Jimbo's Jots

Myth #4 in Shauti Feldhahn’s book, The Good News About Marriage: Debunking discouraging myths about marriage and divorce, tackles a misunderstanding of remarriage. Again, it’s one of those, “you’ve heard it said” but in actuality, prior to her research, the statistics were not there.

The 4th myth is that a majority of remarriages where a first marriage ended in a divorce would likely end in divorce as well. In her own research to follow up with this myth, she found that many of the reputable sources that have been quoted, admitted to not even being connected to the source. So basically what happened was people using the source as proof for their point, would cite a source as factual. She was seeing statistics showing up to 73 percent of second marriages ending in divorce.

So Feldhahn took it upon herself to review this on her own. What she found was there were some a majority of remarriages lasted. In her research, she found that 65 percent of women in second marriages were still married to their spouse. For various reasons, couples who admittedly were in their second marriage had reasons for why the second marriage stuck when the first one didn’t. And I think you will find some similar traits we’ve talked about before:

• Time – many of those she found who were in a second marriage stated their first marriage had ended fairly early in the marriage i.e. less than five years
• Commitment – having acknowledged the early mistakes in their first marriage, many in a second marriage have made a commitment to the relationship. They admit that being in a relationship is hard, but they committed to staying in the marriage.

So we learn to trust in the power of commitment whether we are in our first marriage or we are in a second marriage. We learn to move beyond our own brokenness and trust that God and our partner’s words of dedication.

Be blessed and be a blessing wherever you go!