Tying Another Knot
A First Look at Second Marriages

As Latter-day Saints, we enter into marriage with strong commitment and great hopes for a long, joyful relationship in this life and the next. However, whether through divorce or the death of a spouse, many Church members find themselves unexpectedly single again. Some are able to move forward by falling in love and remarrying. And while second marriages come with many unique challenges, such as blending families and overcoming grief, they can be both successful and rewarding. Here are some insights from six people who have graciously agreed to share some of their greatest challenges and greatest joys of second marriages with us.

SOMETIMES YOU JUST NEED TO LAUGH
I found myself a widow at age twenty-seven with two small daughters. As dearly as I loved my husband, he was not with us any more. Was I to live the rest of my life raising our children alone and living alone? This can be a very difficult decision for many who find themselves single again after being married.

Having been very aware of the joys and challenges of marriage, I wasn’t as naive and optimistic as I was at nineteen, when I was married the first time. At twenty-seven, with children, I was keenly aware of the seriousness of choosing another husband.

After some time had passed, a good friend arranged a blind date with a widower she knew. Talk about terrifying! But we actually enjoyed each other’s company and had things to talk about because we both were widowed and both had children. We dated for several months, and then spent the holidays separately, to honor the holiday memories we had made previously.

We were married in the spring and took a spring break trip, just the eight of us. I’m not sure what we were thinking when we entered into this marriage, but as they say, go into marriage with eyes wide open, and thereafter, have eyes half shut.

Making a second marriage successful can be very fun, but quite challenging. We spent a lot of time on our knees, pleading for direction. While alone, I found myself having many conversations with the “other wife,” asking how to best guide and love her children. I know that she helped me, because sometimes I would say something and my husband would say, “That’s just what she would have said.”

We also had our own adjustments to make between the two of us. Sometimes we would slip and call each other the wrong name. It just would happen, and we would have to laugh and know that it was all good. We had to learn not to compare each other to our first spouses. We were different, and sometimes different was good. I often felt that I was being compared to a perfect person. I think when someone young and vibrant dies, those left behind often venerate that person to an imaginative degree, and I felt, as the new wife, that I simply couldn’t compete with perfection.

As I learned that no one is perfect, I gradually have tried to stop being disappointed with myself for being human. I have learned to love someone else’s children as my own. I have learned to love and forgive and move on, while remembering good things and sweet times and cherished memories. One of our favorite family activities is to watch old home movies on Sunday evenings. It is vitally important for our children to have these memories and to know that ours is one big family, even though some members have gone on ahead.

—Dawn Cannariato

HANGING IN THERE
I have to say that the transition to my second marriage has been the hardest thing I’ve ever done. My husband and I were married for twenty-four and twenty years, respectively, before we were widowed. I naively thought with twenty years of practice it wouldn’t be too hard.

Adjusting as a new married couple had its challenges in determining our individual roles, and especially what part we should play in each other’s children’s lives. We quickly learned that criticizing each other’s children was off limits. The all too common phrase, “he’s your son” has a whole new meaning when the child is not literally “our son.” The dynamics of blending nine children multiplied the number of personal relationships that each child had to develop amongst themselves, and they also had to try to foster (or not) a relationship with a new parent.

I think my husband would agree when I say that the transition was easier for him than for me. Because of monetary concerns, I moved into his home. I felt displaced, his children felt resentment since home no longer felt like home, and my children — well, it wasn’t their home either. My belongings sat in a storage unit for five years until we fi nally found a place that we could call our own. If at all possible, new couples should try to start with a neutral territory — a place everyone can call home.

We were married in the temple for time only, and I really wanted my children to recognize the value of a temple marriage. We are both sealed to our first spouses, and sometimes this issue of not being in an eternal marriage now plays heavily on my soul. The question arises: What will be our relationship in the next life? We know that we are fostering each other’s eternal progression through this relationship, but sometimes the discussions of eternal marriage at church make me feel apart from the whole since my marriage is for time only.

Time is a great healer. We are now starting our eighth year together and we can honestly say our children have become friends. My children have definitely come to respect their stepdad and are proud to call him such. The knowledge and hope that we will all see and be with our nuclear family again helped to keep us focused. Today I think our children would agree that though this union was hard on all of us, it is much easier now and life has normalized.

—Lendie Bliss

What a gift time is. When families with people of good will get together, it is not bliss, but there is certainly hope.

Lendie and I were both widowed—her in 1997 and me in 1996. We met on LDS Singles online in 1999, with me hiding it from my three kids and her letting her six be part of it. We were married six months later, really doing it for ourselves. It turned out, after much struggle, it was a blessing for the kids as well. All of the kids had lost a parent, and now they were thrust in with another family. All of our sons crashed and burned. Where they had a stiff upper lip following the death of a parent, the marriage fi nally made them mourn.

Lendie moved from Oregon into my California home (or should I say my deceased wife’s home — that’s how it felt to her). That was a big challenge. It was like a holy shrine — don’t touch.

Whenever the two of us were alone, we thrived. We remembered why we came together. With the kids, it was harder. But here was the miracle: the remarriage was the magic they needed for life to normalize. Now, eight years later, they are all thriving.

Another challenge was being married for time. With all of our focus on eternal families, what is the role of this new “for time” combination?

I think we are to love and be loved and to learn to love. But what of the next life?

In the end, there is such sweetness, such home, such normalcy, such joy in each other’s kids. We could not have the peace and happiness we have without each other. We have been blessed for taking the risk and following our hearts—and for hanging in there.

—Bill Bliss

A CONTINUING COURTSHIP
My husband says that the key ingredient to our happy marriage (a second for both of us) is the fact that we shared a very honest and very real courtship. As our dating relationship grew serious, we discussed very openly what we felt went wrong in our first marriages and what we hoped would go right in our marriage together. I think it’s safe to say that because we were so much ourselves up front in our courtship, there have been no negative surprises in our marriage about who either of us is.

With this said, second marriages, even with the best-matched couples, are often filled with their own unique challenges and, yes, heartaches. I think the early years of our marriage were far harder on me than on my husband, Barry. He was much beloved by his own three daughters, me, and my daughter, who became his daughter, too.

I, on the other hand, was not initially so welcomed by my husband’s children. While I was excited about the possibilities for how we could become a family together and how I could do my part to make this happen, my stepdaughters were not so eager to have me around. As I look back, it was terribly naïve of me to think that my stepdaughters would be as ready to embrace me as I was them. After all, my very presence was a sad reminder to them that the family they had grown up knowing would never really be the same again.

It took several years for me to let go of yearning for my stepchildren’s love and acceptance. But, I think doing so was a gift for them and for me. It was easier for me to let go when I realized on a deeper level that their rejection of me wasn’t personal. I finally made the conscious decision to just focus on how I could meet them where they were and love them however they would let me.

One of the biggest gifts we gave ourselves as a couple following our wedding was to continue seriously courting one another. In second marriages, couples with children don’t have a year or more to be just a couple before the children start arriving. So, they have to be extra creative in how they find pockets of time to focus on nurturing their relationship as a couple in the midst of blending a family. If you feel guilty about taking time away from your children to have couple time, remember that a blended family can be no stronger than the marriage of the couple that brought it together.

One thing I learned in the early years of my marriage, or even before I married really, was to not hold the faults of the ex-spouse against the spouse you are with now. After my first marriage, I struggled with serious trust issues. Signs of this showed up during our courtship, and Barry recognized my behavior for what it was — leftover baggage from my first marriage. One night, as we were returning from a date, he pulled into my driveway, turned the car off and said that he wanted to share a song with me. He then played Billy Joel’s “I Am an Innocent Man.” As he held my hand and we listened to the song together, he told me, “I love you. I’m not [the name of my first husband]. I’m me, Barry. You can trust me.” And, all these years later, I can tell you that he was right.

One of the gifts I have worked to give my husband is to allow him to share positive memories and experiences from his first marriage. Although his first marriage didn’t work out in the long run, there were some good times and it would not have been fair of me to tell him he couldn’t talk about those eighteen years.

There is so much more I could share about having a happy second marriage, but, more than anything, I want for those who have been through a divorce or the death of a spouse to know that happy second marriages are very possible. Like all couples, my husband and I have celebrated some wonderful times together and navigated some incredibly difficult times together as well. Whatever our future together holds, I know that after fifteen years of a truly happy second marriage, my husband and I are a team.

—Debra Woods

FROM SINGLE TO MOTHER OF SIX
It was tough enough for Lesa when she married into a family with six kids, all under thirteen years of age. It was her first marriage, my second. My first wife, Julie, had passed away two years earlier. Lesa thought since she liked kids and felt she was a good aunt to her nieces and nephews, that she could handle being a mom — but she quickly felt overwhelmed.

Early on, some of my friends and neighbors would comment on what a wonderful family she was marrying into, often talking about my first wife in glowing terms. Lesa began to compare her own perceived inadequacies to the idealized image of my first wife. It just made her feel all the more inadequate. It didn’t help that I accidentally called Lesa by the wrong name a couple of times when we first got married. As you might suspect, that did not go over too well. I ended up avoiding any mention of Julie whatsoever, and rarely did I even speak of anything involving the kids if it had any connection to my first wife. I will say, however, that it has become less of an issue over time.

—Ted

OPENING UP AGAIN
I got married in the temple just before I turned twenty-five. My former wife is a convert to the Church, had been married twice previously and had two children, one from each of her previous marriages.

There were a lot of deep issues I failed to get informed on while we were dating, such as child custody, the history of her past marriages, philosophy on finances, long term family goals, etc.

After my divorce, it was very difficult to open up emotionally to another person out of fear I would be hurt again. Trust was a major obstacle I have had to personally work through as my relationship progressed with the wonderful woman who would become my second wife. Bottom line, I was cut very deep from my previous marriage, and it caused me to be very skeptical and cautious of other women once I began dating. If there is one great weakness my wife and I now share, it is my struggle with this issue. If I were to offer any type of advice to others, it would be to not rush into anything. Take your time. Get to know the person, their personality, their family, their plans for the future, approaches to fi nancial matters, their feelings about the Church, etc., and not to ignore red flags that come up. Pay attention. Seek guidance from the Lord, as well as a bishop or a family member. Oftentimes individuals get so blinded by what they think is love that they can’t see clearly into the future. That is where others can be helpful in making a wise choice on such an important matter.

I am proud to say that my faith never faltered, but it was sorely tested and tried. Looking back now, I have come to understand how my soul has been polished by these difficult experiences. So if there is one bit of wisdom I learned, it is that the Lord never abandons us or forsakes us. He knows us, and He loves us more than we have the capacity to ever comprehend in this life.

—Alan

TIPS FOR SECOND MARRIAGES
No marriage is perfect. And while second marriages come with many challenges — learning to trust after a divorce, blending families, or dealing with grief over the passing of a first spouse, to name a few — they can still succeed and flourish. Here are some suggestions to help your second marriage work.

1. If possible, begin your marriage on neutral ground. Avoid moving into a home where a former spouse lived.
2. Don’t compare yourself or your new spouse to a deceased or divorced partner. Everyone has different strengths and weaknesses.
3. Don’t criticize each other’s children (or each other).
4. Only involve children and stepchildren in things which concern them.
5. Be sympathetic and gracious when your spouse is grieving. Be aware of significant dates, such as the date your spouse’s first companion passed away.
6. Find new interests and create new traditions together that are uniquely yours. Also, travel to destinations neither of you have been to before.
7. Be patient and be flexible. A new marriage is a big adjustment for everyone involved. Keep in mind that what worked for you before may not necessarily be the best solution for you and your new family.

LDS Living, May/June, 52-60