The perils of second marriages

I walked by someone I know today and we made eye contact and nodded politely. And that was about it. It's not that we had nothing to say or couldn't have thought of something to say. The problem was the thing that was obviously not to say.

She happens to be she but the same circumstance could have just as easily have arisen with some he.

The problem is her second marriage or, to be more accurate, her failed second marriage since she and her second husband no longer are married. Getting married a second time is a deadly serious thing to do.

As I think I've written here before, marriages (and other serious loving relationships) only end for three possible reasons: it's either his fault, her fault or they are both at fault. If, after a first failure, you never try again, you can always comfort yourself with the notion that it was all the other person's fault or that the fault was shared but was redeemable on your side.

But if you marry again a subsequent failure is going to make it pretty clear to most people (although not necessarily to you yourself) that you just don't have what it takes to make one of these marriage things work. The level of denial that can operate in these circumstances is incredible. It is not so strong, however, that people don't know better at some level. And thus the impossibility of having a conversation with the particular she I walked by today.

Once, for example, we were talking and she started to expound upon the things that had gone wrong. She was doing just fine for a while and then she said something about it being exactly the same as her first marriage. That's the kind of statement that ought to set off alarm bells. As the old saw has it, "If you keep finding yourself in positions where you have to deal with people who are complete jerks, the problem is you."

That time, a few years ago now, she tried to dig her way out of the hole by citing examples. Every example was really an example of her intolerance of frailty in others.

That was the word that came to mind as I walked the rest of the way home. Frailty. Human frailty.

And then I thought of The Philadelphia Story. I have always liked that movie but there was an aspect of morality in it that troubled me. I've never liked the way the movie justifies the extra-marital affair of Seth Lord. What hit me today is that that sub plot is only incidental to the story. The real point is about human frailty and having a regard for it.