We divorced our men . . . and turned them into our perfect husbands Second time
And marrying them a second time turned them into better lovers, too!
WHEN Christine Jones left husband Colin for another man after 24 years of marriage, he swore he would never forgive her. Both went on to marry new partners, and for ten years the animosity between the pair was so intense their two adult children did everything in their power to keep them apart.
So no one, least of all Christine and Colin, could have predicted that they would once again fall in love and remarry.
‘I look at Colin sometimes and think: “Where did this lovely man come from?”’ says Christine.
The Joneses, from Shropshire and both in their 60s, are, of course, not the only warring couple to have put their differences behind them and have a second shot at marriage.
Hollywood stars Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton famously married and divorced twice; singer Phil Collins got back together with ex-wife Orianne earlier this year after eight years apart; and the Duke and Duchess of Norfolk have reportedly rekindled their relationship after spending five years living in separate wings of their enormous family seat, Arundel Castle in West Sussex.
It is believed that the spark between them was reignited while planning the wedding of their eldest son, Henry, in July — something Christine and Colin Jones can relate to.
The couple were also thrown together again by a family event, in their case their grandson’s first birthday party in 2009.
Neither of their spouses had been able to make the celebrations, and Christine and Colin found themselves chatting civilly for the first time since their separation in 2000. They were surprised at how easily they were able to talk and reminisce about when their children, Lynda, 34, and Paul, 32, were little.
When they first met and married in 1978, the pair both worked in their own construction business, which put a strain on the marriage.
‘Colin was a workaholic — it made him a great provider but not a great husband,’ says Christine. ‘I virtually brought our children up alone, on top of working in our business, because he was never home.
‘The work stresses spilled over into our private life and one day I snapped and said: “I can’t do this any more. I’m not just your business partner, someone you can shout at because I haven’t chased up a payment, I’m your wife.” ’
FEELING neglected, Christine left Colin for a work acquaintance, ‘who wanted to spend time with me, told me I looked lovely, made me cups of tea and ran me baths’. ‘Deep down I thought I could go off with him and teach Colin a lesson, and then come back, but Colin quickly filed for divorce.
‘A few months after it came through, I noticed, as he was dropping off the children, that Colin was wearing a wedding ring.
‘I remember bursting into tears when I told my mum, saying: “I cannot believe he’s married her.” It felt like the door had been bolted shut behind me.’
Five years later, Christine married her lover but there were already tensions in the relationship, due to the couple’s different approaches to work and money. meanwhile, the couple’s children struggled to get along with Colin’s new wife.
By the time she and Colin found themselves together in the kitchen at their grandson’s birthday party, both were unhappy in their marriages. They decided to stay in touch and were soon talking several times a week.
‘When, a couple of months later, I told Colin I’d decided to leave my husband, he invited me out for dinner and we both had such a lovely time we couldn’t wait to meet again,’ says Christine.
Within a matter of months, they had moved in together.
Two years later, Colin proposed beside the Great Wall of China, and the pair married again in August 2012, in Turkey, in front of close family and friends. Anxious to avoid the mistakes of the past, they each now run separate construction firms, though work from the same office, and have bought a Spanish villa with a rooftop pool, in which they spend quality time together.
‘When we were married the first time he was far too busy running his business to take any notice of me,’ says Christine.
‘Colin is very opinionated, about everything from politics to the way a picture is hung, and I never used to contradict him but that decade apart has given me the confidence to let him know when I think he’s talking rubbish, and that’s much healthier for a couple.
‘During our first marriage, I never felt much in the mood for making love when the only conversations we had were about work and we never spent any nice time going for meals and relaxing together. ‘When someone has been shouting at you one minute, it’s hard to be a wanton sex goddess the next.
‘Colin is so much more attentive to me this time around. One evening, at our holiday home, I really fancied some chocolate buttons — not easy to come by in Spain — and Colin scoured the shops for me until he found a packet.
‘These gestures inevitably lead to good things in the bedroom.’
Christine is confident that the pair will make their marriage work this time — and she credits an unlikely source.
‘I’ve got a lot to thank his second wife for: She taught Colin to be romantic, never forget a card on a special occasion and always say: “I love you.”
‘I’ve married the same man twice, but, in many ways, it feels like I’m with a different person.’ According to Relate, one in four divorcees regret their split, although there are no statistics showing what proportion actually get back together.
‘most people separate with enormous amounts of animosity,’ says relationship counsellor Denise Knowles. ‘But what people tend to forget in the heat of a break-up is that there will have been good times — otherwise they would never have married in the first place.
‘In a lot of marriages, one partner can feel stifled or squashed and when couples go their separate ways they grow, develop and mature, though aspects of their characters will stay the same.
‘When these exes cross paths again, there are the memories of what was good, but also they are meeting someone who is slightly different and that can make them very attractive to one another, rekindling interest.’
This was certainly the case for mary and Brian Roberts, who married for the first time in their late 20s, in 1981, and again for a second time in 2007, in their mid-50s. The couple’s first marriage lasted just a year, largely, they both agree, because Brian still carried a torch for an ex-girlfriend who he then went on to make his second wife, though that marriage fizzled out, too. However, mary and Brian, both 64, stayed in touch, sending Christmas
cards and even meeting every now and then.
Mary also remarried, but gradually realised she and her husband were not very well matched, and while she was going through a separation, she turned to Brian for help.
Mary was unable to afford to pay her ex-husband his share of the equity from their marital home and, because she was desperate not to have to move out, asked Brian, a process engineer, if he would buy it as an investment and allow her to pay him rent.
‘I knew that Brian had the funds, and other rental properties, and I was thrilled when he agreed,’ says Mary. ‘When we met to do the paperwork, it was clear there was still a spark between us.
‘I knew I wanted to give it another go — I never wanted us to break up in the first place — but it was Brian who broached the subject of reconciliation first.
‘He was living in Aberdeen at the time and invited me up for the weekend.
‘A few months later I moved in and, both now so much older and wiser, life was good.
‘We’d been together such a short time first time around, and a lot of water had run under the bridge since then, so it was like encountering a whole new person in the bedroom. I didn’t feel any anger towards Brian, just relief that he’d got his ex out of his system.’
Having discovered that the grass was no greener elsewhere, Brian proposed to Mary once more.
‘Mary was just as crazy and entertaining as ever — and still makes the best hamburgers in the world — and I realised that, first time around, I’d been too immature to really appreciate her,’ says Brian.
‘She’s the love of my life and I wish we’d stayed together, but you can’t turn back the clock. So instead we made a new commitment to one another.’
Home is now a £1.2million threestorey wing of an Edwardian house set in three acres, near Woking, Surrey, a world away from the three-bedroom Manchester semi with secondhand carpets that they lived in first time around.
‘Now all the pressures that come with youth have gone, we enjoy hanging out together,’ says Mary. ‘Brian doesn’t always have to be right when we discuss things; nowadays, he lets me be right sometimes.
‘He used to tell me I wouldn’t amount to anything because I didn’t have a degree, and that’s one of the things I achieved while we were apart.
‘In fact I got a first class degree, and have since discovered he only got a 2:2. Brian finds it funny he motivated me to do better than him.’ Denise Knowles warns that it’s important for couples to think carefully about what went wrong first time around before reconciling if they are to avoid repeating the same mistakes — and that means recognising your own part in the break-up.
In her clinic, she has counselled clients who separated when their children were small who are keen to give their relationship another go once they’ve grown up and the pressures have reduced.
THIS was the case for Joanne and Mike Berry, who married in 1993 and separated in 2003, when their children, Alex, Sam and Jess, were aged nine, seven and five. ‘Mike had a stressful job running a business, with ten offices nationwide, and I was a stay-athome mum doing all the domestic stuff,’ says Joanne, a lettings agent from Bromley, Kent.
‘We got so immersed in our different worlds we just stopped speaking, or noticing each other.
‘I’m a bit of a drama queen and couldn’t bear feeling unloved, so I told Mike it was over, and six weeks later started dating a man in his 20s — I was 41 — who I was with for five years. Mike was incredibly hurt and filed for divorce, though it was two years before he had a relationship with anyone, and I can’t deny that I felt jealous when he did.’
In 2011, Joanne, 53, began dating a man closer to her own age. The attraction, she quickly realised, was that he reminded her of Mike.
Around that time, Joanne and Mike both attended a school parents’ meeting for one of their children and as they chatted Joanne realised Mike was flirting with her.
She invited him to her home the next week to celebrate one of the children’s birthdays:
‘Before we knew it we were sneaking around behind their backs, dating,’ she says.
‘We didn’t want to give the children, who were then 17, 15 and 13, false hope until we knew we could definitely make it work.
‘But after five months, on Christmas Eve 2011, we decided to tell them. They rolled their eyes and said: “Tell us something we don’t already know!” ’
The couple, who have now been back together for five years, are planning to remarry in Las Vegas in two years, when their youngest, Jess, will be 21 and legally able to toast her parents’ marriage with a glass of champagne.
‘Mike never used to say “I love you”, but now he does, and gives me a hug,’ says Joanne. ‘He tells me: “You were always the one” and I tease him and say: “You weren’t!”
‘The sex was a bit weird initially because I felt nervous and shy, like being on a first date, but we soon relaxed with one another.’
Mike, 54, a recruitment company director, says while he was ‘very hurt’ when their marriage ended, neither of them dwells on the relationships they had while apart.
For Colin Jones, he says the time he spent apart from Christine was a ‘necessary evil’ in that it made him appreciate how much he loved her.
‘We both acknowledge that if we’d been more mature, we could probably have worked things out without ending up divorced,’ he says. ‘But few of us realise what we have until it’s lost.’
Some couples, however, like the Joneses, Roberts and Berrys, have been lucky enough to get a second chance at happy ever after.