How Successful Are Second Marriages? What The Research Really Tells Us 

Going through an unsuccessful marriage and subsequent divorce can really change your entire understanding of relationships, the sometimes fantasy-like meanings and expectations we assign to them, and what's really practical. To feel this sense of skepticism is only normal after your experiences.

Ah, but then there's that exceedingly unpractical thing called love, which can always find a way to sneak into even the most decidedly closed hearts. You meet someone new, you feel things you haven't felt in years, and suddenly you're back to questioning everything. No matter how much we think we've learned from our past relationships that tells us to be cautious, that warm feeling called love can make us suddenly willing to take all the same risks all over again. And that's not a bad thing—it's one of the great joys of the human experience that we're able to feel so connected to another living being that we're willing to accept the potential consequences.

The existing research on second marriages shows mixed results and doesn't really give us a clear answer about their success rates.

While oft-repeated statistics hold that about half of all marriages end in divorce, the National Center for Family and Marriage Research at Bowling Green State University found that number "rises to 60 percent for second marriages and to 65 percent for third and fourth marriages," per a 2013 report in the New York Times. But in the same year, a separate report from the Marriage Foundation commissioned by and based on data from the U.K.'s Office for National Statistics found couples where one or both spouses are marrying for the second time faced a 31 percent risk of divorce, compared to an estimated 45 percent risk for marriages between two first-timers. The data is from two separate countries, notably, but does that account for the differences in their findings? It's hard to say.

Other popularly cited statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau also indicate second marriages have a worse success rate than first marriages, with some 60 percent of second marriages ending in divorce. But these estimates are from around 1990 (the numbers from the Marriage Foundation are also from around this time period), and we know that marriage and divorce trends have changed tremendously in the last three decades. Recent reports say even the overall divorce rate has fallen approximately eight percent between 2008 and 2016, suggesting the "half of all marriages end in divorce" stat is now outdated. Some experts say the number of marriages that end in divorce may be closer to 40 percent now. BGSU found just 16 divorces per 1,000 married women in 2017.

As for second marriages in particular, a 2015 study1 published in the Journal of Family Issues found that even though remarriages have "consistently demonstrated higher divorce rates," their analysis of some 2,000 couples suggests "a direct causal link between marriage order and relationship stability should not be inferred."

A Pew Research Center analysis of 2013 U.S. Census data found the number of remarried people tripled since 1960, with 42 million Americans having been married more than once. Four in 10 new marriages in 2013 involved at least one person who has been married before, and about a quarter of married adults had been married before. What's more, 57 percent of divorced or widowed adults had since remarried, and about one in five divorced or widowed folks said they want to remarry again eventually.

"Many people leave first marriages blaming the other person and never dealing with their own end of their dysfunctional system," relationship counselor Margaret Paul, Ph.D., tells mbg. "In other words, they take themselves with them into their second marriages and often create the very same problems, and then think they have chosen wrong again instead of looking to their own behavior—their own self-abandonment and lack of love for themselves."

For a second marriage to work, you need to get real about what went wrong in the first one—including understanding your part in causing its demise. You need to be willing to do the serious inner work it takes to make sure you're not repeating the same problems in the next relationship. It's always a combined effort of two people that causes any relationship to fail, so if you haven't made any personal progress since the last breakup, why would you expect your next relationship to be any different? 

A great thing about divorce (and any breakup, really) is that it really pushes you to recognize that, at the end of the day, your happiness and well-being is not contingent on any one person. This was true of your last spouse, and it will be true of your next one if you choose to get married again. Carroll and Paul both stress that having this recognition is absolutely necessary for any new commitment to work.

"Sometimes people are looking for a magic solution to the problems of being a human being and feel as though 'finding the one' will be the answer. In that case, it doesn't look so great for their chances of success," Carroll says.

Paul adds, "When they get into a marriage to get love, rather than having done their inner work to be able to share love, they will almost always be disappointed and think it's the other person's fault."