Should You Get Married Again? What to Know Before Remarrying
I love answering your questions. And here's one that really got me thinking.
A reader wrote in recently. She's 68 years old, been married twice, divorced twice, and has been single for almost nine years. She's been dating a gentleman for about eight months, and they're getting close to the marriage conversation.
Her question: What do you think about getting married again later in life?
I want to share what I told her, because my answer applies to anyone considering remarriage at any age.
The remarriage divorce rate is higher than you think
I'll be direct with you. The statistics on marriage success go down the more times you get married.
According to Psychology Today, the divorce rate for first marriages in the U.S. is about 43%. For second marriages, it jumps to roughly 67%. And for third marriages, it's about 73%.
Those numbers aren't great. But here's what I told her, and it applies to anyone wondering whether they should try again:
It's your life. And you get to do what you want to do.
The statistics don't have to be your story. But only if you're willing to look at your own patterns honestly first.
Why relationship patterns repeat after divorce
So why does the divorce rate go up with each marriage? It's not because people are bad at relationships. It's because most people don't examine what they brought to the ones that didn't work.
When your first marriage falls apart, it's tempting to believe the problems were mostly your partner's fault. And some of them might have been. But that belief makes it easy to skip the harder question: What was my role in what went wrong?
Without that self-examination, unhealed patterns follow you into the next relationship. The triggers, the communication habits, the ways you shut down or get defensive - they don't disappear just because the person across from you changed.
Dr. John Gottman's research at The Gottman Institute confirms this. His decades of studying couples show that the same destructive communication patterns - criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling - predict divorce across all marriages, first or fifth. If you don't learn to recognize and interrupt those patterns, they'll show up again.
Try a "practice marriage" before making it legal
My hot take? Before getting married again, try "playing married" first.
I know that might sound unconventional, especially for someone from a generation where living together without being married wasn't always the norm. But there's real wisdom in giving yourself a trial run.
What I mean is this: live together intentionally. Not just cohabitating, but actively practicing being in a partnership. Share finances. Navigate conflict. Build routines. Make decisions together about the boring stuff - who handles the dishes, what happens when you disagree about how to spend the weekend, what it feels like when one of you needs space.
Do this without the legal, financial, and family complications that come with actually tying the knot. Without your kids going up in arms. Without the pressure of "forever" hanging over every disagreement.
Gottman's research supports this idea. He found that remarried couples can take up to four years to find equilibrium. A practice period gives you some of that adjustment time before you've signed papers.
What "playing married" will show you
Here's what a practice marriage can reveal that dating - even after eight months - won't:
What triggers surface when you share real life together. Not just date nights and weekend getaways, but the daily grind. The way they load the dishwasher. The tone they use when they're stressed. These are the things that test a relationship.
What old patterns from past relationships are still running on autopilot. Maybe you shut down when someone raises their voice. Maybe you over-function and do everything yourself instead of asking for help. These patterns don't just disappear because you're with someone new. They're wired in, and they need to be seen before they can shift.
Whether you can handle the hard, boring, Tuesday-night stuff together. Conflict, compromise, the mundane. That's where real partnership lives. Anyone can be great on a vacation. The real test is whether you can sit in the discomfort of an unresolved disagreement and still choose each other.
The question to ask yourself before remarrying
Whether you're considering getting married again, or you're already in a relationship and want to strengthen it, here's the one question I want you to sit with:
What was your contribution to the relationships that didn't work?
That's not a blame question. It's a growth question. And it's the one that most people skip, which is exactly why the same patterns show up in the next relationship.
As a therapist of 20+ years, I can tell you that the couples who do the best aren't the ones who never had problems. They're the ones who got honest about their own stuff and chose to do the work. That work can start before you ever walk down an aisle again.
A caveat: this isn't just advice for remarriage
Even though this question came from a 68-year-old considering her third marriage, this advice isn't limited to remarriage. It applies to anyone in a relationship, at any age or stage.
Your patterns don't care how old you are. They don't care if it's your first relationship or your fourth. They just keep repeating until someone gets curious enough to look at them.
And that's what I care most about in my work - helping people break the patterns they inherited so they can build something healthier. Not just for themselves, but for the people around them. The kids who are watching. The next generation who will learn about love from what we model.
Here's your homework
Whether you're single, dating, or already married, take 10 minutes this week and write down the top 3 patterns you've noticed in your relationships. Focus on the ways you showed up that in retrospect you'd want to do differently.
That kind of honest self-reflection is where real change starts.
If you want a structured way to go deeper, my Relationship Reboot course walks you through examining your patterns and rebuilding your communication from the ground up. It's six modules of practical tools and scripts you can start using right away.
Rooting for you,
👉 P.S. Want more ways to shift your communication patterns?
Start here:
Loop Breaker – The toolkit to help stop fights before they spiral out of control
Annual Relationship Review – A free resource to help you reflect, reconnect, and recommit
Take the Connection Quiz – Find out how strong your foundation really is
