Second Marriage Challenges: Why Is It So Hard?

We`ve all heard the horror statistics about second marriages. “Second marriages are way more likely to end in divorce,“ is considered to be common knowledge. It makes you wonder why we even try, sometimes, with all the second marriage challenges that we face.

What makes second marriages so difficult? There are a number of factors that contribute to the difficulty of being in a second marriage. Some of these factors are ones we  never consider before we get married. If we did, we might have never walked down the aisle a second time! Here are three reasons that marriage is harder the second time around. This list is certainly not comprehensive, but it is a good introduction. Here are three second marriage challenges that make things more difficult than a first marriage:

• We are less innocent.
  

  The first time we get married, most of us enter believing it was last forever.  We had no reason to think it would fail and that kind of blind trust goes a long ways in keeping up your morale, even when things aren’t going the way you would like.But after being through a divorce, we know it can fail, and that knowledge can be very discouraging to those involved in a second marriage. Many times, we are haunted by the thought of possible failure. Because one or both parties have been through the worst, they are no longer idealistic and that sense of cynicism can make it more difficult to trust, and therefore, more difficult to love one another.

• It`s more complicated.
  

  In a second marriage, there are other people in the picture. At the very least, there are ex-spouses. One or both of you were once married to someone else. The level that you deal with the ex will depend on your situation, but he or she is still a reality.In most situations, children are also a big part of your lives. This makes it inherently complicated.  It is not just two people being brought together in matrimony: it is two people, plus however many children. For the children, their family structure will be changed forever. And the couple must do the job of creating a brand new family, a seemingly formidable task.

• History Repeats Itself
  

  This reason is closely related to reason number one, “we are less innocent.“ Because we have already been disappointed in love and its corollary, marriage, we can soon start hurtling down the same path.History tends to repeat itself, unless we do the work to get healing and change our patterns.And in a second marriage, we are fighting against history, and must work harder to create something different than what we had before.

This list of second marriages covers some of the most fundamental reasons that we struggle, sometimes not even knowing why. Make no mistake, it is challenging and that is why is good to get help, reach out and keep trying.  It takes time to get to know each other and begin to know how you can all work together.