"You're Getting Married AGAIN?"

Let’s talk about getting married more than twice.

But first let’s talk about celebrities who’ve been married a whole bunch.

Mostly just because it’s fascinating.

The Queen of Multiple Marriages belongs to Zsa Zsa Gabor who hit a total of 9 marriages. She also famously said, “I’m a marvelous housekeeper. Every time I leave a man, I keep his house.” Clearly this woman was marrying in tax brackets most of us never encounter unless we’re watching a Real Housewives episode.

Elizabeth Taylor comes in close behind with 8 marriages to 7 men. The woman didn’t have it easy. Husband number one beat her so severely that she later said the abuse caused her to miscarry. Husband number three, producer Mike Todd, died in a plane crash. Husband number four was Eddie Fisher, who left America's sweetheart Debbie Reynolds for her, creating one of Hollywood's biggest scandals. Liz then went on to embody the “let’s give it another whirl” sentiment with famed alcoholic Richard Burton, whom she married twice (and in my humble opinion is a huge dick in his interviews). There was also some weird younger guy who looked like Kenny G.

Anyway, celebrities get married a lot.

Larry King was married 8 times (to 7 women) and I’m just going to say it. I DON’T GET IT. Maybe he had a sparkling personality.

Billy Bob Thornton, Martin Scorsese, and Nicolas Cage all managed somewhere between 5 and 6 marriages. Which, again... I don't get.

George Foreman was married 5 times and had 5 sons. He named every single one of them George, which really defeats the purpose of names.

Then there's Jennifer Lopez, and I genuinely do keep rooting for her even though I don’t relate to her at all. If I had that kind of money, and had gone through what she’s gone through, you would literally never see me again. I would go “poof” into a cloud of bats and plants and folks would say “whatever happened to her” and other folks would say “I think she bought like 5000 acres on the northwest coast and lives in castle overlooking the ocean and can drive a four-wheeler from one state to another without ever leaving her own land.”

(Shout out to the late Ted Turner on that one).

The irony isn’t just that these marriages and divorces keep an entire tabloid industry employed. The irony is that we live in a culture that simultaneously romanticizes persistence in love and turns around and makes fun of it.

“Don’t give up on love!”
“Your person is out there!”
“Keep putting yourself out there!”

But by marriage number three?

I speak from personal experience. Notsomuch.

“Nope. Two strikes and you’re OUT.”

As it turns out, everyone believes in second chances, but most folks only believe in one of them.

Which brings me to... me.

I have not been married 9 times, but I have been married 3 times.

And if you’ve ever been married more than twice, in the eyes of some folks, you may as well be Liz Taylor.

When you announce the impending third marriage, people get a very specific look on their faces and passive aggressively ask, “Are you surrrrrrre?” Others feel compelled to lecture you about commitment. Others just quietly pretend the third marriage never happened at all. They don’t congratulate you. They don’t mention it.

And don’t forget the family members who sometimes lose their minds because your moving on has a funny way of disrupting the old status quo.

You will, for the most part, get exactly zero parades.

And for me, that was fine. More than fine. I felt very solid in my decision to marry Charley, and parades would only mean people staring at me, which is basically my worst nightmare of all time. That, and surprise parties.

But here’s what fascinates me.

Perseverance is celebrated almost everywhere else in life.

Multiple failed startups? You’re an entrepreneur who just keeps bouncing back.

Five unpublished novels? That’s dedication to your craft.

Six attempts to qualify for the Olympics? Inspiring.

But multiple marriages?

Fuhgettaboutit.

We laugh. We roll our eyes. We decide these people are addicted to weddings, incapable of commitment, hopeless romantics, or just catastrophically bad at choosing partners. It’s a strange event horizon where hope itself starts to become embarrassing.

Now, to be crystal clear, I’m not advocating for multiple divorces or marriages. They’re exhausting. They’re expensive. They rearrange your entire life. They’re a lot like experiencing a death. They’re hard on children. If I could have skipped two divorces and all the pain that came with them, I would have happily done so.

But then I wouldn’t have Jane. Or Gabriel.

And that’s where those kinds of hypotheticals fall apart.

It might surprise you to know that I do NOT sit in the “never give up on love camp.” I should be one of the cheerleaders, no? But I sit solidly in the “do what you know is best for your own life camp.”

I have friends in unhappy marriages, who for one reason or another have decided it’s better to stay married, and I support them.

I have friends who remarried, and I supported them.

I have friends who decided they’ve kissed enough frogs, said “noooo-kay” to ever dating again, and intend to spend the rest of their lives gardening and buying weird urns and I support them with the enthusiasm of a golden retriever.

Am I some kind of high-minded sphinx who never looks at another person’s decisions and thinks “that’s dumb” ?

Um, hellur. I’m alive. I have a pulse. I’m the oldest sister in a family full of sisters. I’m an Aquarius. Of course I do.

But here’s a big piece of the puzzle: I’ve lived long enough to know I’ve been wrong. I’ve been wrong about myself, and I’ve been wrong about other people. I’ve also lived long enough to know that other people’s lives are THEIR lives.

Not yours.

Not mine.

Theirs.

And I’ve lived long enough (with the help of a whole lot of therapy) to understand that respecting people means respecting them as autonomous human beings. The people around me have every right to make their own decisions, even the ones I wouldn’t make myself.

You can’t save anyone from a bad job, a bad decision, or a bad marriage. You can stampede them with advice and your opinions and just end up standing in their way of learning some important life-evolving lessons so that they can then maybe someday have a good marriage the third go-round.

*An important caveat here is sometimes people absolutely do need intervention when they are living in situations involving abuse, coercive control, addiction, or danger. Friends who quietly say “you can stay at my house” or “this isn’t normal” can make an enormous difference. And even then, there’s only so much you can do.

But in every-day situations, every-day decisions, every-day choices, other folks’ decisions aren’t just NOT our business, if we interfere with our own judgement and opinions, we’re robbing them of the dignity and necessity of living their life path. I’m neither on the board or the director of anyone else’s life but my own, and I wouldn’t want to be.

I could become the poster child for THE THIRD TIME’S THE CHARM marriage advice.

Because for me, it has been true.

Not because getting married a third time is somehow magically better, or because the first two marriages were just practice runs on my way to getting it right. They weren’t. They were my life. They gave me my children. They changed me. And I was different by the time I married Charley. I’d aged. I’d learned a lot. And I also happened to find a person who was a match for me on an alarming number of levels. Like how sometimes we get the same George Jones earworm at the same time and will randomly sing “there’s still neon in these veins” from the other side of the house.

Charley is calm and kind and very funny. He gives excellent giant-teddy-bear hugs, has approximately 0% concern for what other people think, and never gets road rage. We can talk for hours. We can also annoy the absolute shit out of each other.

We believe in therapy. We believe the work of understanding ourselves, and understanding why we do the things we do, is never finished. And it hasn’t always been a cakewalk. When two people drag as much baggage as we have into a second and third marriage, there’s a pretty steep learning curve.

We fight.

We mess up.

We apologize.

We go to therapy.

We stay up way too late talking about aliens.

We sing George Jones to each other.

I love being married to him.

But that doesn’t make my life an argument for getting married three times. I’m never going to universalize my experience, and I’m never going to take advice from someone who is trying to universalize theirs.

So now, unless someone asks for my opinion, or they’re in danger, I mostly just hope they find whatever version of peace they’re looking for. Maybe someone else’s happiest ending is staying married to the person they met at nineteen. Maybe it’s leaving after thirty years. Maybe it’s never marrying again. Maybe it’s realizing they’re happier with a dog and a new hiking hobby.

I don’t know.

And I’ve finally become comfortable not knowing.

It turns out that’s a much lighter way to walk through the world.

(Though I will admit, walking through it hand-in-hand with a tall husband while singing George Jones doesn't hurt.)