Once I entered my 30s, conversations about dating shifted. Recently, I was having conversations with two friends about how much things change. One was with a friend who is going through a divorce and expressed the feeling that she now has a scarlet letter when she decides to jump back into dating. Another is single in her 20s, and jokes that by the time she gets married she’s going to have to find a guy that’s back on the market after a divorce.
The funny thing is, I often made that same joke back in my 20s. I knew I didn’t want to get married until after 30, but I didn’t actually anticipate that it would come true (spoiler: it did). In the same token, I saw friends leave unhappy marriages and end up with wonderful second spouses, and I also watched some of my closest friends marry people who had been divorced. The concept wasn’t foreign to me, nor did it have any stigma attached.
Last year, I got married – and I am my husband’s second wife. It’s a weird phrase to even say since I never really think about myself as such. We’re fortunate that only once during our engagement did someone refer to my husband as getting “remarried,” and I gave this woman a pass given her age and traditional sensibilities.
But, perhaps it’s that we live in a time where it’s not unusual to hear that someone had a “starter marriage” in their late-20s before settling down. It’s not something I typically think twice about. I had friends who’d forged the second-wife path before I did, and now that I find myself here, these are a few of the words of wisdom I’d give to someone else in my shoes.
