First time ft. Second time marriage advice

October 15, 2022 3:10 AM

Getting married in less than three months. It's my first, my partner's second. We've been through a lot and I'm confident in the relationship but looking for a) any advice for navigating a "been there done that situation" and b) any books you'd recommend I read before I get hitched?

Wow, we're still here and I can't believe it either... Just kidding but if you're interested, check out my post history circa 2018-2019 about some of the challenges. Things are pretty great but I don't take getting married lightly — I have (we both have) matured a lot over the last few years. Looking for any suggestions on relationship maintainence tips/reading/articles — I want to go in prepared and make sure I'm growing this union in the right way. I'm not religious but open to neutral content from all faiths.

I'd also love to hear from you if you have any thoughts on multiple marriages and the tensions, learnings or insights you have on them... Whether yourself or your partner.

Thank you in advance. And thanks for being here for me all these years, AskMeFi.

posted by teststrip to Human Relations (4 answers total)

We, just….. don’t talk about it. It felt great when we’d been married longer than I had been married in my first marriage and my husband doesn’t enjoy when the topic comes up. Sometimes it does for practical reasons. We are not neurotypical and have a different type of relationship (we don’t need to process this together and move past it or anything, we both wish we were each other’s first marriage and I don’t need to share my feelings with him about it or give details) so it’s not important to me that he is okay or not okay talking about it or anything…I’m not sure if that’s how it is for other people. Maybe some getting into the present moment exercises would help? I don’t see how a previous marriage needs to be more important than any other previous relationship. If you really think about it, it is just a piece of paper…. (I know it’s NOT, but in terms of emotions and commitment, it is…) I would say to myself: this person has a past, I don’t need to involve myself in thinking about it, I’m excited about how things are NOW and our FUTURE together. If you need to think about this too much then definitely book some appointments with a therapist to really talk it out.
posted by pairofshades at 10:44 AM on October 15, 2022

Adding the caveat that I was good friends with my ex husband until I met my NOW husband and then I cut it off when it got serious and I knew where things were headed. My husband would NOT have been okay with a friendship between us and that choice was very sad but easy.
posted by pairofshades at 10:48 AM on October 15, 2022

My husband and I are both on our second marriage, and we talk often about how much we learned about ourselves - especially about what we do/don’t want, will/won’t tolerate, as a result of having been married before (and possibly more importantly having been divorced and subsequently single).

I think the place we’re both coming from (not right or wrong, just our experience), that makes it easier to talk about, is that our exes were our family for a long time (roughly a decade for each of us). There will always be things that we did with, or learned from, those people, and there’s no point (to us) in hiding that or talking around it.

But at the end of the day it almost doesn’t matter? We are who we are because of the experiences we’ve had, and we’re a little bit different every day. We acknowledge who we were, but focus our life on who we are now.
posted by okayokayigive at 11:39 AM on October 15, 2022 [2 favorites]

Book suggestions: 8 Dates by the Gottmans, and How to Be an Adult in Love, by David Richo. Good luck!
posted by acridrabbit at 7:41 PM on October 17, 2022