Getting Married Again - Rebuttal

A Response to "Getting Married Again" (blogpost dated 1 September)

by FIERY Fiona

Didn’t we all marry fictional characters the first (or second) time around?? Most of us tried to fit a real character into our fictional idea of what we wanted a marriage, husband or wife to be - that’s usually our first mistake! 

My daughter wants me to get married again so she can be in the wedding - the fantasy of a Prince and Princess - thanks Disney! (Be careful! Disney has a bad habit of killing off the Mother. I still haven’t recovered from watching Bambi when I was little!)

Let’s look at what our next fairytale marriage might look like. OK, OK! We’re All done with the fairytale at this point! Perhaps there’s a marriage that we admire? I think most of us can come up with one of those!  Most of us will look to a couple who has been married for a long time (20+ years?) and admire how they made it there.  Like the couple I ran into one day at the coffee shop on a quiet Sunday morning - not so quiet after my 3 children came barreling in announcing that they want doughnuts and hot chocolate to anyone who could help them. The couple could not have looked more content sitting on the couch reading the Sunday paper and enjoying their coffee together (no conversation necessary anymore). The only thing better may have been staying in bed together enjoying that paper and first cup of coffee. They smiled at my energetic children and then at me and reassured me that they’ve been there too and it will fly by...so enjoy! Ahhh……the joy of knowing that you made through the first 20 years of marriage and parenthood and came out the other side still together!!

Sure they still have those idiosyncrasies that drive each other crazy - how many times did you have to turn the toilet paper roll around the right way, pick up the dirty clothes next to the laundry hamper or take the empty coffee cups out of the car?? After 20+ years, those idiosyncrasies don’t change or go away, but at some point they become part of that person and part of what you learn to love and appreciate about them.  Those of us who are divorced never came out the other side of that marriage where you learned to love and appreciate each other with all of our faults - and we all have plenty of them!! 

For those of us who are divorced and contemplating whether getting married again is even something that we want, the hurdles can be even more insurmountable than the first (or second) time around. Can you actually trust someone again to “love, honor, respect, protect, obey…”?  The challenge of raising children and step-children together can be more challenging than raising your own children together. Then there are also the unmentionable ex-spouses that never really go away...and as much as we all try to live in an amicable relationship with them, they will always have that special ability to take a perfectly pleasant day and turn it sour with the drop of one quick comment - just because they can. How many different relationships do you really want to try to juggle?? Then again, someone has to keep our beloved therapists in practice!!

In the end though, we all want that one special fictional character to become reality. We want to grow together and enjoy life with someone special so that all those challenges along the way don’t seem so insurmountable. So whoever your fictional character may be - Prince Charming, Cinderella, Mr. Cocoa, or Lemony Snicket - we’ve all created someone that we are looking for to enjoy life with!