Life after Divorce 203
remarriages than they do in first marriages. Remarried couples
seem to pay more attention to their sex lives. Perhaps having
witnessed firsthand how a bad sex life can weaken or destroy
a marriage, they take it more seriously the second time around.
As clinical psychologist Robert Kirsch says, “I don’t think two
people can have a good sex life if the marriage is unequal. Sex is
the second language of behavior and it’s important to pay atten-
tion to its message.”
Successful second marriages. Many people also seem more will-
ing to work harder on a second marriage. Having failed at mar-
riage once, each partner may now be more mature in resisting
the temptation to simply blame the other for any and all failures
within the relationship (something they may have done in their
first marriage). The partners in a second marriage are older now
and have each established their independent past histories. Thus,
they are more likely to retain their own separate but equal iden-
tities—a factor that is so crucial to a successful marriage. As my
favorite divorce-recovery guru Abigail Tafford states:
People who have been through a divorce have certain advantages
in remarriage. You know about suffering and pain. You know how
relationships don’t work and you understand fatal power plays that
overtake many marriages. In many ways, you know more than peo-
ple who remain in an original marriage. You know all about avoiding
conflict and dying slowly in a marriage. You may also know more
than people who get divorced but who never make a long-term
commitment again. Unlike permanent divorced singles, you learn to
apply your divorce experience to your remarriage. In the process you
come to grips with the myth of marriage as well as the reality. People
who are happily remarried are a special breed. Like a decorated war
hero, you have been tested in the wars of both marriage and divorce.
You lived through a number of crisis now with your own psyche,
your children, the network, your boss, your current spouse, your
new mother-in-law. Your sense of self is pretty strong by now or you
wouldn’t have gotten this far.Joan Kelly of the California Children of Divorce Project puts it
another way: “Divorce has the potential of not only freeing men
and women from destructive and unsatisfactory relationships,