It is likely that no man ever crouched on one knee, stared lovingly into his girlfriend’s eyes and asked, “Will you do me the honor of being my first wife?” Perhaps, given the current state of marriage and remarriage, that would be an appropriate proposal.
In the United States, almost 50 percent of first marriages and more than 60 percent of second marriages end in divorce. Official statistics on subsequent marriages are more difficult to come by, but there is ample anecdotal evidence that a significant number of people are pledging fidelity “until death us do part” for a third and fourth time. As the famously self-indulgent Baby Boomers edge toward 60, many of them have experienced more than three decades of adulthood — long enough to marry, divorce, marry, divorce and marry again.
“I always had clients who were on their second or third divorces,” says Valerie Colb, author of “The Smart Divorce” (Golden Books, 1999), who has practiced family law for 25 years in the Los Angeles area. “But the volume of divorces that aren’t a first one has gradually increased over the years.”
Are third marriages becoming as common as second marriages once were? Is three the new two? And just how far has society come in its acceptance of people who say “I do, I do,” and then “I do” once more?
Fifty years ago, when Adlai Stevenson made two unsuccessful bids for the presidency, the fact that he was divorced was considered a contributing factor in his defeats. Voters wondered if there was “something wrong” with a man whose marriage had failed. By the time Ronald Reagan and his second wife, Nancy, moved into the White House in 1981, the stigma of divorce, at least in political life, had greatly diminished.
The second divorce of former General Electric chairman and chief executive Jack Welch became very public last year. His soon-to-be ex-wife, a former corporate lawyer, had also been married before. Corporate culture once frowned on men and women with a divorce or two on their resumes. Now enough ex-spouses to start a basketball team wouldn’t qualify as a scandal in the business world.
Grist for gossip
Men or women who appear to be “marrying up,” or practicing licensed social climbing, have always been grist for nasty gossip (ask Georgette Mosbacher, the redheaded Texan now divorced from third husband Robert, a Houston oilman who was Secretary of Commerce in the early ’90s).
And a third marriage before a 35th birthday still inspires finger-wagging and invites ridicule: When Jennifer Lopez, who is 32 and has been divorced twice, announced her engagement to Ben Affleck, Jay Leno quipped: “Jennifer Lopez getting engaged! Now that’s something that doesn’t happen every day.”
Best-selling author Michael Lewis (“Liar’s Poker”), now 42, lives in Berkeley, Calif., with his third wife, former MTV VJ Tabitha Soren. “Never would it have occurred to me, or anyone who knows me, that I would have been in the position of being twice divorced at the age of 34,” he says. “I’d never been in a situation where the casual, off-the-cuff joke at the dinner party was going to be me.
“Being married twice, that’s no problem. Everybody’s been married twice. Two marriages are looked at the way one marriage was in the past — as kind of normal. But three has become the new two, and for a lot of people, that means I’ve crossed a line.”
Social scientists believe increasing life expectancy has had a negative effect on the life cycle of some marriages. Staying with one mate was easier when adults died at 45 or 50 (and when a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy toward mistresses existed in many circles). People live longer today, and thanks to medical breakthroughs, better nutrition and cosmetic surgery, they feel vital and look younger at more advanced ages.
A woman widowed at 55 used to devote herself to grandchildren. Today, she might get a face-lift, step up her exercise program, look around and ask, “Who’s next?”
Toni Grant is a clinical psychologist, author and radio talk-show host who lives in Dallas. “It isn’t uncommon for people to live into their 90s now,” she says, “so if they marry in their 20s and after 10 or 15 years feel the marriage was a mistake, it doesn’t make sense to stick with it for the next 60 years. I don’t think someone is judged very harshly if they’re 60 and on their third marriage. But if they’re 35 and their third marriage isn’t working, then that’s someone who isn’t getting it.”
Learning from the past
Grant knows of what she speaks. “I’m on my second marriage, and in June we’ll celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary. We have a second marriage made in heaven, but it isn’t an accident. I diligently searched for the right partner. I really understood in a way I didn’t the first time what I required in a partner, and my husband, who had been married before, did as well.
“I know many other people who have had very successful second marriages. People who need to go to three and four and five haven’t learned the true significance of marriage.”
Grant and Lewis are typical of many social observers interviewed who conclude that one divorce isn’t taboo and two is no longer shocking. But it’s still possible to do something smirk-worthy: Thirty-four-year-old Lisa Marie Presley’s third marriage, to Nicolas Cage, ended recently after four months, so fast that there wasn’t time to pull a dreamy photograph of the couple from Vogue’s February “Couples Issue.”
“A third marriage makes a lot of people nervous, and definitely a fourth does,” says Nancy Etcoff, who teaches psychology at Harvard Medical School and is in private practice in Boston. “What raises eyebrows is the turnaround time, someone who very quickly cycles in and out of marriages.”
Whether someone who marries and divorces often is admired or criticized depends on a glass-half-empty or glass-half-full perception of events. Some focus on the divorces and wonder, “Why can’t they get it right?” Others concentrate on the marriages and think, “Wow. Not only are they adept at attracting the opposite sex, they can close the deal too.”
Brief, youthful unions have become so common that a term has been coined to describe them. “A starter marriage is defined as lasting five years or less and ending without children,” says Pamela Paul, who wrote “The Starter Marriage and the Future of Matrimony” (Villard Books, 2002).
Children make a difference
Whether a marriage produces children affects how much disapproval its failure engenders. “Trading in wives can be a very expensive habit for men,” says Olivia Goldsmith, author of the novel “The First Wives Club.” “I’m not opposed to divorce. I’m opposed to deception and the victimization of children. I think all first marriages should be brief and easily revocable.
“Almost everybody used to make a stupid college marriage. There’s nothing wrong with unloading it if both people are young and have a chance to make a new life. But if that college wife has put her husband through law school, then the situation isn’t so simple. What is immoral and, in my view, deleterious to society, is that fathers and husbands desert their first families emotionally and financially, and that didn’t use to happen.”
For those who marry repeatedly, hope springs eternal. “People have a powerful need to be with other people, to be loved and attached. On the other hand, they often find it very difficult to stay together,” Harvard’s Etcoff says. “No one would ever get married assuming divorce. These people are supremely optimistic. They value love and romance and they want to get it right.”
Frequent marriers with complementary streaks of romanticism and delusion evidently can learn from their mistakes. The life of actress Stockard Channing, who plays a smart, strong-willed first lady on “The West Wing,” reflects a pattern Etcoff believes has become widespread. Channing has had four marriages; each lasted four to six years. Since 1988 she has been with cameraman Dan Gillham, although they never married.
Still trying to get it right
“The statistics say that second and third marriages are no more successful than first,” Etcoff says, “but I see people who do get it right the third or fourth time, and their experience isn’t reflected in the statistics because they aren’t getting married. They’re getting into intimate, committed relationships, but they’re stopping short of getting married.”
Conservative observers assume that people who marry and divorce repeatedly don’t respect the institution of marriage. But could it be that it means a great deal to them?
“A lot of people value it very much and it doesn’t meet their standards,” Etcoff says. “They want marriage to take the place of religion in life, to be the be-all and end-all in life, and if it doesn’t meet that standard, they go looking for it somewhere else.”
