Angst of the women who are DOUBLE divorcees
Multiple divorces are increasingly common, so why does it leave ex-wives — but not ex-husbands — consumed with self-doubt?
dividing up our DVDs and books and thinking “How have things gone so wrong again?”
‘Although I’d worked really hard at that marriage, I still felt very ashamed when we separated.’
Three years later she met up with Pete, a marketing director and old colleague, through Facebook.
He proposed on Christmas Eve in 2009, although Emma felt uncomfortable sharing the news with her parents. ‘I feared they would think “Oh my God, not another marriage that will inevitably end in divorce,” ’ says Emma. ‘But I think they were glad I’d finally found someone they thought I was better suited to.’
Pete and Emma married at a civic centre in Monmouthshire in the summer of 2010. But it is only with hindsight Emma feels embarrassment over having accepted gifts from guests who had also attended her previous weddings. ‘I went into all of my marriages convinced they would be for life. I’m an incurable romantic, I suppose. Six years into our marriage, it feels like I’m third time lucky.’
Feeling a sense of letting down the family still rankles with Rebecca Jane, a mother-of-two, who is going through her second divorce, aged only 31.
‘I fully expect people to laugh behind my back when I tell them I’ve had two failed marriages,’ says Rebecca, who runs a detective agency. ‘They no doubt question what’s wrong with me and why I’ve messed up in such a big way. Twice.’
In fact, after her second marriage ended she was too ashamed to face her grandparents, who have been married for 69 years, and left her parents, who recently celebrated their golden wedding anniversary, to break the news. ‘Both my parents and grandparents told me they went through hard times but worked hard to stick together,’ she says.
‘They tolerated far more than my generation who want it all — career, family and the nice things in life — but aren’t so good at surviving when married life gets tough.’
Ironically, it was a sense of duty that led to her first marriage aged just 20. ‘I knew I was making a mistake, but didn’t want to disappoint everyone by calling it off.
‘He’d begun going away for weekends a couple of months earlier and, although he insisted he was with friends, I was suspicious.’
BESIDES, Rebecca was already five months pregnant with their daughter, who’s now ten. The marriage lasted just four years, and they divorced on the grounds of his unreasonable behaviour. Yet walking away from that marriage wasn’t as traumatic as it was second time around.
‘John had been unfaithful and I mourned the loss of our £750,000 marital home, set in three acres in the Lake District, almost as much as the marriage itself.’
Three years down the line, in 2012, aged 27, Rebecca exchanged vows for a second time with husband Ben, a police officer.
Her youngest daughter, now three, followed a year later and Rebecca puts the failure of her second marriage down to her traumatic birth by emergency caesarean.
‘I almost lost my life giving birth and, instead of that bringing us closer together, it created a distance between us,’ says Rebecca.
‘It’s a good thing women now have the freedom to pursue careers but I think that lack of mutual dependence makes couples more inclined to move on.
‘I don’t think it’s just coincidence that I’ve had my own business since I was 20 and have always been financially independent.’
However, Emma is doing everything she can to avoid a hat-trick.
‘When people discover that Pete is my third husband their eyebrows shoot up in surprise,’ she adds.
‘But I do work extra hard at making this marriage work because, on top of the pain of a third divorce, the shame would kill me.’
THE stigma of her complicated — and as she sees it, shameful and embarrassing — marital status always stings Sarah Milne when filling out forms, of all things.
‘I always opt for the “single” box,’ she confesses. ‘I can’t bring myself to tick the divorced one. That doesn’t accurately describe me anyway — I’m not a divorcee, I’m a double divorcee. Thankfully there isn’t a box for that.’
The 45-year-old psychology lecturer turned fashion designer, from South London, deliberately shies away from revealing her ‘chaotic’ history from new acquaintances too.
‘If I date a man, I can’t face telling him I’ve been married twice as I know that will leave him wondering if there’s something wrong with me,’ says Sarah.
‘It’s a valid question: two men have loved me enough to marry me, and yet both marriages ended in divorce. I’m the common denominator. I’ve spent a long time wondering if there’s something wrong with me too.
‘What’s equally disturbing is I can’t help questioning why my ex-husbands both went on to have happy marriages, which have lasted over a decade, with women they turned out to be very well suited to. That just compounds my self-doubt.’ However, Sarah is far from alone in experiencing the indignity and shame of two divorces, with statistics showing almost a fifth of those whose marriages broke down in 2013 were already divorcees — twice as many as in 1980.
Fractious step-families, stretched finances, and fewer women dependent on their husbands — therefore less likely to ‘tough it out’ — are cited as the principle reasons.
Yet even in the financially solvent celebrity world, ‘double divorcees’ are commonplace: actress Billie Piper, 33, recently separated from Lewis actor Laurence Fox, the father of her two children, a decade after her divorce from DJ Chris Evans.
Meanwhile singer Cheryl Fernandez-Versini, 32, recently split from her second husband Jean-Bernard after seeming to have finally found love following her divorce from footballer Ashley Cole six years ago.
And with every ‘repeat’ divorce, there is nearly always a sense of shame and guilt — for the women — according to clinical psychologist Dr Katharine Ayivor-Nygard.
‘One divorce is quite common these days, so less stigmatised than it once was,’ she says. ‘But women who divorce and remarry and then divorce again worry that it appears as if the problem must lie with them.
‘And people may be less likely to empathise and more likely to apportion blame than after a first divorce.
‘Unless their husbands are abusive or unfaithful, women may be met with a lot more judgment.
‘It may seem antiquated but many may continue to believe it’s OK for men to have multiple relationships and even marriages, but are less accepting of women who do.’
Sarah married first husband, Rob, in 1997 when she was 23.
Two daughters, Ellie and Hope, followed shortly afterwards, as did a move 150 miles from Sheffield to Bath, where they bought a family home in need of work. Rob was a salesman while Sarah lectured in psychology at the University of Bath.
AS THEY juggled two young children with two careers and a renovation project their marriage buckled under the strain and they divorced in 2003.
Sarah felt a degree of shame as relatives suggested she may have given up too easily and her Christian family took a while to come to terms with the fact she was a divorced single mum.
She was also embarrassed her parents had spent thousands of pounds on her dream church wedding less than five years previously.
However, Sarah was determined not to let disappointment get in the way of finding life-long happiness with another partner.
She began dating Ian, a fellow psychology lecturer and, believing she had met her soulmate, proposed a few months into their relationship.
Their wedding was a fancy affair with a reception at a boutique hotel, although this time Sarah covered the cost herself.
However, with two children to prioritise, married life was even more complicated the second time around.
Matters quickly came to a head when, just a few months after their wedding, Sarah was offered a betterpaid job in London. Ian didn’t want to move, nor did he relish the responsibility of taking care of two children at either end of the day to facilitate Sarah’s lengthy commute.
Their desire to pursue different goals drove a wedge between them and, a year after saying “I do”, the couple filed for divorce.
‘Breaking the news to friends and family that not just one but now two of my marriages had failed was mortifying,’ recalls Sarah.
‘As a trained psychologist, I felt even more embarrassed knowing that people would expect me to be skilled in understanding what makes people tick, and therefore how to navigate relationships.’
SARAH admits it would take ‘a very special man’ to convince her to marry for a third time. According to Relate counsellor Christine Northam, stepchildren are often a contributing factor in the breakdown of second marriages.
‘Family life can be complicated when you have children from different marriages and it can take a lot of work to make sure no one feels put upon or pushed out,’ says Christine.
But as husbands are as likely as wives to experience multiple divorces, why are women still more likely to feel the burden of shame?
‘Mothers often feel it is their responsibility to do everything to keep their families together,’ says Christine. ‘So when not one but two marriages fail they are more likely than men to blame themselves.’
Feeling this sense of shame almost destroyed Emma Hudson when her second marriage ended in divorce, 16 years after the first.
Though both divorces were granted on the grounds of her husbands’ unreasonable behaviour, Emma, 55, a therapist from Chesham, Buckinghamshire, felt undeserving of compassion the second time around.
‘I went completely off the rails, tormented by thoughts that people would judge me,’ says Emma. ‘I felt family and friends were losing patience, thinking: “Here she goes again”.
‘Nobody criticised me openly, so it could have been all in my head. But I considered myself a total failure convinced that, as I now had two broken marriages, the only explanation was that I must have been at fault.’
Emma has two children, Tristan, from her first marriage, and Zoe, from her second marriage, who were 16 and ten when she divorced for the second time in 2005.
She married her first husband, Simon, a gardener, in 1984 when she was 24 and it lasted five years. He spent money she felt they couldn’t afford and eventually she decided she would be better off without him.
‘I was too embarrassed about my marriage failing to tell my parents in person. They lived 100 miles away and were happily married until their dying day, so I wrote a letter asking if my son and I could move in with them. Luckily they accepted,’ says Emma.
A couple of years later, Emma met an engineer, Tristan, while out with friends. They dated for a year before he proposed and they married in 1992, when Emma was 32.
‘He was lovely to my son, made me laugh and had a secure job, so I thought we were meant to be,’ says Emma. ‘I remember squeezing his hand as we took our vows and thinking “Now I’ve found my perfect match”.’
Two years later their daughter, Zoe, was born and for eight years the marriage was a happy merry-go-round of family meals, holidays and cosy evenings in front of the television.
However, cracks began to appear as the children got older and they disagreed over how to discipline them.
‘We would fall out because I felt he disciplined my son too harshly,’ says Emma. ‘I stayed with him longer than I should have, hanging on for five years because I didn’t want to admit I’d failed again.
‘I’ll never forget sitting on the floor