Does a second marriage have more chances?

If Oscar Wilde is right when he said that marriage is the main reason for divorce, then why do partners get involved in this adventure again? In our country, about every fourth marriage is a second one.¹. Does this mean that hope still wins over disappointment?

“Regardless of age and past relationship experience, every woman and every man needs to be loved,” says transactional analyst Ekaterina Ignatova. – Marriage gives hope that one of our main needs will be satisfied. Of course, it is difficult to start a relationship, fearing that they may end in failure. But those who think so simply do not reach the registry office. The motivation to remarry arises only at the moment when desire is stronger than anxiety. Ekaterina Ignatova believes that more often than others remarry (marry) either naive people who are convinced that the first union broke up solely through the fault of the partner, or those who managed to draw conclusions from the first failure.

“The first time I got married, I thought it was for life,” says 36-year-old Anna. We had a daughter, whom my husband simply adored. But after five years we broke up. And in this divorce there was a lot of my fault. I was too demanding and did not realize that my adherence to principles was perceived as rude. I was careless towards my husband, did not understand him, got angry and in the end just hated him. I do not regret the breakup, but then I did not understand how much suffering it would bring to me and my daughter. I think that children are still better when their parents are together.”

“I’m not angry anymore”

Anna remarried six years later. This summer she gave birth to a son and confesses: “Now I am much happier, and I have many reasons to hold on to my happiness. I became more tolerant, more forgiving, less capricious. This does not mean that my high bar in family relationships has dropped. But I cherish the new family, I change in many ways – I have become gentler and calmer. My marriage isn’t perfect and I know it never will be.”

Well, it seems that second marriages can indeed be happier than the first, as the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, noted more than once.². In the failure of the first marriage, he saw the trace of the female “archaic hostile reaction against the man.” Indeed, even in large Russian families, the first marriage ends in 86% of cases at the initiative of women.³. In most European countries, three out of four divorce cases are also filed by women.⁴. Including because they have the opportunity to live the way they think is right: for example, the main character of the film “Kramer vs. Kramer” (dir. R. Benton, 1979), played by Meryl Streep, leaves her husband to become yourself.

In a first marriage, women often feel trapped. Sigmund Freud talks about the gap between expectation and reality, which makes life together unbearable. He writes about “the first and such strong attachment, when the first marriage is at the peak of love”, about the “inevitable disappointments and accumulation of reasons for aggression” that destroy love. And concludes: “As a rule, second marriages are much stronger.”⁵.

But how to keep the irresistible, how to keep a clear desire to have a family, passion and affection, when the relationship of two inevitably changes the birth of a child? “It didn’t work out for me,” admits Marina, 45, a mother of two. – I was in love with my first husband, but our marriage did not survive. We have drifted away from each other. Once I discovered that Pavel had a mistress for 10 years. I tried to forgive, and he tried to leave her, but nothing came of it. I have become a vicious vixen. And in the end she left him, and he wanted to continue to live in a cozy little world, where he has a housewife with children, and a mistress with whom he enjoys when there is time and money. We don’t live in the XNUMXth century, I didn’t want to sacrifice myself at all!”

“Two weeks a month I’m the perfect mother”

Marina confidently declares: in the first marriage, the main thing was the birth of children, and she wants to devote the second to relations with her husband. “After the divorce, I play the role of an ideal mother for two weeks a month,” continues Marina. – We had a period of contention and misunderstanding, but in the end Pavel and I managed to agree and we equally divided the time that the children spend with each of us. At first I was very resistant to this idea, but gradually I agreed that it was important for children to communicate with their father. I didn’t expect this decision to change my life. I was finally able to take care of myself. The first year after the divorce, being alone, I simply did not know what to do. I slept, read, learned to walk just like that, and even went to the movies a couple of times.

Somehow by chance I met an old friend. He was also divorced. We started an affair. We often met, but only in those weeks when the children did not live with me. Two years later, he proposed to me. I agreed on the condition that we keep our schedule. We are happy now.”

There is nothing surprising in such a “rational” approach to marriage. As the historian Philippe Aries recalls, for centuries love in its physical and passionate aspect existed outside of marriage.⁶. The basis of family relations was childbearing and “reasonable”, “restrained” love between spouses. It was only in the XNUMXth century that the idea of ​​reconciling passion and procreation appeared. In Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy described the Oblonsky family, in which the wife, Dolly, suffers from her husband’s constant infidelities. He continues to love her, but is looking for entertainment with young women. The XNUMXth century created a different image of the family, where spouses love each other like lovers. But for many couples, physical passion is incompatible with their parenting role. “When partners turn exclusively into parents, relationships are emasculated,” notes Ekaterina Ignatova, “and first of all, sex disappears from them.” A second marriage for many is a chance to share the roles of lovers and parents.

But after all, children will appear in the second marriage. Does this mean that partners will endlessly fall into the same hopeless situations? Psychotherapist Jacques-Antoine Malarewicz is sure that this is not so. He emphasizes: “Even if partners need to sort out their past and resolve conflicts related to children from the first marriage, the second marriage is usually more stable. The couple have learned from the past and want to take advantage of what they’ve learned.”

We enter into a second marriage, better understanding our own desires, more realistic, Ekaterina Ignatova agrees. “We recognize that the world is not perfect. We are ready to fall in love not with a fictional image and not with our own reflection, but with a real other person, seeing and accepting not only his virtues, but also his shortcomings. We get the opportunity to make a choice in favor of a partner that suits us and, together with whom we can solve our problems at a new stage in our life path.

“We devote time only to each other”

“Igor and I have been thinking about what our wedding will be like for several months,” says 53-year-old Inessa. “We wanted it to be something special. We met six years ago and were like two lone wolves. I divorced in 2007, I had two children, and I was absolutely sure that I did not want to start a family again. Igor also had children, and he divorced his wife. There was clarity between us from the very beginning. Thanks to him, I learned what a real couple is, mutual support, what it means to complement each other. We arranged a ceremony in his country house, surrounded by our loved ones. This ritual made our union even stronger. We protect our relationship – we do not live together, so as not to mix the upbringing of children and marriage. Because of this, we often miss each other, but when we see each other, we belong only to each other. The word “we” governs everything we do.”

The first and second marriages have different meanings, says psychoanalyst Fabien Kremer: “The first time they marry to create a family, a home, while the second marriage is the desire to connect with a partner. That is why the first marriage does not overshadow the next. Of course, there are those who stubbornly live the same scenario, but this does not happen often. The underlying hope of such marriages is to be with a partner forever. In these unions, there is an idea that one stable relationship is worth several dizzying novels. When you can understand this, marriage becomes deeper and more sensual – people do not neglect each other. It may take a few tries to get there.

¹ According to the Institute of Demography of the Higher School of Economics. “Population of Russia 2010–2011” (HSE Publishing House, 2013).

² Z. Freud “Essays on the Psychology of Sexuality” (Potpourri, 2012).

³ A. Sinelnikov “The problem of the strength of large families” (MGU, 2009).

⁴ Data from the French website about the family allowance system caf.fr

⁵ Z. Freud “On female sexuality.” Inc. works in 26 volumes, v. 19 (East European Institute of Psychoanalysis, 2011).

⁶ F. Aries “Child and family life under the old order” (Publishing house of the Ural University, 1999).

⁸ C. E. Rusbult, E. J. Finkel, M. Kumashiro «The Michelangelo Phenomenon». Current Directions in Psychological Science, December 2009.