o Conflict confuses us. Our ability to learn about relationships shuts down precisely when marriage begins to get tough--and they all get tough. Conflict is all inevitable part of relationships. But many people have no idea how to resolve the conflict; they see it instead as a sign that there's something wrong with the relationship and their partner. With low expectations about their own ability, to resolve conflict, explains psychologist Clifford Notarius, Ph.D., professor of psychology at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., people go into alarm mode. This distorts the couple's communication even further and prevents any learning from taking place. "When a husband hears 'let's talk about money,' he knows what's coming," says Notarius. "He doesn't think anything different can happen. He shuts down."
o Conflict rigidifies us. Arguments engage the Twin Terminators of relationship life: blame and defensiveness. These big and bad provocateurs destroy everything in their path, pushing partners further apart and keeping them focused on each other.
Invariably, marriage experts insist, whether in the first marriage or the fourth, couples tend to trip over the same mistakes. No. 1 on the list of errors is unrealistic expectations. A decline in intensity is normal and to be expected, says Notarius, but it opens the potential for a relationship to evolve into something wonderful, a developmental journey of adult growth. Only in supportive relationships can we deal with our personal demons and life disappointments. We get the reassurance of having a partner who will be there no matter what, someone who can sit through our personal struggle for the hundredth time and support us. The promise of long-term relationships is the sharing of the secret self."
Absent this awareness, partners tend to start down the road to divorce as soon as the intensity wanes. Happiness, observes Pat Love, Ph.D., a marital therapist based in Austin, Texas, is the ratio between what you expect and what you get. "You have to suffer the clash of fantasy with reality in some relationship," adds Notarius. "Either you do it in the first relationship or you have 10 first relationships."
How To Remarry
Why is remarriage so difficult? The short answer is because it follows divorce. People who divorced are in a highly vulnerable state. They know what it's like to have a steady dose of love, that life's burdens are better when shared. But, says Love, "They're hungry. And when you're hungry, you'll eat anything." The longing for comfort, for deep intimacy, impels the divorced to rush back into a married state. Says Love: "People tend to want to step in where they stepped out. They want to go back into the woodwork of marriage."
Yet prospective remarriage partners need to build a relationship slowly, experts agree. "They need to know each other individually and jointly," says Robert E Stahmann, Ph.D., professor of family sciences and head of the Marriage Preparation Research Project at Brigham Young University. "This means time for bonding as a couple because the relationship will be under stress from each partner's various links to the past," none more tangible than children and stepchildren.
Couples also need enough time to allow for the cognitive and emotional reorganization that must take place. Says Love, "You've got to replace the image in your head of what a man or a woman is like based on your ex. It happens piece by piece, as with a jigsaw puzzle, not like a computer with the flick of a switch."
When choosing a mate the second time around, people typically look for traits and tendencies exactly opposite those of their first partner. A woman whose first husband was serious and determined will tend to look for someone more fun. "Unfortunately," observes Howard K. Markman, Ph.D., "to the extent that they are making conscious choices, they are looking at the wrong factors." At the University of Denver, where he is professor of psychology, Markman and his colleagues are videotaping couples in a second marriage who were also studied in a first marriage.
"The motivation to do it differently is there," says the researcher, "and that is good. But they don't know exactly what to do differently. They're not making changes in how they conflict, which is predictive of relationship quality."
Further, he notes, both parties need to use the second marriage to become better partners themselves. "They both need to nourish the relationship on a daily basis... and refrain from things [such as hurling insults at one another] that threaten the marriage in the face of disappointments."
o Learn to Love Complexity. There is even more opportunity for conflict and disappointment in remarriages because the challenges are greater. "There are always at least four people in bed," says Love. "Him, her, his ex and her ex. Not to mention the kids." The influence of exes is far from over with remarriage. Exes live on in memories, in daydreams, and often in reality, arriving to pick up and deliver the kids, exerting parental needs and desires that have to be accommodated, especially at holiday and vacation times. The ex's family--the children's grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins--remains in the picture, too. "When you remarry," says Brigham Young's Larson, "you marry a person--and that person's ex-spouse." It just comes with the territory.
o Defuse Anger, Vent Grief. Nothing keeps exes, and the past itself, more firmly entrenched in the minds of one-time spouses than anger. But we can minimize anger by finding ways to minimize the impact of ghosts from the past.
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