Investing in the One You've Got

It takes work to stay married. But, doesn't it take even more work to divorce and remarry?

After a divorce, I often see both spouses eventually try to remarry. The effort they put into remarrying translates to: lots of money, time, hope and attention spent on lots of dates. They'll spend tons of time, money and attention into their appearance - working out, getting new clothes, haircuts, etc to look like a good catch. In fact they're willing to become their best self, so that somebody will fall in love with them. Anybody who has dated knows that lots of these dates are going to be awful. That's just how it goes sometimes, especially while you are working on improving yourself. Often the dates can be so awful that the individual may begin to wonder if they should continue the process, after all it's really taking up a lot of their resources. Then, often after soooo much work, they find a match that works. They put a lot more time, money, hope and attention into this person, while continuing to work on themselves and hopefully end up marrying to them.

This pattern shows up so frequently, and I always wonder what would have happened if both of them had put all that money, time, hope and attention into each other when things started looking bad. And what if they invested all that time, money and attention into their current spouse? This would be a good point to work on their appearance as well - working out, getting new clothes, new haircuts, etc, to look their best for their spouse, as an offering to their spouse when the relationship is rocky. Not just working on their appearance, but also trying to make themselves a person worth loving. Sure, they might get some awful "dates" out of their spouse at first. But, if they continue they might realize that they are investing in the individual that made them fall in love and get married in the first place. They also might become the individual their spouse fell in love with in the first place. If they continue investing so much time, hope, money and attention into their spouse, they might just fall in love again. After all, they already went through the process of falling in love with this individual once, filtering that spouse out from the rest of the human race as one being a great match.

Please, try putting a lot of work into your relationship, before divorcing and putting a lot of work into other relationships.