Four key insights into building a successful second marriage — and insights from those who've done it

Tammy Weber* got married at 19. By the time she turned 21, they had two children, but no functional marriage.

“It took me time to leave. I had to be ready to make the move, to get divorced,” she says. Her children were still very young when her marriage ended, and she spent several years as a single mother before she married her second husband, who was also divorced with kids. “We were still pretty young. I was 25, and he was 29. We were a little seasoned, a little beaten, but also really ready to have, and were grateful for, a fresh start.”

A fresh start is wonderful, but if so much effort goes into making a marriage successful the first time round, what happens when it’s a second marriage and you’re also dealing with stepchildren, or custody arrangements, or moving into a home with preexisting memories and possessions, adult children with their own complicated emotional landscape, and a spouse who has experiences from a previous marriage? How do you navigate all those additional factors while developing a new relationship?

Sarah Rivkah Kohn, founder and director of Zisel’s Links and Shloime’s Club, organizations which support children who have lost a parent, has a unique perspective on the topic of second marriages. Over the years working with bereaved families, she noticed a disturbing trend: Many of the widows and widowers she was in contact with had gotten remarried, but these second marriages were frequently breaking up. Sarah Rivkah and her team undertook a mission to learn more about what makes a successful second marriage so they could help prevent this painful situation. They interviewed 60 men and women who’d lost their spouses and remarried, some successfully, others less so. The question they asked was: What do you wish you’d known before remarrying?

As the team conducted their interviews, they noticed a certain pattern emerging from the responses. Looking at the data, they identified four elements that exist in successful second marriages: a) couples marry for the right reasons, b) they have a financial prenuptial agreement, c) they have a mutually respected rav, and d) they attend regular therapy sessions long-term.

Marry for the Right Reasons 

“Never marry to solve a crisis,” cautions Sarah Rivkah. “The crisis could be that the kids are so challenging, or that it’s so hard to live alone, or that it’s not possible to manage financially.

“These are all realistic things that single parents face,” she empathizes. “But however counterintuitive it sounds, marrying someone when you can’t manage alone is a surefire way to get into an unhealthy relationship out of desperation. The home front needs to be settled, everything needs to be going well, and only then should you introduce a new element into your life in the form of a new spouse.”

Tammy recalls how after her divorce, even though she was still very young and had young children, she had such a good support system where she lived that she opted not to move back in with her parents, who lived in a different city. “I had a sister in town who I was very close to, and she was always a place I could bring my kids. My neighbors were amazing.” She knew moving back home wouldn’t be the ideal arrangement for her and that the key to her having a successful future was to build the best life for herself that she could.