Time To Remarry After Divorce?

Here are some thoughts to keep in mind when you fall in love after divorce and decide to remarry. Remarriage after divorce can be a wonderful healing. It can also prolong or repeat all the pain of your divorce.

The odds are you’ll remarry. Don’t think so? Maybe you’re right. Maybe you’ll be in the roughly 25% of divorced people who never remarry. Smart money says you won’t, though.

And isn’t it interesting that we say “smart money”? Because making a second marriage work is an awful lot about dealing with the money issues. It’s also about kids.

Statistically, your subsequent marriage after divorce is more likely to fail than your first marriage. And if the remarriage occurs within two years after either partner’s divorce, the odds of failure are higher still. I haven’t been able to corroborate this, but I heard once that the failure rate for these marriages is 85%.

Would you do me a favor? Before you decide to remarry, take the time to go through some extended and intensive counseling with your fiancée. If this new marriage is meant to be, good counseling won’t convince you otherwise. If you decide in counseling that maybe the two of you aren’t meant for each other after all, good.

Wait to Set the Date

And here’s a thought if you’re waiting for your divorce to be effective so you can remarry. Several states, including my state of Alabama, require you to wait some number of days before marrying anyone else (in Alabama, it’s 60 days). I don’t know why they do, but I suspect it’s out of a desire to protect you from some of the factors I laid out above. I know you’re convinced that this new relationship is the answer to prayer. Iknow this person you now love and want to commit to spend the rest of your life loving is nothing like the spouse you’re divorcing. But for the sake of your sanity, do not plan your marriage until you have a signed divorce decree in hand. If this relationship is as strong as you think, and if it’s meant to be, it is strong enough to wait until you can plan your wedding with confidence that you won’t have to shift the date later because your lawyer made a mistake, or because the judge was sick, or on vacation, lazy, or just in a bad mood.

There’s a separate page here about remarrying each other (that is, remarrying your recently divorced spouse).

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