Do you think less of women who are triply wed? If not, at what point does a woman suffer stigma for being married too many times? I wonder if women and men would answer this differently.
A Double Standard for the Triply Wed
By MIREYA NAVARRO
WHEN Judith Giuliani recently revealed that she had been married not twice but three times, her disclosure caused a stir. In all the public accounts about her relationship with Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York mayor, why had it never come out that she had an earlier, four-year marriage before she wed Bruce Nathan, long assumed to be her first husband?
Asked in an interview with Barbara Walters on “20/20” that was broadcast Friday whether she had deliberately hidden the first marriage “because it might look bad that you had now three husbands,” Mrs. Giuliani said Mr. Giuliani, now a Republican presidential candidate, always knew. But she acknowledged that his run for national office required her to go public.
“And when I was asked, we discussed it,” she said. “That was my decision.”
Mrs. Giuliani, who married Mr. Giuliani in 2003, didn’t say why she never bothered to correct a false impression, but women who have had multiple divorces say it is not always in their best interest to acknowledge previous marriages. Those who have said “I do” three times or more say they sometimes feel self-conscious about being deemed incapable of keeping relationships or lacking in values, and that women are judged more harshly than men.
But divorce experts say the stigma of serial marriages and divorces is on the wane. It is too early to tell how the idea of a thrice-married first lady may turn off conservative voters, but high divorce rates and longer life spans are making third marriages more common and socially acceptable, sociologists, family therapists and divorce lawyers say.
“The stigma of divorce is lower than in the past, even the stigma of a second divorce,” said Andrew Cherlin, a professor of public policy at Johns Hopkins University who specializes in marriage and divorce trends. “Researchers used to think that people in third marriages were very different — not as good at keeping a marriage together by temperament or taste.”
“But these days, with so much more divorce, third marriers aren’t necessarily so different.”
There is little information on people who marry three or more times because the demographic is relatively small. Census surveys show that only 3 percent of men and women marry three times or more, compared with 13 percent of men and 14 percent of women who marry twice.
But third marriages are, by logic, more common among older Americans, and when broken down by age the census figures show a significantly higher incidence of marriage for certain groups. Eight percent of men and 6 percent of women in their 50s had married three or more times, 2001 figures show, and so had 7 percent of men and 6 percent of women in their 60s.
That’s likely to rise as people who grew up in the 1970s, when divorce became more commonplace, reach midlife, Dr. Cherlin said.
Multiple marriages used to be synonymous with movie stars or the very wealthy, and today plenty of celebrities, from Tom Cruise to Jennifer Lopez to Donald Trump, keep up with tradition. But even declared and potential presidential candidates today, like Mr. Giuliani, John McCain and Newt Gingrich, don’t see previous divorces as a liability that would prevent them from running for office.
Although third unions are losing shock value, some of the multiple married say they are still fearful of negative attitudes. You can always blame the first divorce on the ex, some experts noted, but by the second and third breakup it gets harder to point fingers.
“Something must be wrong with you,” Constance Ahrons, a family therapist in San Diego who researches and writes books on divorce and remarriage, said of an attitude still seen today. “We haven’t gotten over that for second and third marriages.”
For her third wedding, Donna Leeds surrounded herself with 100 friends, relatives and clients and had the big celebration she had missed out on in her first two marriages.
The third time was not the charm, however, and six years later Ms. Leeds ended up divorced, again. “I stayed with him for six years because I was embarrassed of having been married three times and not making it work,” she said.
But Ms. Leeds, 50, who owns a marketing and public relations firm in Long Beach, Calif., says she has not soured on marriage yet. “I’m not going to give the power to three mistakes,” she said. “The right person would get a whole brand-new shot.”
Still, Ms. Leeds, who is single, said that when a man asks how many times she’s been married on a first date, she says two, not three. “I do feel self-conscious.”
And she has heard the jokes. At a party once, guests were comparing the length of their marriages and one of them noted, “If you add up all the time Donna has been married, she’s been married the longest.”
Ms. Leeds was not amused. “It was something that didn’t need to be said,” she said.
Sylvia Kendrick said she used to be so embarrassed about her first marriage, at 18, that she swore her two subsequent husbands to secrecy and didn’t tell her children about it until they were teenagers. “I thought they’d think less of me,” she said.
Part of her shame was the double standard she said divorced women have experienced. In fact, some divorce lawyers said third wives have fared worse than first wives in divorce settlements in the past, especially if the woman herself has had previous marriages, because it was assumed that a third marriage was worth less than the first.
“It’s O.K. if the man goes out and gets married three or four times,” Ms. Kendrick said. “For the woman, it almost makes her look like she’s sleeping around.”
But by the time she divorced a third time five years ago, Ms. Kendrick, now 71, an interior designer in Newport Beach, Calif., no longer cared to hide her past.
“I just became more comfortable with it,” she said. “Fifteen years ago people were going, ‘Oh, my gosh!’ Now people don’t even bat an eye.”
There are many reasons some people persist in marrying despite previous unsuccessful unions, even at a time when more and more couples are opting for cohabitation, experts say. Having children, or providing existing ones the security of a legal bond, is a major one. Another is the bias against the informality of just living together when you’re old enough to be grandparents.
But romance also plays a major role. “I felt ‘O.K., this is really my soul mate,’ ” Ms. Kendrick said of her third husband, with whom she lasted 20 years. “He was in the beginning, and then he just wasn’t.”
Third marriages can work out better, or not. There are no recent data on whether these marriages are more or less successful than previous ones, Dr. Cherlin said. (Some studies suggest that 40 to 50 percent of first marriages end in divorce and that even a higher proportion of second marriages do.)
Lessons learned, more realistic expectations, maturity, financial security and life circumstances can all combine to give a third marriage a good shot, some divorcées said.
But some divorce lawyers are skeptical. Gaetano Ferro, president of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, said he has clients who have divorced three and four times because they are attracted to the same personality again and again.
“I don’t think people learn from their mistakes, or that you pick a better spouse for the second or third time,” Mr. Ferro said.
Ms. Kendrick, who has four children and seven grandchildren, said she’s done with vows. She’s financially secure, she works flexible hours and she has found a support group in WomanSage, a national organization for women at midlife.
“I have a big circle of friends who are all single,” she said. “I’m very content.”
