Lana Turner and her second husband, Stephen Crane, did it as early as 1943.
Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton tried it in 1975, as did Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith 14 years later. Marie Osmond and Stephen Craig seem to have found success with it in 2011.
And as recently as last month, Pamela Anderson announced she and Rick Salomon had done it as well.
Each of these couples said “I do,” again — they re-married a spouse they had divorced.
Experts say this isn't a phenomenon only among the famous. One study found that as many as 6 percent of the participants worldwide remarried an ex-spouse.
But while research shows that one in every two marriages in America ends in divorce, the rate of failure for subsequent marriages is, alas, even higher. The second unions of Turner and Crane, Taylor and Burton and Johnson and Griffith all ended in divorce the second time around as well.
Nancy Kalish, a psychology professor at California State University in Sacramento, has been conducting research on reunited couples since 1993. Her landmark study from 1993 to 1996 of 1,000 couples — ranging in age from 18 to 89 and hailing from 35 countries — is the subject of her 1997 book, “Lost & Found Lovers: Facts and Fantasies of Rekindled Romances.”
By her findings, 72 percent of those reunions were successful. Kalish, a Long Branch native who is still researching couples who reunite after a break, found that the older the couples were when they tried the reunions, and the longer they had been separated, the better their chances of success.
“People seemed to be intrigued with the idea of remarrying a spouse,” Kalish says, but she and other experts have found it difficult to fully quantify the number of people who reunite — because some do so without remarrying.
“A successful remarriage is very rare. It is possible it can work, but only if, in their initial marriage, they separated for situational reasons — for example, parents broke them apart, major money problems or heavy drinking (and later sobriety), or they were teenagers and too immature for marriage — situations that would not exist later in life,” she says.
And in her more recent research, Kalish finds that second-time-around marriages are becoming even harder to maintain.
“The success rate is lower now because people reunite while married (to someone else) and then have an affair but stay married.”
Science writer Rachel Clark remarried her ex-husband in 2009 and chronicles the experience on the “Psychology Today” blog, “Marry, divorce, reconcile.” She spent eight months apart from her husband, to whom she was married for 10 years.
“To reconcile, my ex-husband and I used deep honesty, a commitment to really hearing each other out and an ongoing examination into the realities of marriage,” she says. “By learning about the universals — the parts of marriage that tend to be challenging for all married couples — we came to see it was less about us than about the institution.
“People in long-term healthy marriages experience many divorces over the course of their lifetimes, it’s just that they never leave and they remarry each other. People always grow and change over time, asking us to make room for healthy change in our marriages if we wish to keep the benefits of such long-term partnerships. We may find that we divorce our ‘old’ partners and start new, healthier relationships with our ‘new partners,’ without ever leaving home.”
More than 20 percent of marriages end in divorce within the first five years and 48 percent of marriages dissolve by the 20-year mark, according to 2006-2010 data from the government’s National Survey of Family Growth.
Peter J. Economou, a psychologist with offices in Hoboken and Springfield who also is an assistant professor at Felician College in Lodi, says it’s important to find manageable levels of discomfort in any marriage. Economou — like many relationship experts — believes that most people divorce prematurely.
“Sometimes, impulsivity leads to the divorce in the first place. Oftentimes, people can’t tolerate how uncomfortable a situation is. I’ve always said, our partner represents a mirror and a lot of the time we’re learning about ourselves, not our partner. That’s what’s very scary for people — learning about themselves. We’re so consumed by our image.”
Will Stevenson, an Army specialist from Hillsborough, was married to his ex-wife, Judy Ann Mena, for eight months. The pair tried counseling with a psychologist and a pastor before seeking divorce. “We still had a lot of issues, despite all of this,” he says.
The couple spent a month apart before considering remarriage. But their road back to the altar hit a dead end. “Some of the problems did remain the same, with the lack of trust and grudges we both held against each other about our failed marriage,” Stevenson says. “I learned that there are a lot of things I really need to work on about myself if I ever want to be a good husband to someone. I also learned what I desire from a future spouse.”
Daniel Watter, a clinical psychologist specializing in sexual and relationship problems, says this type of self-reflection is necessary to preserve a marriage.
“I think taking care of yourself is what puts you in a good position to be a good spouse. A lot of the time, you read about friendship and that is important too, but the primary emphasis needs to remain on each individual doing their part to make things work — doing something good for your partner to respond to.”
And though a marriage is a partnership, Watter says it’s important each spouse focus on themselves. “If people dealt with their unhappiness sooner, they would often be able to halt the downward slide of their marital relationship,” says Watter, of the Morris Psychological Group in Parsippany. From his findings, the lack of fulfillment many people attribute to their marriage is actually internal.
Michele Weiner Davis, founder of the Colorado-based Divorce Busting Center and author of “Divorce Busting,” says the vast majority of problems that couples have are avoidable. This includes the leading causes of divorce: infidelity, financial stress and disagreements on parenting. “Research suggests that most people divorce without seeking professional help,” she says.
Davis puts her estimates of ex-spouses who remarry at about 10 percent. “I see it on a regular basis. I know it’s a phenomenon that happens. I have witnessed it firsthand,” says the marriage counselor and therapist.
On the other hand, “I’ve been doing this for 30 years and I don’t know of any cases where people have remarried after divorce,” says Eileen Epstein, a clinical social worker and marriage and family therapist. Epstein, who has an office in Jersey City, says she often works with couples who are considering divorce but finds that the majority work through their problems with therapy. “I do know with this particular type of therapy I do — emotionally focused therapy — the success rate in avoiding divorce is high, the marriage improves and the results hold over time,” Epstein says.
Sue Johnson, a clinical psychologist and researcher, founded emotionally focused therapy with Les Greenberg; both Johnson and Epstein say EFT is helpful in that it encourages couples to understand their own behavior and the effect it has on their partner, which is critical to a healthy marriage.
“If you don’t understand the impact you have on others and how you make them feel, you will only push them away,” Johnson says.
“The fact that people remarry after divorcing is a testament to how strong their bond is — but longing alone cannot remove the issues that drove them apart in the first place.”
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