New Beginnings: My Journey Through Divorce and Remarriage

I was married once.

It didn’t work out.

I had always promised myself I’d never get divorced like my parents, my brother, my uncle, my friends. I would be different. Divorce was not an option.

Years later, I found myself in the wreckage caused by a lack of wise decisions, unpreparedness for marriage, and an affair. I didn’t cheat on my wife, she had the affair, but that’s not what mattered. Looking back, I was as much to blame for her infidelity as she was. We were both sincere, but neither of us was ready to love in the way that a sacramental marriage requires.

And so a decade went by as I tried to rebuild my life, myself, and my capacity to love heathily.

I went on dates with women; a few before I was even officially divorced. I was sad and wanted companionship even though I wasn’t ready for a real relationship.

I had good intentions and made a lot of mistakes. I dodged a lot of bullets. God loved me and looked out for me during that time.

Flash forward, and now I’m married again.

The Catholic Church says I’m actually married for the first time because an annulled marriage is not recognized as a true marriage within the Church. This time, I had a better sense of what I was doing and was fully able to consent to the requirements of the Sacrament of marriage. 

I loved my first wife, and she loved me, but we were young and didn’t know what we were getting into. We were always a mix of good intentions, sincere desires, and unmet emotional needs. We moved fast, and we crashed hard. In a perfect world, we would have reconciled and found a way out of the mess. But we don’t live in a perfect world.

In the ecstasy and tragedy of my first marriage, I learned a lot.

And then I met someone new. This time, I took my time. We got to know each other, broke up, and got back together. One night, I told her over the phone that I had still been communicating with my first wife. My new girl expressed concern. That’s when I realized I had something good with this new girl and shouldn’t jeopardize it. 

I lived in a city an hour away, but I told her we needed to talk. I saw something good possibly slipping away. I hung up the phone, jumped in my car, and drove to her. That night, we sat on her back porch in the summer heat, ate ice cream, sipped bourbon, and I told her I was ready to give our relationship a real shot. To see where it might go with the intent to get married.

A year later, we were in Pre-Cana marriage preparation class at my local Catholic church.

She had never been married. I had and was all too aware of what could go wrong if you’re not sufficiently prepared for a lifelong commitment. We identified areas of potential conflict (differing views on handling finances, etc.). We decided to make the commitment. 

On December 7, 2019, we got married. I had lived a previous life with a previous wife, but I remember my heart and my eyes swelling as my new bride walked down the aisle toward me.

It’s been four years since that day. 

Like my first marriage, we’ve had struggles, arguments, disagreements, and trials. She has been patient, forbearing, and loving. I have tried to be, too. I know more now than I knew in my first marriage. I have tried to apply the lessons I've learned to my new marriage. 

It has not been perfect, but it has been better. We’re all students in the journey of life, and, hopefully, we get better as we go. As the author Ernest Hemingway said, “We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.” He was talking about writing, but it’s true for marriage, too. After all, in a marriage, the husband and wife are writing their own new story together. We’ll never be masters, and we’re always learning.

I love my new wife, and I’m extremely thankful for her.

I will always have affection for my first wife, too. That doesn’t mean I want to be with her again. I would never trade what I have in my marriage now for what I had before. I’m not looking back. 

As Holocaust survivor Victor Frankl said: “Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!” Well, I already acted wrongly the first time around. Now, I am actually living for the second time.

One day in Heaven, we will all meet again, and we won’t be married. As Jesus told the crowd in Matthew 22:30-32: “In the resurrection, people will neither marry nor be given in marriage. Instead, they will be like the angels in heaven. But concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what God said to you: ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” 

God does not preside over what is dead.

My first marriage is dead, and, in the eyes of the Church, was never a sacramental marriage. My new marriage is alive and active. But, in Heaven, we will see each other again, and it will be good and right this time. In a way, love never really dies, it just gets perfected. It may not happen in this life, but Jesus says it will happen in the next. In the meantime, we grow from what we’ve learned and suffered in the past, and we love better in the now.

So, if you are broken up or have received an annulment, grieve what was lost. Seek what is better going forward. It is possible to be happy and to love again. I’m proof of that. And know that, in the end, your love, both lost and found, will be perfected in Heaven.