Has anyone remarried and ex-spouse after some time being divorced from them? Or do you know of friends or family where this was done? Please share the story…How long where they married, how long divorced before remarried? Did they have relationships in between? Kids? How are they doing now? What triggered the divorce, what triggered getting back together.
Fuck that shit.
An aunt of mine divorced my uncle 3 times over 35 years. He was a great guy, they made a great couple, but she would occasionally decide she didn’t want to be married to him. They got married right after high school, as far as I know neither has ever been with anyone else. He would simply move out until she worked thru whatever her issue was, then re-marry her. There was one time where I went home for a visit and my grandmother told me she’d divorced him again the week before, and when I visited my aunt he’s sitting in the kitchen in his bathrobe drinking coffee, having obviously spent the night. My aunt stepped away for a moment and I looked at him and said “Dude!?” He just shrugged his shoulders and gave me this “Man, I don’t know…” look. He just dealt with it, their three kids just dealt with it. He passed away a couple of years ago during their 4 marriage. We’ll never know what was going on there…
My friend’s parents got divorced when she was in college and got remarried several years later and are close to twenty years into the second marriage. The wife decided that she wanted to be a Bohemian for a while and came back once she got it out of her system.
Yes, pretty much the same story, only my friend was a son.
Yes, my crazy granny got married to my grandpa, divorced for a few years, married again, divorced again, stayed divorced. In the divorced bit in the middle she had a kid (my uncle), not by my grandpa. I’m not entirely sure if anyone knows who his father is, even him. This was in the '40s, so there was the whole child-out-of-wedlock stigma. My grandma actually moved away from town for the duration and fostered my uncle out, so nobody would know. Then when she remarried grandpa, she got him back from the foster family, and raised him from about 5.
I suspect this was a Bad Idea. He’s kinda fucked up (we’re not on speaking terms since about 10 years ago). Whether this is anything to do with being hauled away from a home he was perfectly happy with at age 5 and forced to live with crazy granny, or just the general cumulative effects of most of a childhood of crazy-granny-ness, I can’t tell.
Frankly, I’m with Loach
Nup not going back there!
This about covers it for me, and I’d guess she feels the same way.
My maternal grandmother was married to her first husband for quite a while; some of their kids were pretty much grown when she divorced him for being “a mean drunk”. Then she married my grandfather and had two more kids; my mom was the youngest, born in 1926. That marriage did not last, and she moved to a farm owned by a family member for a few years. By this time, the Great Depression was in full swing, and she was a twice-divorced woman trying to raise two small children on her own. So when her first husband started coming around, she was willing to give him another try, but she should have known better. They remarried, and he put her into a house in town and things seemed to be going OK, until she found out that not only was he still a mean drunk, he earned his money as a pimp and wanted to use the place they were living in as a brothel (“Men and women! In MY house!”). Needless to say, she kicked his ass back to the curb. 
No way in Hell.
I’ve heard of this a bunch of times. Maybe some people don’t find the satisfaction they’ve had after a divorce and think their original marriage was better than anything they’d found after divorce.
A couple of special circumstances: I know of one case where a woman remarried her ex because he was dying from cancer and needed her health insurance (her plan from work didn’t exclude pre-existing conditions). And then there were people who pulled a tax scam by marrying and divorcing to repeatedly, though I think the IRS changed the rules to prevent this.
Didn’t we just…?
I know of this couple who’d simply break up (not get into the entire divorce stuff) and stay apart for months and when things cooled back, they’d patch up and live happily thence after. They have kids (who I’m sure have some serious problems understand the concept of a “normal” marriage.) but they stay at home despite either parent walking off.
In a way it is quite an efficient way of dealing with a tense situation but then again… almost like “running away” from the situation rather than talking it out face to face…
I had an aunt and uncle who were married close to 30 years, then divorced and spent a number of years apart, then remarried and have been together the second time for at least 10 years. They are very open about how they thought they had nothing in common any more after the kids were grown and had started their own families, but the years apart made them realize they were closer to each other than they could ever be to anybody else. I believe they each had relationships in between but neither of them married anyone else.
I can’t think of any other couple in my circle that this would have worked for, though. My mom and dad? No way. Someone would have died ;).
I’ve got an aunt who has been married seven or eight times, and husbands numbers three and five were the same. Or four and six. Or something.
I remember an argument she was having with someone and she huffed, “I know something about marriage.” to which the reply was “You know a lot about getting married, but nothing about marriage.”
Crazy woman, of course. But colorful. One of my father’s two younger sisters, I want to say the youngest. Grew up in poverty on a dirt farm outside a no-stoplight poke town in central Utah with a slightly paranoid, deaf and mute mother, less the father who abandoned them to a shed behind her grandfather’s house. They were raised during the depression on a tiny bit of welfare and whatever food the grandparents would give them.
As soon as she got through high school, she got the hell out of dodge, moving away from her Mormon roots and worked as a waitress in a dive in West Hollywood, and married the first guy who asked. As well as the second and third and forth and all the way down the line. My father hated his family so I barely knew her, until she suddenly got Mormonism again and was purer than the rest of us.
Her son was psychotic, and died of aids a few years back. Not sure where her daughter, grandkids and probable great grandkids are. The last I saw my cousins was almost 30 years ago.
You couldn’t escape that circumstance without being crazy. People just weren’t designed to grow up in that degree of chaos, uncertainly, abuse and lack of love so they turn out loony. You wind up with emotions which run hot and cold, love too much and hate too much. You find the wrong partners and never learn the right lessons.
My parents got divorced when I was around 1 or 2. They stayed divorced (lived apart) for a year or two and then got back together. They are still married (30+ years later).
Good to see my opinion has not changed. Or my eloquence.
Lulz…
Same here. Not just no way, but no fucking way.
Sometime during our long separation we discussed getting back together. Dispite the fact that she left me while I was in Iraq, took all my money and destroyed my life, I did consider it. It was Christmas and I was caught up in the moment. We had been married for almost ten years and together for almost 15. When I was able to think about it later on my own I realized that it wouldn’t work. I was willing to go through counseling (even though I knew she would make it all about me). I was willing to change (even though I knew she never would). But the fact that she was unwilling to break up with her boyfriend while we went through the process was a bit too much for me. I met my girlfriend a few weeks later and have been happy even since. I now know for the first time what its like to be with someone I am compatable with.
She left you while you were deployed in a combat zone? Jesus.
Like you needed additional stress in your life at that point in time.