Real life: Meet the boomerang couples
For some, divorce is just the beginning – as these two couples who split up and then reunited to marry again prove
Carol Bailey, 73, and her husband Alan, 76, live in Leicestershire. They have three children.
Carol Bailey and first Alan got together on a youth club bus trip to Blackpool in 1961, when Carol was 15 and Alan was 18. They got engaged one Christmas Eve, a month after Carol turned 17, and married in a church in Derbyshire in August 1964, a year later. ‘It was fairly normal back then but in hindsight we were so young,’ remembers Carol.
The newlyweds lived with Carol’s parents for 18 months while they saved £200 for a deposit on a house and they then went on to adopt two children, Matthew, in February 1972, and
Emma, two years later, before Carol pregnant. fell Their son Daniel was born in March 1981.
On the outside at least, life seemed rosy. But when Carol returned to her job as a secretary after a break to raise the children, the marriage unravelled. ‘It was all my fault,’ she reflects. ‘Back at work full time, I suddenly felt like me again. At the time Alan had health problems and was trying to start up a business, and I remember looking at the lives of other people around me and thinking that mine seemed a bit hard,’ Carol explains. ‘I thought there must be greener grass somewhere so I ended our marriage in 1990. I can see now that you create more trouble for yourself when you look at your life like that. It was a horribly upsetting time for all of us and a situation that I wish I hadn’t created.’
Carol moved out, and eventually bought a flat. She dated another man on and off for many years while
Alan had other partners, too.
But everything shifted when, both single again, the family got together to celebrate Daniel’s 22nd birthday in 2003.
‘I realised I missed Alan and even Daniel noticed we were getting on well,’ Carol explains. ‘For a while before
that I’d sometimes go to his house and we’d sit and have a glass of wine in the garden and I’d think, ‘Oh this is nice’, but then Alan would put the barriers up because he was still hurting.
But by the end of 2003 the couple started dating again.
‘We had to acknowledge what went wrong to move forward,’ says Carol. ‘But we also agreed that we wouldn’t bring things up in any arguments because the past is behind us now.’
A few years later, Carol gave Alan a slab of chocolate iced with the words ‘Will you marry me?’ Despite his
‘Our relationship is stronger than ever’
‘I can now see you make trouble when you look at life like that’
initial reluctance, they remarried in December 2012 at a register office and celebrated over a pub lunch with their children and three grandchildren. Six years on, they’re still very happily married.
‘Alan and I make each other laugh,’ says Carol. ‘He plays golf and has just signed up for an allotment and I’m secretary of the bowls club. But there’s nothing’s nicer than sitting together in the evenings and having a glass of wine and a chat.’
Although Carol regrets the break-up, she’s glad they had the opportunity to reunite. ‘Our relationship is stronger than ever.’