How Long Should You Date Before Marriage the Second Time

08 Sep How Long Should You Date Before Marriage the Second Time

Almost every answer to this question was written for people in their twenties. Date two years, get engaged, marry the following autumn. The advice assumes you have decades of runway, no dependants, no property, and no prior marriage to learn from.

If you are fifty-two and considering a second marriage, none of those assumptions hold, and the standard timeline is answering a question you are not asking.

What the research actually says

There is a real finding underneath the folk advice, and it is worth knowing before deciding to ignore it.

Economists at Emory University surveyed more than three thousand ever-married adults in the United States and examined which factors predicted how long marriages lasted. Among their findings, couples who dated three or more years before the proposal faced roughly half the divorce risk of couples who dated less than a year. Those who dated one to two years fell in between.

That is a genuine effect and it points at something true. But it is a population average drawn largely from first marriages, and averages are poor instruments for individual decisions. The question is what the finding is actually measuring.

It is almost certainly not measuring time. Nothing happens at the thirty-six month mark. What longer courtships tend to contain is a larger number of unrehearsed situations: an illness, a financial setback, a difficult holiday, a disagreement neither person could smooth over. Time is a proxy for exposure. Three years is simply how long it usually takes, at ordinary speed, to accumulate enough of it. The same distinction underlies the difference between chemistry and compatibility, which is measured on a very different timescale.

Why the second time is structurally different

Two things change, and they pull in opposite directions.

You have better instruments. A person who has been married for two decades knows what daily life with someone actually requires. You have seen how a partnership behaves under strain, what you can tolerate, what you cannot, and what you were wrong about at twenty-five. You are reading a person with equipment you did not previously own, and you tend to read faster and more accurately. Our guides to dating after divorce and dating after 50 cover how that judgement changes.

The stakes are more concrete. Property, retirement accounts, adult children with views, possibly grandchildren, possibly a business. A second marriage joins two established lives rather than two potential ones. There is more to disentangle if it goes wrong, and the disentangling happens at an age when rebuilding takes longer.

The first change argues for moving faster than the standard advice. The second argues for moving slower. Which is why “how long” is the wrong question, and “what needs to have happened” is the right one.

What needs to have happened before you decide

These are the events that carry information. Some couples accumulate them in eighteen months. Some go four years without encountering half of them.

A real disagreement, fully resolved. Not a difference of opinion about a restaurant. Something where you each wanted incompatible things and both cared. What you are learning is not whether you agree. It is what they do when you do not: whether they escalate, withdraw, concede too quickly, keep score, or stay in the room and work.

Contact with each other’s families. Adult children in particular. A second marriage that the children of either party actively oppose is a different undertaking from one they accept, and finding this out after the wedding is expensive. This does not mean anyone gets a veto. It means you need to know the terrain.

An explicit financial conversation. Not a full disclosure of balances on a third date, but before any decision about marriage: how each of you thinks about money, what obligations exist, what happens to what you have built, and whether either of you supports anyone. Financial silence between two people with established assets is not romantic discretion. It is a deferred argument.

Seeing them unwell, inconvenienced, or tired. Courtship is conducted mostly in good conditions. You want at least a few observations taken in bad ones.

A conversation about the shape of the next fifteen years. Where you want to live. Whether either of you intends to retire, and when. Proximity to children and grandchildren. What happens if one of you needs care. These are not morbid questions at fifty-five or seventy. They are the actual content of the decision.

The two failure modes

Moving too fast usually looks like relief. Someone who has been alone for several years, or who left a difficult marriage, meets a person who is kind and steady, and the contrast is so pronounced that it reads as certainty. Intensity early in a relationship is not evidence of fit. It is frequently evidence of how much you needed the relief.

Moving too slowly usually looks like caution but is often avoidance. A five-year courtship in which nothing progresses is not careful. It is a decision that has already been made and not said out loud. If you cannot name what you are still waiting to learn, you are not gathering information any more.

The honest test is whether you can answer this: what would have to happen for you to be sure, and is it plausible that it will? If the answer is nothing specific, time is no longer doing work.

A workable answer

For a second marriage between two established adults, somewhere between eighteen months and three years is where most of the necessary exposure tends to accumulate. That is a description of how long these things usually take, not a rule.

Two people who have lived through a genuine crisis together in year one may know more than a couple who have spent four pleasant years never being tested. A matchmaker screening for long-term potential is looking for much the same evidence, which is part of what a matchmaker actually does. The calendar is a proxy. The events are the thing.

And there is a version of this question that no timeline answers, which is whether marriage is the right instrument at all. Plenty of people in their sixties and seventies build committed, permanent partnerships without remarrying, for reasons involving estates, pensions, adult children, or simple preference. That is a legitimate destination rather than a failure to arrive at one.

Frequently asked questions

How long should you date before marriage the second time around?

Most established adults need roughly eighteen months to three years, though the number matters less than what has occurred in it. Before deciding, you want to have had a real disagreement and resolved it, met each other’s adult children, held an explicit conversation about money, and discussed where the next fifteen years are meant to happen.

Is it a bad sign if we want to marry quickly?

Not necessarily, but it is worth examining what is driving the speed. Relief after a difficult marriage or a long period alone can feel indistinguishable from certainty. If the urgency comes from wanting to secure the relationship rather than from having tested it, that is worth noticing.

Should adult children have a say in a remarriage?

They do not get a veto and you do not owe anyone permission. They do warrant a conversation, both because their reaction affects the practical shape of the marriage and because the reasons behind an objection occasionally contain something worth hearing. Being told about it rather than presented with it usually goes better.

Do we need to discuss finances before getting engaged?

Yes. Two people with property, retirement savings, and possibly children from prior marriages are making a legal and financial arrangement as well as a personal one. This is a conversation for a solicitor or financial adviser as well as for each other, and it should happen before an engagement rather than during wedding planning.

Is living together a substitute for a longer courtship?

It compresses the timeline usefully, because it produces the ordinary friction that courtship tends to avoid. It is not a complete substitute, since some of what you are testing for only appears under conditions that cohabiting does not generate on its own.

If the timeline is what worries you

Most of the anxiety about pace comes from not knowing whether the other person wants what you want. That is a question better settled at the start than discovered in the second year. Los Angeles Singles works with people who have stated plainly that they are looking for a serious relationship, and readiness is assessed before anyone is introduced. If you would rather date from that position, you can begin with an application.