MULTIPLE MARRIAGES I do ... I do ... do I?

By JOYCE SAENZ HARRIS
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
THE PHRASE ITSELF MADE IT into the Oxford English Dictionary only last year. But serial monogamy is not really all that new. The phenomenon has been around since way before Henry VIII, the 16th-century king of England who married six times in his obsessive quest for male heirs. Even citizens of the Roman Empire, as far back as the first century B.C., practiced serial marriage.
Before the 20th century, the combination of mortality in childbirth and primitive medical practices often resulted in shorter life spans, meaning many people were unfortunate enough to be widowed more than once. This was the case of some unlikely candidates for serial monogamy, such as Mary Baker Eddy, the thrice-wed founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist.
But today we have a different breed of serial monogamists: people who divorce repeatedly, going from one marriage to another in search of the "perfect" partner.
In some cases, real life may be not too different from the byzantine soap-opera travails of "All My Children" heroine Erica Kane (played by actress Susan Lucci). Erica has been married nine times to six men. She married three of her husbands twice each, and (oops!) had two illegal marriages to yet another swain.
On the soap, it's all fiction. But it's not all that far from fact, considering that actress Elizabeth Taylor has been married eight times, including twice to Richard Burton -- and that she managed to acquire four husbands in the 1950s alone.
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"I imagine Elizabeth Taylor choosing a dress in which to marry Richard Burton. Did she believe that this time everything would be different? That this time she would be true until death did them part? I marvel at such hopefulness." -- Novelist Ann Patchett, in The New York Times
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Top contenders
If we define serial monogamy as three or more marriages on one's personal r & eacute;sum & eacute;, the best-known serial monogamists are celebrities such as Taylor, CNN talk-show host Larry King and actor Mickey Rooney, all with eight marriages each; and Hollywood's reigning champion, Zsa Zsa Gabor, with nine. Moving up as a contender is our serial bridegroom of the year, actor Billy Bob Thornton. He recently dispensed with Wife No. 5, actress Angelina Jolie -- and he is only 47.
Many of us know someone who has shed his or her second or third spouse and plans another trip to the altar. The mom next door may have more than she imagined in common with model Christie Brinkley and actress Melanie Griffith, each of whom has been married four times and has three children, each child by a different husband.
This inherently creates difficulties. "The blending of children is one of the biggest problems," says Joan Robertson Cross, a psychologist whose Dallas-area practice sees many couples working on third or fourth marriages. By the time a parent enters a third marriage, he or she is hauling the considerable baggage of children who resent the revolving door of stepparents and stepsiblings.
Generational impact
Such children also grow up with a distorted idea of marriage, says Kelly Simpson, a marriage and family therapist at the Active Relationships Center in Dallas.
"Repeatedly changing partners produces a generation of kids who have never seen a marriage work," Simpson says. These children are likely to regard the opposite sex as untrustworthy, spouses as easily replaceable. The chances are poor that they will avoid the example set by their parents and achieve a stable marriage of their own.
Serial monogamists "most definitely come out of similarly fractured households," Simpson says. Cross agrees: "There is a correlation in divorce. If one of the partners in a marriage has been married three times, 9 times out of 10, that one is from a divorced home."
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"Same old slippers, Same old rice, Same old glimpse of Paradise." -- poet William James Lampton, "June Weddings"
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Why do people repeatedly fail at marriage?
It's not a matter of socio-political philosophy, for sure: Those who have had three spouses include staunch conservatives such as Newt Gingrich and die-hard liberals such as Jane Fonda. A couple's level of marital commitment is far more likely to be shaped by parents and siblings, other married friends and religious beliefs.
The need for romance
First marriages usually falter when the heat of romance cools unexpectedly. This coincides with the waning of a potent "chemical cocktail" that, when released in the human body, makes one feel sexually attracted to -- "in love" with -- another person. After a few months, perhaps up to two years, that initial thrill is mostly gone.
Unless romance has ripened and matured into a committed, selfless relationship, the partners are likely to feel vaguely dissatisfied. Sexual relations may diminish drastically, especially after childbirth. But another attractive person can make that chemical cocktail kick in again.
Eventually it's the same song, third verse.
If you fit this pattern, you're merely in love with love. Like any addiction, the "love drug" requires more frequent doses to maintain its kick. That's why serial marriages or other monogamous relationships may get successively shorter in duration.
Couples who work to save a marriage and succeed are likely to be influenced by "subliminal pressures from their families, their friends and their faith," Simpson says. Those partners tend to have more intact extended families, with parents and siblings in stable marriages.
Couples may have a better support network if they have a religious reason for marital commitment. A social group of happily married friends also can exert a subtle force, "because friends don't like to see their friends get divorced," Simpson says.
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"It was the triumph of hope over experience." -- Samuel Johnson on the subject of remarriage, 1770
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Important lessons
Can serial monogamists ever find true happiness?
Yes -- but not unless the serial bride and groom learn some hard lessons. Otherwise, "you can marry five times and never learn anything," Simpson says.
Key points:
UNo serial spouse is an innocent party to marital disaster.
UAll serial spouses have repeated poor choices and negative behavioral patterns.
UThey are destined to fail unless they change themselves.
UThey must team up with their spouse to break the destructive patterns.
Cross and Simpson agree that the serial spouses who seem to try hardest are working to save a third marriage. "I see a lot of good marriages coming out of No. 3," Cross says.
So, if what was learned in No. 3 had been learned in No. 1, more first marriages presumably would survive.
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"Elizabeth Taylor, now 70, once said of her eight marriages, 'What do you expect me to do? Sleep alone?' And Zsa Zsa Gabor, 13 years older and wed nine times, said, 'Personally I know nothing about sex because I've always been married.'" -- columnist Susan Ager, the Detroit Free Press
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Is serial monogamy the symptom of a society that now treats marriage vows as disposable?
"No question about it," says Simpson. "People cut the line a lot faster than they used to."
Living together
They also hedge their bets more. Modern couples often live together for years, thinking a "test drive" will avert divorce, says Carina Chocano, a writer for the online magazine Salon.com. But the National Marriage Project, affiliated with Rutgers University, found that cohabitation before marriage actually increases the likelihood of divorce by 46 percent.
"There's a reason a 'test drive' lasts 10 minutes instead of three years," Chocano wisecracks. "Because at the end of three years, you want a new car."
Chocano is the author of "Do You Love Me or Am I Just Paranoid? A Serial Monogamist's Guide to Love" (Villard Books; $9.95), which will be published in January. She describes it as a comic takeoff on earnest self-help books and "girl guides" to male-female relationships. But the writer also has real-life experience to share: She says a pattern of serial monogamy is quite usual among today's singles, be they gay or straight. Careerist types especially tend to date well into their 20s and 30s.
At 34, Chocano is thinking of marrying her live-in boyfriend, who is her third lengthy post-college relationship. "When you live together, you're 'committed,' but ambivalent," she says. Getting married requires a leap of faith for her generation, the first to grow up with parents who were likely to be divorced.
"People are understandably gun-shy about getting married, because who wants to go through three divorces?" Chocano says. "Three break-ups are bad enough." She cites a male friend who emerged in his early 30s from a short-lived "starter marriage."
The divorce, he said, "was just like breaking up -- only with paperwork."