How To Tell Your Ex About Your Remarriage

Unless There's Abuse, Let Former Spouse Know about Your Engagement


By KRYSTLE RUSSIN


A second marriage is the chance to redo everything again: the wedding of your dreams, celebrating a new life and not making the same mistakes as you did in your first marriage. But when someone gets remarried, is the hardest part planning your second wedding or telling your ex-spouse? The event is an awkward one - imagine having to tell someone you thought you'd spend a lifetime with that you've chosen someone else.

According to Dr. L. Martin Johnson in Honolulu, Hawaii, the first step is determining where your relationship with your ex-spouse stands. "That's gonna really vary with each individual. For instance, it'll be a very different situation if the former spouses are on good terms," Johnson says. "It'll be different if they parted by mutual agreement, or if the party now remarrying was the one who left versus the one who got left. All of those things come into play. What's important is the current kind of relationship between the two of them," he says.

"The other relevant variable is: are there kids? Have they been divorced for 10 years, or are they not in contact? If they're both parenting young kids and have only been divorced for 18 months? Generally, the closer the relationship is, not necessarily emotionally, but how involved you are in each others lives is what determines whether you should tell someone." Johnson says it is best that you tell your ex-spouse the news unless your first marriage has been extremely problematic or abusive. "The one exception to that would be if it was an abusive relationship,and you were the victim, in which case, hopefully, there's little or no contact anyway," he says.


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