Over the last 50 years of my life, I’ve been married twice. The first marriage lasted almost 17 years. The second marriage is at 11 years and running strong. It’s odd to think that I have spent almost 60% of my life married.
According to the Census Bureau, 40% of first marriages end in divorce. For couples married before age 20, 50% of them end in divorce within the first 10 years. I was 19, almost 20, when I was married for the first time. Honestly, I had no business getting married at such a young age. Someone had given me, what I now consider, to be bad advice. “Get married and have kids when you are young so they are moved out of the house in your 40s and you have the rest of your life.” I’m sure the advice was given with the best of intentions, but there were a few problems with it.
The first problem is maturity. A typical male brain doesn’t finish developing until around age 26. Females mature around 24. So things like decision making, impulse control and planning haven’t completely set in until then.
The second problem is that during your younger years, your making the least amount of money you will ever make. So you mix the combination of low wages and immaturity and you have high potential for a rough start to an adult life. This isn’t the best time to be planning a wedding, getting married, setting up a new home or having children.
In 1995, my wife and I were both making $4.25/hour. This was the foundation for a financially rough life, first living with relatives and then roommates.
At the age of 20, we had our first child, a son. Almost 2 and a half years later, we had a daughter. The timing of both was horrible planning and clearly not thought through thoroughly.
Shortly after my son was born, I started a trend that would continue for the rest of my first marriage. I would drive an hour to school, when I got home, I would go to work at my first job, a computer store, and then go to work at my second job delivering pizza until midnight. I would sleep for about 6 hours and then be off to school again. This trend of working multiple jobs, side hustles, or even running my own computer company, kept me away from my family quite a bit. I did all of this in the name of supporting my family, but over time, it strained the relationship with my wife AND my children.
After 16, almost 17 years of marriage, we divorced. This started a phase of my life I wasn’t ready for. I quickly discovered that I quite a bit of my ego and self-worth was tied to being a husband and a father. We will talk about finding myself in a future video.
The most important part is how we handled the divorce. Through the next few years, we worked to co-parent together and keep things as amicable as possible. We didn’t involve lawyers, we worked out the child support and alimony with court guidelines, keeping it reasonable. I picked up extra work where I could. If she needed extra help with the bills, I would do what I could, even calling utility companies to negotiate payment arrangements. We worked out visitations and did our best to share the kids and events. We both made it a point to never speak badly of each other, especially around the kids. Some people tend to forget things like this during a divorce. I can tell you that my respect for my ex-wife didn’t always sit well with girlfriends, but it was a must for my children.
A few years later, I met the woman that would become my second, and hopefully last, wife.
I told myself this time things were going to be different. I had to learn some new habits. One of the first things I did was started working on myself. I started reading books, or listening to audiobooks. Books like “The Richest Man in Babylon” to work on my finances. “The Alchemist” to work on my view of the world around me and how I let it affect me. “How to Win Friends and Influence People” to work on my attitude and outlook. I went through 20 or so books to improve myself first.
For my work life, I would stay closer and be more present with my new family. For most of my 11 years in my second marriage, I worked from home. Taking kids to and from school, attending school events and helping with kids duties while the wife was at work.
For my financial life, I used to work extra hours and extra jobs to make up for poor financial habits, so it was important that I prioritize my finances, our finances, this time. After reading “The Richest Man in Babylon”, a fantastic book, by George Clauson, I decided to start following the 7 Cures for a Lean Purse. With this, I started saving money. Now, most of this was just making sure I was using the retirement fund options I had at work. We cut back our excess expenses. I know you will be surprised to hear this, but you really don’t need to pay $100 a month for cable, and $20 for NetFlix, and $20 for Disney and whatever other subscriptions I had. I took my credit score from 496, in 2016, to nearly 700 today.
At the start of the Pandemic, I had managed to get my credit score to the 625, so it time for the Fifth Cure for a Lean Purse, “Make of thy dwelling a profitable investment”. I was tired of renting and the house we were renting was being sold by the owner… this was the 3rd time in my 20 or so years of renting that the owner had sold the house while I was renting it. I had followed the first four cures, so now it was on to the fifth cure. We had controlled our expenses, saved some money in my 401K, and now it was time to buy a house. This was especially important because during my first marriage, a mortgage agent had told me that I would never own a house. Now my wife will have, as the book says “a spot to raise the blooms that gladden a woman’s heart”. “Thus come many blessings to the man who owneth his own house.” I fully agree.
Definitely not the last lesson I learned, but the most significant lesson I learned was about treating my partner, my wife, differently. During my first marriage, I was a pretty standard husband. Not overly affectionate. Waiting until Valentine’s Day or anniversaries, birthdays and holidays to show my affection. This was one of the first things I changed. Now, I seldom leave or enter my house without showing my affection to my wife. We don’t even celebrate Valentine’s Day because we show our affection every day. Maybe it’s my age, but this next one has been a game changer. I no longer pick fights or yell at my wife. That doesn’t mean I never yell, but if I do, it is to calm a situation, not make it worse. I don’t think the wife and I have had a fight about anything in the last year. This is something that I think is huge for the relationship and sets a good example for my children.
These have been some of the biggest changes I’ve made in second marriage, but it’s also about the little things as well… getting the wife her favorite candy bar or favorite water. Stepping in to do little things that make her life easier. Going to the store so she doesn’t have to. Doing animal chores on the weekend so she can sleep in. In the end, it is all about thinking about your partner as much, if not more, than you think of yourself.
I hope that you have found some of this information to be helpful. Please, learn from my mistakes and use the stories of my missteps to improve things in your own lives.

Remember, be good to one another. – Opa

Watch the video here: What I Learned from 2 Marriages