Stepcouple Relationships: Tips for Making It Work by Trisha Ladogna
It may be that the divorce rates for second and third marriages are lower than originally thought. Those statistics, which have been touted around for years, note that between 60 and 70 percent of those relationships end in divorce. But subsequent studies are showing that those numbers appear to be much more favorable.
In 2013, the Marriage Foundation (a U.K. relationship think tank) released a report showing that the divorce rate for second marriages is not any higher than it is for those who marry for the first time. Using figures from Britain’s Office for National Statistics, the foundation showed that the divorce rate for second marriages (31 percent) was lower than it was for first-time marriages (41 percent).
Couple that with their finding that husbands who get married for the second time are more likely to find happiness and we’ve got confirmation for what many stepcouples already know: Love really is lovelier the second time around!
Andrew J. Cherlin, PhD, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, is another academic who is helping debunk the second-marriages-are- doomed-to-fail myth.
In an article on remarriage, which appeared in the “Wall Street Journal,” he is quoted as saying: “We used to think that second marriages were much more fragile. The fact that the divorce rate isn’t higher for remarriages shows that a lot of people are trying very hard—and with great success—to make their second marriages work.”
Stepcouples do try very hard to make their relationships work. The majority of the time they succeed and are happy—just as happy as, if not happier than, couples in first-time marriages. Unfortunately, the general public doesn’t see it this way, making it hard for stepcouples not to buy into the hype.
So, what tips and tricks can we glean from those stepcouples who have gone before us and made it work? …To read the rest of this article, log in to your account and download the February 2016 issue. Don’t have an account? Click here to subscribe.