The nationwide divorce rate used to be around 50% of all marriages. Given the current pandemic, the divorce rate has begun spiking even higher. Whatever the divorce rate is for first marriages it is even higher for second marriages. Approximately, 60% of second marriages end in divorce. Moreover, approximately 73% of third marriages end in divorce.
The final statistic is reserved for those couples who marry and divorce the same person multiple times. The divorce rate for such “do overs” is off the charts. I actually had one of these vitriolic cases and it went on for over ten years.
Given these statistics it is amazing that people nevertheless continue to dip their toes into the sea of matrimony – multiple times. As a close friend of mine once observed; “Remarriage is the triumph of hope over experience. However, remarriage to the same person is the triumph of delusion over reason.”
As if to prove the latter point, a couple who had been married for over 9 ½ years divorced after a one year period of separation. The wife in the relationship was the one who wanted out but the husband was not so sure.
During their separation both spouses dated other people, a circumstance which made their divorce even more difficult and acrimonious. Collectively, the couple spent approximately $100,000 on their case. They reconciled after the final divorce decree was signed and remarried thereafter. The couple is now in the process of paying off their divorce debt. The wife observed on Tik Tok “our happy ever after is paying off a divorce we never got.”
The greater the number of previously unsuccessful marriages, the greater the odds are of a failed future marriage. Take the case of the actress Pamela Anderson who has been married six times to five different men. Along the way she divorced two rock singers (Tommy Lee and Kid Rock), a music producer (Rick Salomon whom she married, divorced, remarried and divorced again), and a film producer (Jon Peters who lasted all of 12 days).
Recently, Pamela commenced her sixth divorce case, the latest in a Canadian court, against her current husband Dan Hayhurst, a 54 year old body-guard and contractor who had been living with her in Vancouver. According to a source close to Anderson, Pamela and Dan were married one year ago following a “pandemic whirlwind” romance that petered out.
Apparently their 24/7 relationship proved to be too much, Again, sources close to Anderson say that Hayhurst was “unkind, unsupportive” and “a d-k” (a divorce industry term that encompasses various forms of misbehavior). During the pandemic they got to know each other better and Anderson came to the conclusion that he was not the one for her. Seventh time's a charm?
Finally, multiple marriages are not confined to hopeless romantics or the naive. I once met a fellow divorce attorney who had been married and divorced four times. As he recounted his failed marriages he revealed that the details of each marriage were somewhat hazy. By way of explanation he said “You see all of my ex-wives have the same first name - Plaintiff.”