After her first marriage ended in divorce Clover Stroud vowed she'd never walk down the aisle again. A decade on she's tied the knot again and is trying to do things very differently...
Photo: LAURA HYND
Never say never again, they say, but when I got divorced, I did just that. I cancelled the gas bill that addressed me as ‘Mrs’ and took off my wedding ring. My finger looked startlingly naked after the glint of gold, but I liked the terse brevity of ‘Ms’.
It suited the new way I felt about myself. Marriage, I insisted to anyone who would listen, was something I’d never, never do again. I was all of 28. But I should never have said never again.
Less than a decade later, I’ve done all the things I said I’d never do – promise to love one person above any other, and yoke my future to his, to say nothing of the dress, the ring and the shared gas bill – again. But being a second wife feels as different from being a first wife as running feels from swimming: they’re different experiences, and just as I can run a marathon but don’t like swimming, I’m hoping that, second time around, I’m better at marriage.
Statistically, this shouldn’t be the case. Statistically, the odds are stacked very much against me, with 60 per cent of second marriages ending in divorce.
A second marriage might be kindled in a mood of triumph, with the optimism of hope over experience, but it will always bring with it challenges the first marriage never faced. Baggage, after all, makes every journey more complicated.
Clover with her second husband, Pete
Along with two very small children, I left my first marriage with enough baggage to require my own baggage handler, and it needed unpacking before I could even attempt another serious relationship, let alone get married again. And a second marriage also has the spectre of the first marriage to contend with.
Left unchecked, that ghost can haunt the present by leaving an imprint of predetermined failure on the new relationship. If I fight with my second husband, I sometimes have to try to silence the tiny voice in my head that starts saying this is the way all marriages end, and here is the past repeating itself.
I understand making this second marriage work isn’t down to luck, to having made the ‘right’ decision this time as opposed to the ‘wrong’ decision last time, but is destined by choice, and me choosing to make the marriage work, rather than let that voice or that ghost overwhelm me.
‘It’s important to think of the second marriage as a separate relationship to the first, and understand there is no overlap of experience with the first,’ says the clinical psychologist Pauline Rennie-Peyton. ‘Subconsciously, the experience of first-time failure will be strong, however optimistic you feel about the new relationship. In a second marriage you have to look at your husband and tell yourself clearly this is different.
'Making that distinction is important, as second marriages can be threatened by memory of divorce as a self-fulfilling prophecy. If your second husband does something your first husband did, you have to resist the temptation to see this as a pattern from the past repeating itself.’
A decade has passed between my two marriages, and as I’ve got better at life, I’ve got better at love, too. We know life is short and time flies along, but a decade in which to take a hard look at my behaviour, and acknowledge the role I’d played in the breakdown of my marriage, occasionally felt like a very long time.
Clover and Pete's wedding car on the day they got married
Understanding that role wasn’t something I wanted to do – or even knew how to do – when, aged 27, I extricated myself from a marriage that started three years before as a pregnant bride. I have absolutely no regrets about my first marriage, despite our divorce, because it was founded on love, even if that love was youthful and unrealistic; we produced two beautiful and wonderful children, and then unravelled very fast.
The journey from the flower-lined aisle to the harsh lighting of a solicitor’s office is always painful. And it’s hard, when hurt, not to point the finger of blame at the other partner. I was angry and hurt, so of course I blamed my ex-husband! But after the swirling drama of decree nisis and decree absolutes, and what to do with my wedding ring and photographs, and after my new world order of life as a single mum had found a rhythm, I had quietly to admit to myself that I was partly responsible for the mess.
While a new, long-term relationship was the last thing I wanted, I knew I had to tackle my own issues before I could imagine life with anyone else.
‘Accepting divorce is always down to two people is really important before embarking on a second marriage. It’s never about one person, even if it feels like it at the time. If you go into a second relationship feeling self-righteous, that the first relationship went wrong purely because of the other partner, the chances are you’ll find yourself in the same place again,’ says Rennie-Peyton. ‘If you go on doing what you’ve always done, your relationships will never change, and some of the things that caused the first divorce will harm the second marriage. Acknowledging you have to change, and not heaping all the blame on the other person, will make embarking on a second marriage easier.’
Making those changes meant learning that stepping down from the winners’ podium in an argument is stronger than insisting on having the last word.
It meant acknowledging that slammed doors don’t achieve anything other than cracked plaster. It meant understanding that sometimes it’s better to confront your own worries – tax bills, deadlines, the children’s reports – than dump them on your partner as he walks in the door.
It meant learning that time together, alone, without children or Blackberries, should be fought hard for, and that tiny acts of everyday kindness to one another add up to something valuable.
Mastering the art of map reading in the car, making a really cracking fish pie and applying a bit of mascara before saying goodbye to my husband and heading out on the school run have probably all helped, too.
Getting better at life and love also meant learning to be realistic about grown-up life, and accepting it can feel relentlessly hard and unfair, but that that’s just how it has to be. After the sting of divorce, it would be easy to enter a second marriage lulled into a false sense of security, with a feeling that things can’t go wrong again because lightning doesn’t strike twice. But all relationships bring with them their own unique issues.
The pause between first and second marriage also helped me identify what I didn’t want to be as a second wife.
I didn’t want to get stuck in a role – the put-upon mother, the domestic drudge – within the relationship. I wanted a malleable relationship that could change shape to face the challenges life throws up, and I wanted someone who loves both the intimacy of domestic life and the thrill of unknown lands when the horizon of the kitchen table becomes suffocating. I knew I needed a mate who likes constant talk as much as I do, and I wanted to find my equal, in every sense of the word. It goes without saying that that person would also have to be big-hearted enough to accept that I brought two children to the relationship.
Wanting and getting are different things, especially when you want as much as I did, so I was very lucky when a friend from university called me out of the blue and asked me for a drink. We met, we liked each other a lot, but we didn’t start going out together for several months. That gave us a moment to catch our breaths – a good thing, because once our relationship did gain momentum, the fact I had children meant we didn’t have much time to bask in the present.
Clover and Pete on their wedding day with Jimmy and Dolly – Clover's children from her first marriage
‘Second marriages involving children can be really challenging. As a couple you hit the ground running, with none of that period of grace – of slowly getting to know one another alone, and of time to fall in love gradually – on which successful relationships without children are built,’ says Mary Ownis, 39, who had been divorced for two years, with twins aged seven, when she met her second husband, with whom she has a two-year-old son. ‘Later you can use your experiences of having had kids to make the challenges of new parenthood easier, if you decide to have more children, but to start with it puts huge pressures on your second marriage.’
Becoming a new stepfamily is difficult, but I am in no doubt the children enhance our relationship in (almost) every way. Having divorced their father, I owe it to them to make our life together really happy, and I’ve learnt from the way my children have wholeheartedly thrown themselves into our new family life, embracing my husband as their stepfather in the most generous way. These two children – now nine and 12 – set the bar very high, and I’m determined not to let them or their new sister, who is just a few months old, down.
Their existence also reminds me that looking to the long picture will make the difference between success and failure second time around. I made the mistake in my twenties of thinking happiness could be instantaneous. Now I work harder on ignoring the short-term worries; and I’m more determined not to let small irritations ruin the bigger picture.
So far I’ve only told you about the hard work, the mistakes and painful lessons learnt, that have gone into making me a better second wife. But it’s not all hard work. There’s something relaxing, for example, about knowing we’ve come into this marriage from a point of imperfection with the shadow of divorce behind us. We’ve never faced the pressures of being that ideal, 2.4-children nuclear family, because we can’t be. The messiness of our status is calming.
‘I never felt the claustrophobia of fulfilling the nuclear dream in my second marriage,’ says Anna Barkes, 45, who had three sons under 10 when she married her second husband. ‘I was divorced with rowdy kids, and I was actually relieved feeling that the milk had already been spilt on the floor. It was liberating and has made me live my life as a wife more fully. Knowing you can never have the perfect set-up lets you off the hook and allows you to relax and enjoy it more.’
Clover and Pete with Jimmy, Dolly (Clover's children from her first marriage) and their daughter Evangeline
Having been in a marriage that went totally wrong might have made me extra vigilant about cracks appearing this time around, but it’s also helped me appreciate and understand what it is that makes the marriage go right, too.
When my first marriage was failing, I went to see a marriage therapist, who said she wished more couples saw her when they were happy so they could get better at perpetuating that feeling.
‘A second marriage teaches you how to keep checks on your relationship, in good times as well as bad,’ says Janice Hillier, a clinical psychologist at the Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships. ‘You get better at identifying when things are wrong, and act more quickly to resolve them. As a second wife you’re very motivated to make it work, and have learnt how to communicate your own needs better.’
Hillier believes that it’s knowing how high the stakes of failing to communicate are that can make a second marriage easier, as well as the fact that as a second wife, you’re probably more relaxed about accepting the other’s imperfections, rather than struggling to change them.
‘I let my second husband get away with things I would have made a huge scene about first time around,’ agrees Barkes. ‘First time I thought I could change these things. As a second wife, I’m better at letting them be, and accepting that they are what make up the whole person. I’m less agitated as a second wife, calmer.’
Time, of course, will be the harshest judge on whether I’ve really learnt the lessons of my divorce. My second marriage makes me incredibly happy; my husband is my ally and truly my best friend, and I don’t want to go through life without him. But I’m also realistic, and I know that with three children and demanding careers, home life isn’t always going to be roses round the door.
We face the same challenges and problems as any couple. But I hope this time I really am right, because getting married is something I never, ever want to do again.
Source:- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/9955427/Second-marriage-better-wife.html
