agree that if you're talking over decades and there is death inovlved, that's one thing. whole different ball game if you're just man hopping without a few years break in between.
DH's mom and 2 aunts have each been married 3 times. MIL settled down with FIL and he is 20 years older than her. They have been together since DH was 2. One aunt has been married to her husband about 20 years and he is her 3rd too. Another aunt just divorced her 3 husband. I don't get it but to each their own. DH's family is a very disfunctional functional family.