Hmmm, this is a loaded question for sure.
My first marriage ws a big mistake. Too young, and did it out of neccesity(?). I was pregnant and told him I would get rid of him before I got rid of the baby. There was no way I was going to abort or put up for adoption. He stuck around and we got married because of insurance. But he was an abusive drinker and irresponsable jerk. But it took me years to get over him. He was my first love after all. The only good thing was my daughter.

I remarried almost 3 years ago after dating him for 6 years I guess. We have a great marriage and a baby as well. He is a great step-father, provider and husband. This marriage is better than the first because we married for the right reasons. So everything is better this time around. Security, respect, friendship, partnership.

Finally, after many years, my ex and I get along okay too.
So life is good.

CS

I married the 1st time without love. We produced two wonderful children, but otherwise, our lives were pretty empty. Sometimes it was like existing rather than living. My kids were getting old enough to where soon they would be out of the house, and I couldn't bear the thought of living there alone with #1 husband.
We divorced. I re-married the love of my life. The difference is like night and day.

Ruby

I was married for 2 1/2 years to a guy I lived with for about 4 or 5 years. We divorced in 1996, and the whole relationship is like a dream where I can't remember the details...like I am not sure it really happened or not. It was a waste of part of my life, but then again, there are reasons for everything. Thank God there were no children...one thing I do remember is that he was social moron (I married for looks) and I would hate having to communicate with him because of children!

The second marriage so far has been more intense, more mature, and in some ways more difficult because we are in for the long haul...in the first marriage, we divorced without ever having a REAL problem.

LOL, Tracy, you just described my 1st marriage! I thought I had married a big strong silent type (he was also a hunk.) Took me a while to realise that the reason he didn't say much was because he just didn't have much to say. Unless he was flirting with my friends. Duh. One reason we didn't have kids was because I realised I had a weak man with the emotional development of a seven year old, and one big kid was enough.

Ditto on working harder on this relationship. It gets rocky at times, but we're committed to getting through problems and sticking with it. I don't know why second marriages have a wose divorce rate than first ones, perhaps because more people who marry multiple times are serial monogamists? My best friend is also much happier, wiser, and more committed to her second husband. I think if you learn from bad relationships, you can make a second marriage work much better.

i have been remarried almost 2 years but seperated for 9 of those months i made the mistake of not realizing what a mommas boy this one is so he likes being with her more than me i told him he can stay there and i have filed for divorce #2 but i learned my lesson there will never be marriage #3

From my mothers words. There is never a love or marriage quite like your first(barring an abusive one of course). The second can be wonderful and sweet, but the first will never be duplicated.

I dated my first for two years and we lived together. I knew he was an angry person but he was also funny and smart and I thought I could make up for some of his selfishness and change his anger. We stayed married for twelve years but I became more lonely and abused and finally when I began drinking and self-destructing I decided it was time to make a change. I tried to make it oon my own but I couldn't provide what I wanted for my three little guys so I went back. The pressure was on for me to re-earn and be worthy and I was living a lie trying to be perfect. Then he hit one of our little guys and I knew that I was no longer going to be the only one he took things out on - my neighbor was kind and sweet and undemanding and we moved away to provide a safe place for my kids (who were thrilled by the way) and he and I got married. It is more of a friendship - he has been burnt by two really evil women but he likes/needs to be married and I can provide the stability he wants as well as what I want for my kids. They see their daddy every other weekend and he is mean and nasty to me, but the kids and I are happy and safe and daddy spends more quality time with them then he ever did. I do everything I can to make my husband have a nice enjoyable life like he provides for us and all in all it is a very nice thing.

Yes this is a loaded question but here goes. My first marriage my hubby was six years younger than me and I'm not gonna lie I married for the sex, the man just blew my mind. After three years when the smoke cleared I guess he got tired of blowing my mind and suddenly decided he didnt want to be married anymore. Thank God I didn't have any kids with him, it did devastate me because i was in love with the lil man below, anyway I stayed single for 12 years till i got tired of different men and dating. I remarried a little over a year ago, and it's been great. Good times and bad times but for the most part pretty darn good. I have matured and learned that the lil man below isn't everything so this time I married because I really do love him. We won't be having any children together, this is our time to shine. He has two children already and I have one, thank GOD all are on their own. Financially I make more money but it doesn't matter. We take care of each other. He treats me like gold and I'm pretty spoiled.
I think I married this time for all the right reasons so this is a match made in heaven, wonder what my ex hubby is doing now. (laughing)

Read the step parent forum and it will give you a much better idea of what re-marriage is like if either of you have children, even if the children are now adults. Many times you exchange one set of problems for a different and new set of problems.

Hi Vicki from Indiana.....I too am a Hoosier...
I've been married (and divorced) twice...
I got married when I was 19 (enough said)and was married for 3 years. I was WAY too young and WAY too immature.. I had a son..and that's the ONLY good thing that came out of our marriage.
I got remarried about a year later (I know) and it went pretty well for 5 1/2 years. I was still WAY too immature for marriage! We divorced after 7 years. It's been 4 years since then and we are now back together. It took ALOT of growing up on my part to be ready for a relationship.....much less marriage!!
SO, I would have to say my 1st marriage does not even compare to my second..

Toni

I met my first wife when I was in graduate school in Wisconsin. She was a student in the class I was teaching. She was making advances toward me during the semester but I rejected them. When she was still doing so after the semester was over, I figured she really was serious about dating me. We got along great. We went out for just a short while before she asked me to go home with her for Christmas to meet her parents. I hit it off with her family immediately. When I found out that they liked to play Rook, a card game popular in Alabama where I'm from, it just seemed too good to be true. I asked her to marry me the following March while we were visiting my family in Alabama. She got along with my family as well as I did with hers. She said yes to my proposal and we were married the following August. We had a great relationship but it was stressed tremendously by my long hours in graduate school. Once I graduated, I had trouble getting a job (lousy market that year) and accepted a postdoctoral position at Emory in Atlanta. That was sort of lame because it meant that I would be working really long hours for another couple of years. I was just about finished with my postdoc and starting to interview for jobs when my life took an unexpected turn. I was scheduled to leave Atlanta to interview for the job that I've had for the last ten years when my wife told me the night before that she had an affair and that she was pregnant with the other man's child. I had suffered heartbreak before but not like that. I cried on the plane to Boston for the job interview. The people at my company have never known what a great job at did on that interview given what I had been told the night before. When I got back to Atlanta, I filed for divorce. I lost my wife that I loved dearly and all of her family that I also loved dearly. It still bothers me greatly to this day.
Once I moved to Boston, it was several months before I went out again. My first date felt very strange. I felt like I was cheating on my marriage even though I was divorced. I dated women here and there but never more than a couple of times each. I just couldn't find anyone that I had anything in common with. I'm not sure there is a bigger culture clash in America than than a conservative/moderate Southerner looking for love in radically liberal Yankeeland. Eventually, though, I ran across a conservative Bostonian. Although rare, they do exist. She had been looking for love for quite a long time. She had gone through several dating services, etc. without any luck. She seemed pretty excited to find me and I felt the same way. We dated for a year and half and had a good time especially in the bedroom. About this time, she started getting desperate to get married. I was unsure because of a few things. One, I was still hurting from my previous relationship and was a bit gun-shy about getting that serious again. Two, she had the most disfunctional family that I had ever seen. Her mother and father had been divorced for about 20 years. Her father was an alcoholic that lived in a workshed behind the house of one of his friends. Her mother was the one of the most selfish people that I've ever known and oddly sat around the house all day eating candy. Her brother was and is a bum. As bad as it sounds, though, my wife seemed like Snow White waiting to be rescued and given a real family. However, I had observed a couple of highly irrational fits from her that had me wondering about her mental state. She said that she was anxious about my uncertainty about marriage and that was causing her "fits". So love being blind, we eloped in Maine. It wasn't long after we were married that she started having more "fits". As an example, I was watching TV one afternoon that summer, when she walked in wearing shorts. She had a large bruise on her leg and I asked her how it happened. She looked at me and said "YOU, know how this happened". I wasn't sure what to say at first. Then, I said, "No, I don't". She said, "You did this to me". I was stunned. I told her that she knew I had not done that but she kept repeating that I had done it. So I asked her how I had done it. She never would tell me. She would just say, "You know how". I told her that that the whole conversation was irrational and that I was going out for a while. She dove down at my legs and started screaming "You can't leave me. Please, don't leave me". I tried to push her arms off of my leg and she would just latch back on. Finally, I pushed her arms off of my leg toward the floor when she lunged back like I had pushed her into the middle of the room. She started screaming "Don't hit me again" over and over. All of the windows were open, and the neighbors were listening. I thought for sure the police were going to show up and take me away even though I had not done anything. I knew then that my wife needed help but she resisted. I got married for better or for worse and in sickness or in health. I'm one who takes vows seriously. So, in spite of that crazy episode and MANY more like it, I have stayed with her for six years.
Since then my company's stock has gone through the roof and I was able to buy her a very nice home. She even convinced me that her craziness was due to her biological clock ticking and we have had two kids who I love dearly. However, the craziness continues. Additionally, her nympho persona while we were dating somehow morphed into an entire six year marriage with very little sex. I'm talking three times per year. I've given her a fairy tale and she wants nothing to do with me and still denies that she has a problem.

So here I am now, a fabulous home, great job, two beautiful kids, a crazy wife and a marriage without any love. All I've ever wanted is my own family with a wife who loves me. I work hard, I don't drink or smoke, I don't cheat or go to stripclubs, etc. While I'm not Tom Cruise, I'm not ugly either and I look very young for my age. I've read so many stories of women in nightmare situations that desire what my wives have had but yet I couldn't seem to find one of them when I was dating. I just don't get it. So, all in all, I really cannot recommend getting married a second time. Just say NO, and very loudly.

"The second can be wonderful and sweet, but the first will never be duplicated."

Thank God for small favors!! There is no way I would want to duplicate my first 20 years of misery!

My second, on the other hand, is my best friend, lover, companion, and just all-around dream come true. I had decided that true love was something that only happens in romance novels and it never happened in real life.

Then I met my current husband. :-)

My life might have been much happier & loving if i had given as much dedication to making it work as i have my 2nd marriage.