Can you ever be third time lucky in love?
As Anthea Turner gets engaged again, Flic Everett reveals the pleasure and pain of finding ‘the one’ in later life
When I was being repeatedly silly as a child, my wise Jewish grandpa used to say: “Once is funny. Twice, maybe. But three times, no.” It’s a maxim that could easily be applied to marriage – because, surely, after two sets of failed promises, dragging yourself up the aisle for a third time is just wilful idiocy.
Not, however, if you’re TV presenter Anthea Turner, who, at 59, has just got engaged to businessman Mark Armstrong. Her marriage to DJ Peter Powell broke down over 20 years ago – the same year, she moved in with Flake-loving CEO Grant Bovey. Sadly, due to his extramarital dalliance, they broke up in 2012. Now, Anthea says she’s extremely happy with Mark and, after their glamorous engagement in Rome, added: “When you know, you know.” The only thing is, the lovebirds first met in March.
Naturally, there’s been a fair amount of scoffing, doubting and questioning Anthea’s state of mind – why, onlookers argue, would you do this again after it’s gone spectacularly wrong twice already? Isn’t marriage meant to be forever?
On this, though, perhaps surprisingly, I am Team Anthea.
I’m not engaged, and have no immediate plans – but, after two divorces, at 49, I’d readily consider getting married again, should my boyfriend and I ever agree that it’s about time. We’ve been together for more than five years and living together for over three, and we know each other inside out. He knows I can’t get up without a cup of tea, and I know the thing that annoys him most is crockery “left to soak”. Compared to Anthea and her man, we’re practically on our golden wedding anniversary.
Despite that, you might well assume I’d be too disillusioned and embarrassed to even consider the whole public-commitment business all over again. My first wedding was at 21 – too young to tie my own shoelaces, looking back, though at
the time I thought I was wise beyond measure. It lasted three years and produced our wonderful son, but “irreconcilable differences” wasn’t the half of it. In retrospect, meeting at a fancy dress party (we were the only two not dressed up), dropping out of university and getting engaged after six weeks was unnecessarily impulsive.
After a speedy, painful divorce at 24, I married again at 29, this was a much more grown-up attempt, but there were also four children, two ex-spouses, two demanding freelance careers and a lot of financial stress involved. Still, there were very happy times as well as impossibly difficult ones in my second marriage. It lasted 15 years and, again, the eventual break-up was horrendous.
Most people in my situation, I imagine, would retire to singledom, dress their emotional wounds with a camomile poultice and focus on cats and library books for a few years. But, as luck had it, I met my partner, Andy, via a mutual friend who’d known us both for 25 years (though it had never occurred to him that we might get on).
We fell in love very quickly and, after two years of a long-distance relationship – rattling up and down from Bath to the West Highlands – I moved up to Scotland (with my cats and books) to live with him, initially for three months, to see how it worked out. “Very well” was the answer, or as he puts it: “I hate you less than the others.” He is halffinnish and not given to flowery romance.
We are clearly in for the longhaul now. We’re in our late-40s, we love one another and our pets, and tolerate each other’s quirks, and the very idea of going through another break-up and beginning all over again with blended families and resentful exes and “getting-to-know-you” chats is unthinkable. My son is grown up, and Andy’s parenting experience is largely limited to well-behaved spaniels.
So, we’re happily cohabiting – and, according to my close friends, getting married for a third time would make no sense at all. “Why would you?” asked my best friend. “It’s just a piece of paper.”
She’s right, in a sense. Andy and I are both atheists, so I don’t feel I need a deity to oversee our union, or an ordained person to ratify our agreements about bin day and the washing-up. I’ve had one church wedding and one town hall wedding, and while both were lovely at the time, they entailed an awful lot of fuss, not to mention expense.
Currently, we live in a tiny cottage with a mouldy bathroom ceiling and mice in the attic, so it’s not as though we have funds set aside for a wedding.
By our age, there’s a whole lot of people we’d want and need to invite, too – branches of both families, old friends, new friends, friends’ children … I can’t see it happening with two witnesses pulled off the street at Gretna. And the obvious question is, why rock the boat? We’ve committed, so why go through the fluffy charade of another wedding, when I’m too old and jaded for a white dress, and we already share all the bills and a John Lewis cafetière?
I have thought at length about this, in fact – and there are several reasons to get married eventually. The first is practical, with my Jane Austen Yearly Income bonnet firmly in place. Andy owns property, I don’t. I am the higher earner. If one of us dropped dead, the other would struggle – but marriage solves that. Not being a natural gold-digger, however, that’s not the most compelling reason (and we can always make a will). There’s also the bonus of becoming each other’s next-of-kin officially, rather than simply writing “ICE” (in case of emergency) next to their name on your mobile – plus Andy has never been married, and he might enjoy a good Scottish wedding.
But the main reason is because marriage is a promise one intends to keep, made in front of people you love. It’s a public declaration of private feeling, and it admits a wider circle into your relationship – you are officially part of one another’s families, even if you don’t change your name. In an uncertain, and (currently) frankly terrifying world, that old-fashioned stability and longevity feels more important than ever.
Wedlock is a padlock, as the old song says – but having learnt so much from my previous relationships, one day, I’d like to give the combination another try and finally get it right.
And of course, there’s being able to say “my husband” rather than, at nearly 50, “my boyfriend”, which makes me feel like a 14-year-old snogging at a bus stop.
I can entirely see why some would feel that three marriages makes a mockery of the whole idea. If you keep messing it up, why risk it? One divorce is bad enough, let alone two. And, indeed, I may never stroll up the aisle with Andy – and I really don’t know if I can ask my dad, yet again, to give me away. I’m like a boomerang.
But if we do decide to marry, I do know it’ll be for the right reasons. And, like Anthea, I hope I’ll be given the benefit of the doubt – because this time, it really would be for life.
We met at a fancy dress party… and were engaged after just six weeks