One of my childhood friends (we are both 58) recently got married for the third time.
No—before you ask—this is not a case of an older man trading in his same-aged wife for a younger model. All of my friend’s wives have been “age-appropriate”. None of the three were conspicuously attractive, or more conspicuously attractive than the other two. My friend has always been a man of average means and appearance who dated and married at his level.
Many celebrities have made a bad habit out of marriage. Zsa Zsa Gabor was famously married nine times. Mickey Rooney and Elizabeth Taylor both married eight times. Nicolas Cage has had five wives—including the late Lisa Marie Presley, who was married four times. (Presley’s father, Elvis, recognized that he was a bad fit for marriage, and married only once. That marriage ended after six years.)
I grew up Roman Catholic in the Midwest, during an era when “traditional family values” were still more than talking points in the culture wars. My parents had an occasionally argumentative—but basically sound—marriage, and I benefitted from that upbringing.
That said, I would argue that marriage is mostly a young person’s game, and that it should only be done once. Back to my friend. Why, exactly, does a man in his fifties, who has already been married twice (and who has two adult children from a previous marriage) need to tie the knot a third time? Marriage can be a wonderful thing; but it can also become a life-disrupting, expensive habit—for men and women alike.
Most of us are good at some things and not so good at others. We can spare both ourselves and others much grief in this world if we learn to recognize the things that we are not good at. A man who has already failed at marriage twice has demonstrated that he is not well-suited to the venture. Something is wrong with his fundamental process. Either he chooses poorly, or he is incapable of the deep, one-on-one interpersonal union that a successful marriage requires.
I wish my friend well, of course, in his latest marital venture. But I can’t help recalling that old saw about the definition of insanity: that it is the insistence on doing the same failed thing over and over again… yet somehow expecting a different result.
-ET