Part 6 (1/2)

I'm constantly surprised in looking at second marriages, even with the challenges of a blended family, at how happy they are. They say, ”I was so immature before. But I learned my lesson, and this time is different. This time, I knew what to look for. What I need to change.”

Although divorce leaves many scars and second marriages come with unique challenges, the ”I've learned my lesson, and this time is different” reaction is one reason that I see hope in the most recent BLS study and the Census Bureau's second-marriage data above. Although the divorce rate may be higher for re-marriages, especially in the first few years, I think many remarried couples are actually less likely to divorce the second time around. They feel like they have, in my friend's words, ”done it wrong” once, and they are determined not to do that again. They are committed for life.

Giving Hope

Knowing the good news may, in the end, make it easier for them to keep that commitment. After having been a single mom for years, another friend of mine just got remarried. After reading a draft of this chapter, she e-mailed me this: This is so personal for me coming into a remarriage that I truly hope will be a blessed and happy marriage. I find that I have this subconscious fear, especially when there is conflict and things aren't going well. Fear that I am responsible. Fear that I will make a mistake. Fear that I need a backup plan, that I must protect my kids if something goes wrong. Maybe all that fades after the first five years and you don't worry about all the ”what ifs” each time. But that is where communication, trust, and prayer play such a large role in remarriage. You come into it already damaged once.

I realize I have to work constantly to make sure I stay open to my husband and do not slide into protective mode when I am worried, hurt, upset, or tired. To me, the hopeful message of the book is something that will help so much. This hope will be one of the things I look toward when I am sliding toward protecting myself or my kids; it will help me to stop that trend and instead lean into my marriage and husband in the way we deserve.

Remember the remarried couple I quoted at the beginning of the chapter? They said they made it due to the vision that they had ”of what it could be like if we chose to press on.” And, they said, ”That gave us hope, although sometimes it was literally the last thread we were holding on to.”

A thread is better than nothing, but it seems so fragile. How much more of that all-important hope might we give the two in ten couples who are remarried if they knew that they had a much greater chance of making it than they thought?

Summary * Most people, including leaders, erroneously believe that 60 percent of second marriages and 73 percent of third marriages fail.

* We have tried for years to trace the sources for those numbers and have found that, as far as we can tell right now, they don't exist. They appear to be pure urban legend, which is perpetuated in part because there simply aren't very many studies on remarriages and those that do exist aren't well known.

* According to 2009 Census Bureau data, just as 71 percent of women are still married to their first spouse, 65 percent of women are still married to their second spouse.

* Among the 35 percent who aren't still married to their second spouse, a much larger percentage of that is probably due to death than in first marriages, simply because these couples tend to be older. In fact, it is a.n.a.lytically possible that especially after the first few high-risk years, the remarriage divorce rate could be lower than for first marriages.

* According to the data we do have, and what we can infer from various studies, roughly one-third of second marriages appear to end in divorce.

Good News #4 The large majority of remarriages last. Among women in second marriages, 65 percent are still married to their spouse, and of those who aren't, many were widowed rather than divorced.

6.

How Most Marriage Problems Can Be Fixed by Small Changes

After the release of my book For Women Only, people began sharing the most rewarding stories about couples whose marriages had been saved, changed, or restored through the knowledge they gained from that research. In the same way that I had been astonished by what I was learning about men (especially Jeff) while I was writing it, my female readers seemed to suddenly see something they simply didn't know before. As I began speaking at women's conferences, countless women were relaying stories of how they would read the book in bed next to their husband, come across a finding about men that shocked them, turn to their man, and say, ”Is this true?” Upon hearing (most of the time) yes, that was true, they would begin a deep conversation and discover things about their man that they hadn't learned in twenty-five years of marriage, usually things their husband hadn't known how to articulate. And upon the release of the corresponding book about women, For Men Only, the aha moments went both ways. Using these discoveries, men and women started to change what they did and said to align with what they now understood about their spouse.

What I was continuously struck by, though-in their lives and in mine-was how simple the changes often were. It was as if, with a little bit of extra knowledge about their spouse, people could scoot themselves into a whole new realm of marriage. Some folks already had a good marriage, while others had been unhappy for years; but either way just a few eye-opening pieces of information somehow allowed these men and women to help themselves instead of feeling helpless.

And early on, I heard a story that clued me in to the fact that there was an even bigger implication behind this trend, an implication that has a vital part to play in countering the current sense of futility about marriage.

After twelve years of marriage, a couple we'll call Nelly and Brad had separated. Although neither started out believing in divorce, he had given up on the idea of ever being able to please her, and as he grew more and more distant, she became more and more critical and was convinced he had a personality disorder that made him narcissistic.

Finally Brad gave up. He rented an apartment closer to his trucking company's headquarters about two hours away. By this point, things were so bad between them that his only regret was being so far away from their twin four-year-old daughters. He told me later, ”That was what really killed me-the idea of not being able to see my girls all the time.”

About two months later, on the road in his rig, he caught a few minutes of a radio interview where I discussed For Women Only and what I learned about how men think. He was astonished, not because of what I shared about men's fears and needs, but because it sounded as though women didn't already know what they were.

The next day, on the last leg home, he happened to walk into a truck stop and see the companion book, For Men Only, on a spinner rack. After reading a few chapters over lunch, he headed out-not to his apartment, but to the house he had shared with his wife. He walked in, opened up the book, pointed to several pa.s.sages, and said, ”Is this true of you?”

Suddenly, both of them started talking. He suddenly understood so many things that weren't just his wife's issues but were common to most women. He saw how much certain actions of his had hurt her ... and how much she hadn't realized she was hurting him!

And on her part, Nelly began to see that what she took as his ego was actually a deep self-doubt and longing to be appreciated. They spent most of the night discussing things they had never known before, and the next day, he drove down to his apartment, packed his things, and came home.

I was so touched when he shared his story with me. But as I heard another like it ... and another ... I began to realize, If just a little bit of new knowledge can save a marriage, there are a whole lot of unnecessary divorces going on.

If just a little bit of new knowledge can save a marriage, there are a whole lot of unnecessary divorces going on.

It's Usually Not the Big-Ticket Problems

As noted in chapter 3, most marriages, thankfully, are happy. More than a third, in fact, are very happy. But as I've conducted my interviews and surveys with those men and women who are ”mostly happy” or in ”so-so or struggling” marriages, I frequently hear something important under the surface, a feeling that I can only describe as a combination of confusion and helplessness. That feeling of He's upset with me and I don't know why or I can't seem to really make her happy, no matter how hard I try.

That sense of confusion and helplessness is just one step removed from a sense of futility. The feeling that having a good marriage or fixing a troubled one requires a PhD in clinical psychology with a minor in mind reading. And it is that helpless feeling that is so often quickly blown away by simply having a little information the couple didn't have before.

The good-news truth that Jeff and I have seen over the years, that Brad and Nelly's story hints at and that countless counselors have confirmed, is that most marriage breakdowns are not caused by what you might call the deep, systemic big-ticket problems-for example, by one spouse being an alcoholic or having been s.e.xually abused as a child. Those problems do happen and it is tragic when they do, but they aren't the majority of cases. Instead, what usually happens is that a husband and wife who deeply care about each other are tripped up by some relatively simple things, often resulting from a lack of knowledge about what the other person needs or what hurts them. They simply don't know some elementary needs and fears shared by not only their spouse but most other men or women, or they don't know a few simple day-to-day actions that would make a big difference to the happiness of the marriage.

Let's look at two intertwined good-news truths I've seen in the research.

Truth 1: More Than 99 Percent of Spouses Deeply Care About Each Other

In our research for The Surprising Secrets of Highly Happy Marriages, Jeff and I identified several simple things that the happiest spouses do that they often don't even realize are making them so happy.100 And one of the most important is that they try to believe the best of their spouse's intentions even when they have been hurt.

We found in our research that the vast majority of spouses-more than 99 percent overall, and only a few points less even in troubled marriages-care deeply about their mate (see graph).101 The problem is their mate doesn't always believe it.

Out of the 1,261 people who have answered that completely anonymous survey question, only nine people said they didn't really care about their spouse anymore. Not 9 percent-nine people! Even in the most troubled marriages, 97 percent of the survey takers said they cared about their spouse. And yet of those spouses, only 59 percent believed it. That gap is a major reason for all the unnecessary unhappiness and angst in marriage. A hurting spouse thinks He [or She] doesn't care about me-but that just isn't true!

Do You Care About Your Spouse and Want the Best for Them, Even During Painful Times?