REBOUNDERS, BEWARE!
If you have decided, immediately following your divorce, that it is high time to find the next spouse, think again. Recent studies have confirmed that marriage success rates for second marriages evolving from rebounds often have a significantly higher probability of failure as did the first marriage. Veteran Star magazine and NY Daily News relationship expert and astrologer, Jennifer Angel, cautions:
- Do you want desperately to fill the love-void at any cost?
- Does your new love look like a dead ringer for your first spouse, or have the same traits?
- Are you falling into the same bad traps as with the first spouse?
Chances are you will be heading from the frying pan into the fire if you are jumping into marriage too soon after going through a rough divorce. You need to understand your reasons for wanting to marry so quickly. Some people are in such a rush to remarry, either for their kids, families, the Jones’, etc., that they even set a quick wedding date in their head soon after meeting the first person they date after their divorce is final. Or maybe they start dating even before their divorces are final…whatever the reason, rebounders need validation that they are good people, and often subconsciously look for relationships or traits that mirror their first marriages, instead of listening to what their heart is telling them about their true love feelings. Infatuation dies early on in marriage, the dust settles and resentment starts to set in.
THE REBOUND PARTNER MAY BE TOO NEEDY, LOOKING FOR AN INSTANT SPOUSE REPLACEMENT, RIGHT AFTER, OR DURING, THEIR DIVORCE, AND YOU MAY BECOME THE VICTIM OF INSINCERITY
Cathy Meyer, a therapist who has written extensively about rebound relationships, cautions against marrying a rebounder. Meyer says that the person you are about to marry is needy and vulnerable, and may be marrying as a coping mechanism, instead of dealing with internal conflicts directly. Rebounders choose the easy way out, convincing themselves that remarriage to the first person they meet is the answer; that the rebound marriage will solve all their problems. It isn’t. Marriage will only get worse, and harder for the rebounder(s) if they don’t deal with their emotions before pursuing another marriage. Meyer says that the new relationship is the extreme cover up of what may actually be going on inside of that person.
AVOID BEING THE RESCUER OR YOU MAY BE VULNERABLE TO ANOTHER DIVORCE
While rescuing friends and loved ones after divorce is admirable, know that the person pursuing you and the rebound relationship is relying on you to rescue them. Not a good place for you to be because you are vulnerable to instability in the form of waffling actions and feelings; and the other person distancing themself from you when things get hard or when the infatuation wears off. The new rebound spouse may be a fill-in for the person who your partner truly loved, but never dealt with properly. Your partner may be searching for the void, resulting in a true tragedy if you realize early into your marriage that it all happened too quickly, and without careful time spent really getting to know the other person. Rebound marriages (engagements that occur typically within one year after meeting someone) rarely maintain a sustained love by both parties.
REBOUND MARRIAGES HAVE HISTORICALLY LACKED SUSTAINED ROMANCE OR PASSION, AS WELL-KNOWN ANALYSTS REPORT
Yes, this is true. Meyer warns that a quick rebound marriage is a result of an attempted quick fix for problems that were never properly resolved, and a quick attraction that can’t be sustained because it was never real at the core in the first place. The lack of romantic feelings you may have felt for your first spouse may come back the second time around. What a shame it would be to one day wake up and discover that you were really never in love with this second spouse, but used them as a band-aid, as well-known author and psychologist, Gilda Carle, reiterates.
IT’S POSSIBLE YOU ARE STILL THINKING ABOUT YOUR EX LOVE SO MUCH THAT IT TAKES OVER YOUR THOUGHTS IN YOUR EVERYDAY LIFE
An experienced and brilliant therapist with a large national following, Denise Young, once told me that the “more you tell yourself NOT to think about someone the more you do”. If you can’t get your mind off your previous love you must come to terms with the fact that you are still in love with that other person, and deal with the feelings before your life begins to unravel again, becoming so unsettling that your health suffers. Many people enter rebound relationships just to try to cure a difficult situation or to quickly forget. Again, Denise Young says–”it isn’t that easy. Especially if you were in love with the love of your life, and for a few decades. How can you get over that person? Why did you walk away? You were perfect together. You, and you, alone, must come to terms with that person before you can move on like that relationship never existed. If your previous relationship lasted so long and the love was so strong there must have been a magnetic force keeping your love alive. That love will usually stand the test of time”, says Young.
DECIDE WHETHER YOU WANT TO REMARRY QUICKLY AFTER THE DIVORCE
You may have been married almost twenty years to someone else whom you got to know intimately well. But now you are content just jumping into something that you aren’t really deep down comfortable with in your heart? Below are tips from the professionals about shopping for Spouse #2, and knowing when the time is right, and not just a big distraction:
- Do you or do you think your partner still thinks about the former love constantly, especially at the end of the day, longing for what you had that was so perfect?
- Have you noticed your partner having difficulty losing weight, or seems unmotivated to get in shape due to the unresolved feelings of the previous relationship? Has his or her confidence gone down a lot since their divorce?
- Have you read the unabridged copy of your partner’s divorce documents? Divorce documents are open to the public and fairly easy to get at any county court house. You want to make sure all the pages are still in the file, because the papers are public and can be tampered with or confiscated from the physical file. Divorce documents will possibly reveal affairs, behavior patterns, pornography, alcohol or sex addictions, abuse, etc…. You may want to read divorce documents with a grain of salt, but some additional knowledge over what you already know will be very beneficial.
- Remember, most importantly, that there are two sides to the story; not just your partner’s side. Have you been brave enough to ask to meet your partner’s first spouse? You should meet the first spouse, and if you already have, does he or she look just like you? Or act like you, or have the same taste in clothes, same body shape, same decorating taste, etc.? Have you talked with your partner’s first spouse about their feelings about your partner and the cause of their divorce or the reason for their marriage? Although there are always two sides to every story, you want to err on the side of caution this time around, minimizing your chances for another failed marriage. If you are too similar to your partner’s ex that could be a warning for what may go wrong in your marriage to that person.
- Does your partner feel a sense of urgency just to get married? For the sake of kids, or social circles, maybe a job? Did you get engaged at a very specific time, like exactly one year after your divorces, or exactly one year after meeting? Or right before some big event in your lives? This, too, could be a warning sign of a potentially doomed relationship, or a wedding that seems staged for children or family and friends.
- Do you really know what your partner craves or needs, deep down? It takes years to learn all you can about a person, and then you may still not know the real person. If your love is really true you will always know what their partner needs and how to show them their needs are being met by you.
- Is it possible that your partner is really just eager to show the world that he or she wasn’t at fault in their first marriage, and that the new marriage with you will prove that? Usually marital breakdowns are a result of two people, and not just one person. Again, rushing in may be the first sign of disaster. Remember how your first marriage went wrong, and don’t repeat what you learned the first time around.
- How did your partner’s first marriage end? Did it end amicably? You can tell a lot about a person’s true character when times are bad. So in the case of the first marriage, did your partner abandon their first partner, without having any conversation, for the person to discover some other way? How were problems dealt with? People that quickly walk away from one relationship are often the same people who quickly walk into another relationship.
- Does your partner remember your birthday and holidays? Does he or she seem sincerely interested in you and all that goes on, good and bad, in your life, or are you there to just take care of them and their needs? If they can’t be generous or remember you and your birthday or holidays, or other meaningful days, they are holding back, and you need to determine the reason.
- Does your partner talk about having more children, when between the two of you, there are already several children? How will you afford to pay for all of these children, who will need to go to college, especially if you are still supporting your ex? Voids can be easily fixed by just having more kids; but having additional kids is not the solution to the void. Therapy and couples relationship counseling may help, but having more kids will not help.
A TOUCHING AND MEMORABLE PERSONAL STORY
About twenty years ago, I met a much older man named named Steve, while I was on vacation with my girlfriend, who told me that he once almost made the mistake of his life by almost marrying a woman right after his own divorce. More than anything, Steve wanted a stepmother for his children because of all the guilt he felt. Though Steve found a woman who seemed to be a carbon copy of Julie Andrews in the Sound of Music, a friend recommended that Steve look at her divorce documents, to make sure Steve wasn’t making a rash decision.
Though at first astonished that his friend would even recommend that Steve look at his partner’s divorce papers, Steve decided one day that maybe it would be safer for him going into his second marriage without having second thoughts, and by reading his mate’s divorce documents he would feel more secure. What Steve discovered while reading her file kept him up all night that night. Surprisingly, the only thing his partner asked from her first spouse in the divorce was to maintain her membership dues at her country club, and money for monthly highlights to maintain her light blond hair. She also mentioned that she didn’t like the way her ex wrapped birthday presents that would be presented at little kids’ birthday parties, and that going forward, she would expect nice gift-wrapping for all birthday presents. There was absolutely nothing in the documents about her bond with her children, or their emotional well-being! She showed that she was out for herself, and not for anyone else, including her kids.
Steve started thinking about all the clubs this woman joined when going through her divorce, and really beforehand. Steve saw the writing on the wall—she just wanted to find a spouse that would fit the ticket for her image, and cared less about who that person really was on the inside.
Steve couldn’t believe what he was reading. I was surprised when Steve told me that he decided to contact her ex to see if what he was reading and interpreting was actually true. Her ex confirmed that these were the demands and sentiments of the woman; and in fact, the woman had engaged in a short-term affair with another man she believed had more money than her ex. I asked Steve at what point did he realize that he should back out of the relationship.
On his way way home from his partner’s ex-husband’s house Steve said he asked himself over and over, ”Is this is going to be the woman that I really want to be the stepmother of my children? This otherwise really pretty ordinary woman, both in looks and in personality, who I learned, along the way, had very little money from her ex, a pretty dead-end job, and who personified herself as a true child-loving family-minded and conservative woman with good values who lived in a nice part of town, turned out to be a self-centered gold-digger, looking simply to find a middle-aged man with a good job, who could give her the grand house and lifestyle of her dreams, which was fine except for the part about her true colors and motivations for marrying me.” Steve asked himself, “What had I done with my life, and what kind of values did I come to have?” Luckily, Steve said he backed out in time, before the repeat of his first marriage occured. A few years later Steve married a wonderful person, who he realized in the process of healing, truly loved him for all of his qualities, not just for his job, grand house and car, and was a kind and compassionate person, who Steve never had the chance to marry when they were young; Steve married his college sweetheart, a woman he is so thankful he has every single day. I will never forget this story.
