Today every third marriage ends in divorce – but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Such experiences can also be enrichments
If the partner has been married before, this can enrich the relationship
“You have already experienced all this with another woman, then it is nothing special with me.” A listener of the “Oh, Baby!” Podcast has to hear this sentence often from his girlfriend. He has been married before and that bothers the new woman at his side: She feels like a kind of “consolation prize” because she will never be the first woman in his life. Her friends always say to her, “A divorced man? I couldn’t!” It can even be an advantage if the partner has been married before. Couple and love therapist Malte Thoma explains why.
Every relationship is unique
“In our society, a second marriage is no longer a drama, it was maybe 30 years ago,” says Malte Thoma. For some people this is difficult to imagine, especially when the parents have been together for 40 years and would never separate, no matter how much they argue. “But nowadays it is more the rule to get a divorce if it no longer works.”
But isn’t the first time something special? First apartment, first wedding, first child? According to Malte Thoma, every time is something special: “Every person is unique. And every love is unique. And if I have three children with three women, the fourth child with the fourth wife would still be unique.” After all, there is a lot more shared experiences in a relationship than just children and weddings.
The first marriage is not always the best
A new relationship can even benefit from a past divorce. Malte Thoma explains why: “A breakup is always painful. If I have connected with someone emotionally and they break up then it hurts. The healthy way to deal with it would be to consider what part do I have in the failed partnership? ” although in the end one of them usually expresses the separation, both have their share in the crises that have happened before.
So the divorced should ask himself: What do I have about me that my partner couldn’t live with? “That doesn’t have to mean that these traits are bad. It just means that I have them in me and my ex-partner reacted very extremely to them, namely through a breakup.” So if you are ready to look at these parts, you can learn a lot about yourself and grow in the end, says Thoma. “This gives me the freedom to decide whether I want to keep these parts in myself or whether I work on it. And then of course the next partnership can benefit from it.”
And even the love in the new relationship can become better , explains Thoma: “After the first marriage I may already have an idea how love works for me and can think about what was good? What was bad? What would I like to have different? And then I can explore all of these things with a new partner and go on a journey together. And then everything is new again. “
Open communication helps
Listen to yourself: Why are you bothered by your partner’s failed marriage? What are you really afraid of? This can be, for example, the fear that your partner is not capable of bonding and that the relationship with you will therefore also fail. Or you may find it difficult to trust your partner. What can your partner do to alleviate these fears? Only open communication helps. And then it’s up to you to decide whether or not to live with a divorced man.
