"Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them." – Albert Einstein

I am becoming convinced that the laws of conservation apply to marriage in the United States.  It seems the numbers of long-term couples I know breaking up, more or less equal the number of wedding invitations I receive in any given year. 

I am going to take this time to burst one marriage related fallacy – I have been sagely informed, by more than one concerned person (and a few times I suspect as an underscore to the failure of my first marriage), that second marriages are more likely to end in divorce.  An authority no less than the CDC, who keeps such statistics, concurs in very serious tones, that there is a strong probability that 2nd marriages will end in separation or divorce”.

Well, let’s compare the CDC’s own numbers.

Percentage of first time marriages ending in divorce within 5 years = 20.

Percentage of second time marriages ending in divorce within 5 years = 23.

Now, I am a biochemist, with only a biologist’s working knowledge of statistics, but that 3% looks pretty piddling to me.  And, as an interesting corollary, the ten year figures only widen the gap by another 3% – 33% vs. 39% respectively.  This does not, in my own rather inexpert opinion, justify the knowing predictions of failure proclaimed by so-called marriage advocates.  All it tells me is that we are just as likely to repeat the same mistakes the second time around as we did the first – but no more likely.  And – contrary to the “divorce epidemic”, the majority of marriages overall are remaining intact at least 10 years.  10 years of living in close proximity with somebody else’s idiosyncratic personal habits is not a feat to be downplayed. 

Hey, I am a strong supporter of marriage myself.  Loved it so much I did it twice.  And in recognition of the overblown and inaccurate portrayal of our second-time chances, I admire every wedding I attend where at least one of the celebrants is going in as a retread.  As has often been said, it is a triumph of love and hope over experience, and after all, if we give up on the institution entirely, our chances of sticking it out with each other for a decade are really dismal. Cohabitations have as much chance of staying together as married people have of splitting up – only 38% remain together after 10 years.  That’s the saddest statistic.  Every time I hear somebody put forth the excuse that they are “waiting until they can afford the wedding they really want”, I know they won’t last another two years.  They have put style before substance.  It isn’t the “getting married” part that’s important.  It’s the BEING married part.  If you are so much in love that you are willing to commit the rest of your natural lives to listening to each other snoring and alternately leaving the toilet tissue un-replenished, then ANY wedding you have at that point is inherently romantic. 

It is said that women are most beautiful on their wedding day and they day they give birth.  I can testify that the latter is a complete crock.  However, I think that the last two weddings I attended definitely support the former.  Both brides were ravishing.  Both grooms suitably awed.  And both couples were absolutely, perfectly matched.  They were weddings that it was easy to cry at.  The ceremonies, the setting, the trappings were as different as they could possibly be, and they were both sweetly, wonderfully, perfectly romantic because the love and commitment was so evident it practically emanated.

But these are the things of our fantasies, our days to be fairytale princes and princesses.  The real part happens years later, when the man that thought you were the most lovely on the day he married you never lets on for a single moment that he ever thought so; when he treats every morning that you wake up as the day you are the most beautiful to him.  A perfect wedding is a beautiful thing.   A perfect marriage is breathtaking.

October 2nd, 2006 at 2:30 pm
3 Responses to “Conservation of marriage”
  1. 1
    bubandpie Says:

    As a fellow second-timer, I loved this post. I remember reading somewhere that psychologists can do a better job of predicting the success of a marriage using data on the husband than they can using data on the wife. So the husbands get the credit for the good marriages, but they also get the blame for the bad ones. That corresponds fairly nicely to my experience, I’d say. I wonder how the stats compare when it’s a second marriage for just the wife vs. the second marriage for just the husband?

  2. 2
    Kat Says:

    (sigh)

    Ah. A perfect marriage. I gotta tell you, we’re not there yet. Ask us in, oh, 20 years or so.

    Our 7th wedding anniversary is coming up… and the only ways we know to spend it are (a) with our friends at home, or (b) with our friends at an event. Some of the seven years before the marriage were so formal, so rigid — that any expectation not met was a nightmare in “well, what do we do now?”

    In retrospect, I think we waited so long not because of fear of committment but because of fear of what might happen after we committed. We both grew up in the rubble of our parents’ own broken relations. By the time we’d met, my mom was on her second, I’d lost track of my dad, his dad had two and quit, and his mom was about to start her fourth. She’s on her sixth now.

    The idea to “cleave” to one another has become stronger over the years. Yes, it could mean to break apart. But time after time, when things got rough enough to want to bust up, we just hung on for all it’s worth, fighting with everything we had.

    Not that I don’t agree with re-marriage. One of the best marriages I’ve seen is with one friend who’s remarried to one on his first time. No one thought it would last. There were reports of “marriage of convenience” because she needed insurance and he needed a place to live. But they’ve grown together like two trees in a garden — still separate, but twined together in a way no one can take them apart.

    As for us, we wonder. Over 14 years you see a lot of pairings untie — a lot of remorse for marrying young and for marrying old — and for not realizing the person you’d married was different after stepping across the threshhold. We’ve been blessed. Mightily blessed.

  3. 3
    Sheila Says:

    Interesting, I posted today before reading your blog. Must be something in the air. I think Venus is in Libra or something like that.

    I loved the part at the wedding about the ring is just an outward symbol of an inward commitment. Without that commitment, you just have some pretty dresses and some good cake. And you have to have two committed people to make it work.