How Many Divorced Couples Get Back Together (and HOW)

Marriage Clever
6 min readSep 17, 2020

You might be surprised how many divorced couples get back together but the real important question is HOW they do it.

Studies show that around 60% of marriages going through a divorce are open to reconciliation. 62% of spouses wish their partner had worked harder to save the marriage at this stage. Roughly 30% of divorced couples get back together when one of them is actively trying.

This does not mean you should just sit back and wait or hope that your spouse is the one to try and save the marriage. We’re going to cover things you can actively do to save your marriage.

Every marriage is going to be different in some way, shape or form. Hopefully the advice here will help give you some guidance but if you want some more specific advice then take a free marriage assessment quiz. It can help fix the underlying problems, not just address the symptoms.

(Study: Wineberg and McCarthy, “Separtion and reconciliation in American marriages,” Journal of Divorce & Remarriage 29, 1993: 131–46).

Nowadays, more and more divorced couples decide to get back together after spending some time apart. Previously, the mere idea of divorce was inconceivable to the most conservative part of society, and later, to those who believed in it and supported the freedom of love beyond marriage, knowing that a divorced couple would try again seemed at the very least a mistake; and a waste of time.

However, despite the difference of opinion on this subject, the reality is that there can be life beyond divorce and that love can go beyond signed papers. Human relationships are much more complex than a mere legal procedure, so if your feelings resist the passage of time and the break-ups, the fact that you are married and divorced will not be an obstacle for you to love each other again.

The key for this reconciliation after the divorce is found precisely in the reasons that triggered it, that is to say, they will not have the same possibilities of returning a couple that broke up due to a lack of communication, as one that did it due to physical or mental abuse; and that is that there are insurmountable distances even for love.

Next, with the intention of helping other couples that find themselves in a similar situation, we will explain what are the main reasons that make a divorced couple love each other again and think about getting married again.

How many divorced couples get back together?

Keep reading!

Reasons why a divorced couple reconciles

Children in common

The main cause of reconciliation after a divorce is always the children in common. Clearly, it is not the same to try to fix a relationship that has had children as it is to try to fix one that has not. Children are a very important connecting factor between ex-spouses, since as the saying goes, “When you are parents, you are parents forever.

When a couple has children, they inevitably have to keep in touch: their education, behavioral problems, illnesses, economic issues, etc. This means that the separation never becomes completely final and there is always the possibility that feelings will return.

Although having children dramatically increases the chances of reconciliation, it does not always happen. There are marriages that need to separate for their own good and for the good of their own children, so whether this factor works will always depend on the overall context of the relationship.

Talking about your problems as a married couple

There are marriages that after a divorce need to take a lot of distance to meditate on the mistakes they have made that have caused this separation. However, after all that period of reflection and time without seeing the other person, there are times when the need to face all those problems appears and they look for a way to reconnect with their ex.

Then, once they have reconnected, the most important process begins: talking about the mistakes they made as a couple. This is a healthy and diplomatic way of dealing with the fact that their relationship had many failures and that both of them were partly to blame for them; since it is not helpful to try to reconcile with your ex by blaming him or her for everything.

In those conversations it is key that both of you are open and willing to discuss any issue, otherwise you will end up arguing about the same thing again and reconciliation will be almost impossible. The only way to find back what made a marriage so happy is through tolerance and mutual understanding, there is no other way to solve it.

Learning new ways to communicate

There are marriages that begin the road to reconciliation trying to improve communication with their ex-partners, which is always complicated because if there is a divorce it will surely be because they have not found a way to solve things without arguing; but we must not lose hope.

If a marriage ended because one of the two never paid attention to what the other was saying, he will try to improve that and try to be more present and active in his partner’s life. On the other hand, if the relationship ended because of a lack of passion or because of an emotional chill on both sides, what you should look for is to be alone for a long time and try to show your feelings in a much clearer way; romanticism is always a good resource to forget the old quarrels and to believe in a new opportunity again.

The most important thing is to try to avoid falling into old habits, since it would only lead us to realize that as a marriage we will always end up failing.

Being cautious is always the smartest option

I’m sure you know the saying, “A cautious man is worth two”. Well, if you are trying to get back in touch with your ex-spouse, you will have to burn that phrase into your brain, as rushing won’t do you any good if you want to succeed.

It is very common that when we retake our relationship with our ex-spouse we want to go too fast, as he is not someone new and we are confident enough to skip all the usual steps that a love relationship with a complete stranger requires. However, wanting to go too fast is not good, since we are not forgetting the most important thing: we have already had a relationship with that person, we have married and divorced. Something has to change, right?

It is important to take it easy and enjoy the new start you can offer, but never without forgetting your old mistakes. For something new to be born, you must be able to close your past as a couple, otherwise you will always be dragging along past feelings that will end up resurfacing when you least expect it. Therefore, try to close your past and create a completely new relationship where only the present and your possible future together matter.

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Marriage Clever

Sharing my thoughts and (hopefully) my help with even one more person in the world will make this all worthwhile.