You were in love. It didn’t work out. You split. Then one day something happens — maybe your parent dies or you get sick or you realize you’re tired of the dating game at midlife — and you start thinking, “I want my ex back.” No worries because there are thousands of “proven techniques” on the Internet to help you do exactly that. 
That seems to be stuff of snake-oil con men, but there are plenty of people who do want their ex back, and get them — most recently Ethan Embry and Sunny Mabrey, who have gotten engaged again after divorcing in 2012.
While Embry admits his former wife of seven years may have been somewhat manipulative in her approach — “She drove over to pick up my son, and I came out to say hello and she’s wearing my old shirt, my favorite f–king shirt! And it’s this vintage Levis plaid number, and she had tied it at the titties” — they are hopeful it works out this time (although I’m skeptical about this maneuver …)
“We grew up,” Mabrey says. “I don’t know, we needed that time, obviously we did. We were just … a little mixed up. It takes a long time to realize what’s important and figure out your own issues. I just think we’d been apart for so long and the love wasn’t going away.”
That’s nice for them but for many divorced people having a root canal would be preferable to remarrying a former spouse; after all, he or she’s a former spouse for a reason.
Yet it happens.
Marie Osmond says it was “mental cruelty” from former pro-basketball player Steve Craig that sent her to divorce court. But when her teen-aged son from a second marriage, which ended in divorce, committed suicide, Craig was there for her. They tied the knot again in 2011.
During a tragedy, we often count on the people who know us best to show up, and he did. That’s pretty powerful. But is that and a couple’s shared history enough to sustain a remarriage?
Perhaps not; while about 15 percent to 45 percent of first marriages end in divorce about 60 percent to 80 percent of second marriages end in divorce (although numbers vary on how many of those second marriages are to the former spouse or a different one with assorted children from different parents all trying to live happily a la “The Brady Bunch” under one roof).
But the bigger issue for exes who are remarrying is personal growth, as in has there been any? “Remarrying may be a good idea if, during your time apart, you’ve changed elements of your behavior that were causing the problems in your relationship. Then you’re not the same person you were before and you have a better chance of success second time around,” says U.K. psychologist Denise Knowles.
But if you haven’t, it’s too easy to slip back into old habits. “Do that and the relationship certainly won’t last,” she says.
And we all know how easy it is to change at midlife.
Of course, Osmond and Craig aren’t the only ones to tie the knot again. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton did it, so did Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith, Elliot Gould and Jennifer Bogart, Stephen Crane and Lana Turner, Eminem and Kimberley Scott. Pamela Anderson married Rick Salomon twice, but is now is the middle of divorcing him yet again.
And it’s not just celebrities. According to research by Nancy Kalish, a psychology professor at California State University in Sacramento, about 6 percent of the participants worldwide noted that they married, divorced, and then remarried their former spouse, and about 72 percent of those reunions were successful.
Science writer Rachel Clark, who chronicles her marriage, divorce and remarriage to her former husband on the Psychology Today blog, Marry, Divorce, Reconcile, believes the 6 percent is too low. So does Michele Weiner Davis, author of Divorce Busting and The Sex-Starved Marriage; she believes about 10 percent of the population remarries their spouse, although not necessarily with the actual legal actions:
“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. Marriage changes over time. We need to divorce our ‘old’ partners and start relationships with our ‘new partners,’ without ever leaving home.”
That may be so, but once you do leave, the old Thomas Wolfe book comes to mind; you can’t go home again.
That’s why The New I Do: Reshaping Marriage for Skeptics, Realists and Rebels suggests that you try something different rather than work harder on a marriage, which is what “experts” often recommend.
But if you’re already divorced, be really careful about romanticizing your former spouse. Even with all those “proven techniques” to get him or her back.
Want to win a free copy of The New I Do: Reshaping Marriage for Skeptics, Realists and Rebels? Seal Press is running a contest on Goodreads through Feb. 23. Enter here and good luck! You can also download an eBook for just $1.99 though March 15.
Interested in learning about ways to re-create your marriage? Read The New I Do: Reshaping Marriage for Skeptics, Realists and Rebels (Seal Press). Order the book on Amazon, follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook.
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