2nd marriage. Learning to be better or keeping up appearances

[Chchchanger]

Do men try harder in second marriages?
Or do they try harder to not let another woman tell everyone they're still a twat?

Just wondering if men really learn and change or if they're just more aware that if they get divorced a second time it'll look really bad.
I mean you can pretend once your ex wife was 'crazy' and you were the victim because you have a new wife that is still there. If the second wife leaves or marriage breaks down, your story of being a victim starts to look less plausible.

I guess I just wonder how many second marriages are built on more understanding and less thoughts of leaving because of this.
Whether it's really because they don't want a failed marriage again or because they genuinely learn from the first.

Look at Ross from friends. 3 failed marriages.
What draws a woman to someone on their 3rd marriage? Does it happen in real life?

@Santaischeckinglists

My dh is my 4th dh. He knows I now accept no shit.. So he gives me none! He knew in our first conversation I had been married 3 times. He didn't judge me.

🤣🤣 I'd wonder what you were doing at no 2 never mind 4!!! That's a lot if self punishment

@SweeneyToddler

Based solely on my personal observations of marriages around me-

I think women are much more likely to justify things to themselves. Man married multiple times? Poor lamb obviously unfortunate to have met psycho women. Man ruined his marriage(s) due to his own shitty behaviour? Well, he obviously didn’t love those women enough to change but this time it’s different…

I really think this is true. Women can be so horrible about other women and lacking in self esteem that I think they might believe him when he says his ex was crazy, or if he says that then they spend so long trying to be the opposite, squeezing and altering themselves into the cool girl role. Like the example above about ex being in pjs all day so new wife in lingerie all day. Maybe second wives feed this narrative by being or trying to be 'better'. Not so much a pick me dance but a keep me one.

Probably starts to crack when they hear the same stuff the man said about his ex, now being said about them.

When ex remarried he picked his wife very carefully, she speaks no English, has no family here and believes, according to the letter she wrote to court that the survivor of DV is 50% responsible.

@thepinknecklace

Interesting....

I worked with for woman who was married to a man who’d left his first wife because apparently she was “a slob” who wore her pyjama bottoms about the house

His second wife (my boss) always wore jeans, nice top around the house and negligees to bed etc. I thought the husband sounded like a prick and she was trying to keep up appearances. She was a dick as well tbh.

How do you know what your boss wears to bed?

I am my husband's 4th wife. I've lasted longer than any of the others - but each marriage ended for different reasons, rather than there being a repeating pattern. I knew when we got together how bad it looked on paper but I was certain we would work. And we do.

I was widowed young at 19 [5 months], divorced [6 years], widowed during divorce proceedings [14 months] and now been married very happily for 20 years.
Finally found THE ONE, his 3rd marriage too,

Can't really generalise: there are as many second marriages as there are first marriages.

Your post is a bit loaded: it seems to imply firstly that all first marriages fail because of men's infidelity and secondly that people whose first marriages have failed have done so because they are not good people. In fact there are a million reasons why a marriage can break down and while cheating certainly plays a part in some its not always the case.

FWIW I think quite a lot of people marry (the first time) far too young, before they really know themselves or what they want when they would have been better off staying single longer.

I've seen plenty of serial cheaters who can't make a committed relationship work and I'm sure a lot of men in particular fail to learn these lessons from a failed marriage. But I've also seen people use a first marriage to learn about themselves and what they actually need from a relationship and try to build on it.