Royer - How many marriages are too many?

How many marriages are too many?

Bethany J. Royer

Mother of the Munchkins

Sometimes it's necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly. ~ Edward Albee

As a child, divorce was all around me. I’d uncles who were divorced and remarried, one multiple times. I’d close family friends who were divorced, a few school chums with divorced parents, even my own parents divorced when I was eleven years old, both going on to remarry, one side several times, too.

It seemed the only place there wasn’t divorce in my young life, or at least very, very few divorcees hanging about, was at church.

No wonder I always felt like a third wheel and yet very safe in church. Divorce, seemingly, couldn’t get me there! And I often times assured myself that I would never have to worry about divorce affecting my life ever again. I wasn’t about to do something as stupid as getting married.

Then some guy had to go and ruin everything by having the audacity of not only liking me but loving me and ask me to marry him.

How insulting, right?

Well, I should have stuck to my childhood resolve, because the day came when he decided he wanted to be with someone else and walked out. I was left with my jaw on the floor in shock and holding not so much that oft-used proverbial paper bag but the mortgage.

Oddly enough, as brutal as that abandonment by first husband was, I had a very favorable view of marriage and thought what could a second try hurt? Or rather, assumed myself far more knowledgeable, experienced, and a second time would be the charm.

Oh, another beauty of hindsight kind of moment; if only I had known…

So here I am today, twice fooled, I mean married, and twice divorced, wondering if time travel was possible would I go to the past and keep myself from ever marrying or to the future to check out if I was crazy enough to make it a third times the charm.

Which leads me to the question, just how many marriages are too many?

Obviously, the majority of society frowns upon more than one marriage at a time but what about the accumulation of marriages? It’s a question I want to bring up with friends but to be perfectly honest, I am afraid of the response. I imagine many friends molding their answers to fit my situation so as to spare my feelings and perhaps liken me to Elizabeth Taylor.

What’s one marriage or eight?

While other responses may be that after one failure there shouldn’t be another attempt, let alone a third or fourth or eighth walk down the aisle. Obviously, if you can’t get it right the first time, what makes you think a second is going to get any better?

Yet others would say life is short enough as it is, what anyone else thinks should not be taken into consideration because I have to live my own life.

            I really marvel at those latter friends with such open minds because time and time again I am constantly being forced to open my eyes and not so much see the other side of the coin but live it. Because not very long ago I would have been part of the second response group. I would have wrinkled my nose and looked scornfully down my nose at this other person’s failed marriage. I would have made an immediate assumption that something must be really wrong with them to be married and divorced so many times.

Live and learn the hard way should be tattooed across my forehead.

I’d like to think that things, specifically bad things, happen for a greater purpose. In my case, have I’ve been chosen to experience the many sides of divorce to put a voice to it, to open other people’s minds? To save others the pain or to think before they take that first step down the aisle? To help others rethink their immediate response to how many marriages are too many? To see that sometimes things don’t pan out the way we want, no matter how hard we try, and that failures do not necessarily make a person bad or flawed.

Maybe the question isn’t so much how many marriages are too many, but rather, why are we always so worried about what other people think?

The mother of two munchkins, Bethany J. Royer is an independent contractor and writer currently studying psychology with Florida Institute of Technology.  She is actively seeking a publisher for her first completed novel while working on a memoir about her personal trials and tribulations with divorce.

She blogs prolifically at motherofthemunchkins.blogspot.com and can be reached at themotherofthemunchkins@yahoo.com.