On the board and in real life I’m aware of individuals that have been married many times. Whats the angle? I guess for some ‘gold diggers’ its a continuous series of support, but what about the men? Dopers will mention brothers, uncles, grandfathers with multiple wives, past and present. I’m wondering what the appeal is of getting married a second/third/fourth/etc time? I heard an anecdote that every divorce a person has increases their likelihood of getting divorced in the future. I’m guessing this is due to poor taste in partners, drug/alcohol habits or mental health problems.
I can understant some people getting into bad situations before they were wise enough to know better. But someone thats on their third/fourth/fifth spouse obviously knows how things might play out, but still continues. Why? If they are lonely, they don’t need to be married to someone for companionship. Multiple ex spouses must clean out a person. Why keep trying something that obviously didn’t work the last 3 tries?
My dad’s been married 5 times. First time, I don’t really know, I wasn’t around, but it didn’t last long. Second time was my mom. My mom and his 3rd wife (who I actually liked) both divorced him over his drinking. Then he quit drinking and got with his 4th wife. That lasted a while but she was a bitch and eventually they got divorced. He really hates being alone though and quickly got into online dating to meet someone else, who apparently doesn’t like being alone either because her divorce wasn’t even final yet and I’m not sure if his was either when they were going on dating sites. Now they’ve been married for 14 years though. They might actually stay together. I don’t quite get their relationship though, they seem kind of superficially/fake nice to each other. Well, she seems like that with everyone really.
Some people just can’t stand being alone so much that they marry the first person they can find, which obviously makes it less likely to work out. Just as common are people who won’t break up with one boyfriend or girlfriend until they have the next one lined up. All of these people drive me nuts.
In the case of my 5 times married FIL, I believe that this is the driving reason. Fear of being alone, especially when driven by self doubt/loathing, can also lead to self medication through alcohol and drugs which raises the likelihood of divorce.
I started getting defensive reading the OP. I’ve been married three times. But then I realized, if this one doesn’t work out (it’s been as close to perfect so far as I could imagine) I’ll probably hang it up for good.
You mention “gold diggers” as if they are all women. I’m sure there have been a few men who also married for money. Not that it’s fair to assume that every match involving people with very disparate resources is a case of gold digging.
You also assume that anyone who has been through multiple divorces would be “cleaned out.” Not every divorce involves children or a great deal of money. In many cases, neither partner had much money to begin with, they haven’t accumulated a lot along the way, and they don’t have children. (I speak from experience, having divorced my first husband after five years. There was no child support and no alimony. We had only owned a house for a few years so the profit from the sale barely paid the realtor’s commission, and there was very little to split up.)
My friends father was married 7 or 8 times.
I have no idea why he married all those times other than he had trouble keeping his pants zipped.
Who I never understood were wives 4-8, because I would think long and hard about marrying somebody who had been divorced that many times.
What was funny, not in the haha way, was that he always managed to get out of paying child support. My friend isn’t sure how many half/step siblings she has. However her father adopted the children of one of his wives and they were the ones he ended up paying child support for.
I don’t know, only been married once, still married. My observation of a couple of friends with multiple marriages is that they like being married, and they don’t think they have to be married to just one person forever. It’s similar to the people who hate being alone, except they don’t just marry the first person they meet, and they don’t go into it thinking it will last forever either.
To add to this from another angle, some marriages are between people who both have resources already. I have clients who got married recently and are both bringing six-figure investment portfolios into the marriage and they have prenups that keep these assets separate in case of divorce. For them, a divorce is not a financial hardship.
It could be that the marriages ended for different reasons. I have one friend who’s on his fourth marriage, and one wife left him because he was too obsessed with his work, and one left him for a woman. (I’m not sure what happened to the third.)
Me neither. And I’m wondering the mindset of a person who marries a person that’s been divorced 3+ times. Even if it’s not their fault in any of them, it reflects their taste in partners.
There are legal benefits to marriage, such as health care and inheritance issues. Some of these legal benefits can be navigated without marriage, but all of those methods involve getting the lawyers involved up front. With a marriage, you only need the lawyers to get out of it.
Some people also see it as a moral issue. Of course, why they see cohabitating as being a worse sin than divorce is a question for them and their priest…
They seemed to at the time. I still know the guys, but I have no contact with their previous spouses after the divorces. Each of the splits I was around for seemed to be mutually agreed upon, but people will say that sometimes even it’s not really that way.
What he said. I am working my way through a divorce and I can totally see myself getting married again. The rights that you get with that little piece of paper are quite extensive. A lot easier that trying to put together a cohabitation agreement yourself.
