Becoming A Third Wife Gave Me A New Perspective On Marriage
I never considered that marital success could be measured in something other than years.
cbarnesphotography | Canva I, like you, am a proud American who adores the institution of marriage. I hate to brag, but public record evidences that I love it even more than you do. For, unlike you, I haven’t vowed “till death do us part” just once in my life — I’ve done it twice!
Now, before you get all preachy on me, you should know I am not one of those radical feminists pushing divorce as a path toward a “completely amoral society.” Far from it. I needed my divorce.
I was ashamed after I divorced my first husband. I was so filled with self-hate, in fact, that I hobbled back into the dating world with only one standard by which to screen all prospective partners. Each was required to have already suffered exactly one divorce. If they had more than one divorce, I was too good for them. Any less and they were far too good for me.
This “exactly one divorce” standard, as you may imagine, served me well in the post-apocalyptic adult dating scene. It led me to the once-divorced construction firm owner who announced, fifteen minutes into our first date, that he would like to impregnate me. It found me sitting across the table from a once-divorced nurse who demanded I stop making jokes because being funny was “their thing.” I still have screenshots of the thirty-three text messages I received from the once-divorced financer, who painstakingly detailed my personal failings after I told him I wasn’t interested in a second date. “You’ll never be happy,” he told me, “because you can’t see a good guy who’s standing right before you.”
Well, I am pleased to tell you that the thirty-three-text guy was wrong. Because less than a year later I was standing across the room from a good guy. And I saw him.
He was a combat veteran who risked his life protecting this country you and I love so dearly. He owned a thriving business and paid his fair share of taxes. He laughed at my jokes and never once offered to put a baby in my belly. He was thoughtful and measured with everyone he encountered, whether or not their lifestyle mirrored his own.
It’s fair to say I was in lust after our first date and love after our second. But one night I mistakenly asked him to tell me about his ex-wife and his answer shook my divorce-tarnished soul.
“Which one?”
There it was, the one flaw in this otherwise remarkable person. He was the one you all warned me about, the one seeking to demolish the “beautiful buttress of divine architecture” we call marriage. He was going to make me his third in a long string of heartbroken ex-wives.
Thankfully, this good guy’s mouth ran a lot faster than my feet and he caught me before I could flee that night. I’m grateful he did because, in the conversation that followed (and in our seven years of marriage since), I learned a few things about life and love from this now thrice-married man.
He taught me that marital success isn’t measured in years — it’s measured in personal growth.
Ridiculous, I know, but this man isn’t ashamed of his two past marriages. He celebrates them! He celebrates the love he shared with his ex-wives, the memories they created, and the many ways he evolved as a result of sharing a life with them.
And, by some odd coincidence, his ex-wives seem to feel the same. Both are remarried to wonderful spouses. Both live beautiful lives. And none of them would have turned into the people they are without the bumpy marital road they navigated together.
I’ve found my current husband to be an incredible person not despite his past marriages but because of them. I love the man he is so I must love the life experiences that created him. Through him, I’ve even begun to theorize that my first marriage wasn’t a mistake, that I grew and evolved as a result of it, and that I’ve become a person more deserving of love than shame.
Will my second husband and I make it until death do us part? I don’t know. I suppose we’ll eventually have to figure that out on our own and make that very private decision between ourselves. But whether we live our final days together or I watch him evolve with wife number four, I’ll never regret the years we’ve spent married. I’ll never see our marriage as a mistake but, rather, a time of joy and growth. We might not all be walking the same straight line but we’re all ultimately headed to the same happy destination. If you’ll kindly allow it, we’ll figure out a way to get there on our own.
Kay Stephens is a romance author and former law professional.