I have a male relative, who shall remain nameless, that I don’t have a relationship with, but I do occasionally hear about him through the family grapevine. One thing I find curious about him is that he is currently married to his 5th wife. That’s right, his FIFTH wife (just one more and he’ll match King Henry VIII!). And, apparently, he married her just a few months after his divorce from his 4th wife was finalized. That’s just bizarre to me.

First, why does he keep getting married? Once, twice, even three times I can kind of understand, but after the 3rd divorce I think I’d be ready to give up and say, “clearly, marriage doesn’t work for me.” But I think he’s one of those marriage addicts, who thinks that he is supposed to be married.

Society does promote that idea (though not as much, these days), that marriage is the end all/be all of life. It’s the goal we must all strive for: to be married. But I don’t agree. Marriage isn’t for everyone. Some folks are just better off staying single, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

It also might be okay if you can learn from your mistakes, and improve yourself, before trying again, which I don’t think this man is the type to do, as evidenced by the quickness in which he remarried after divorce #4. He’s the type of man who if you asked him what went wrong with his previous marriages, he will tell you whateach of his wives did wrong. He wouldn’t take any responsibility for the failures himself. But I’d look at him and say what’s the one common denominator in each marriage? Answer: YOU. So even if his complaints about each ex-wife were valid, well, he picked each one, so what does that say about him?

Second, the even bigger question is what was going through the mind of wife #5 when she accepted his proposal? How do you say yes to someone whom you know has previously proposed to 4 others before you? When you’re standing there reciting the vows and they get to the line about “til death do us part”, why would you believe that he means it this time?

And it’s not like he’s rich. Quite the opposite, from what I hear. After the marriage, he moved in with her. And she has two young children (btw, she’s 28 years younger than he is), one who is disabled, so maybe she just married hom to have someone help take care of the kids?

Then the ironic part here is that gay marriage is still illegal in most states, and supposedly that is the biggest threat to the sanctity of marriage, according to some people. Can’t let two men or two women get married, because that would ruin society, but it’s okay for a heterosexual man to get divorced and then remarried as many times as he wants, as long as it’s always to a woman. How does that make sense?