I often spend a lot of time wondering about things that can do me absolutely no good.

I know people who have been married multiple times -- which I define as "more than two" -- and I sometimes find myself wondering what it is they're doing. Most of us who have been divorced fit into two categories. There are those who wanted to end the marriage and those who didn't. It might seem logical to say that those numbers would be equal, but there are certainly plenty of marriages in which both people decided it just wasn't working out.

For whatever reason, my questions on this subject are directed at the ones who wanted out, the ones who felt the proverbial grass was greener over in the next valley. I have one friend who is now happily married to his fourth wife and I pray it lasts. My own guess is that once the divorces get past one, it becomes easier and easier to call it quits. That's one reason why during my own single years between marriages, I didn't date women who had been divorced two or more times.

I'm an extremely lucky man. I have been married for more than 17 years to my second wife, and there is no doubt in my mind that Nicole and I will be together until at least one of us is no longer living. But neither one of us was the one who wanted the divorces that ended our first marriages, so we still believe in the "death do us part" part of it. Both of our children are married, and we hope with all our hearts that they got it right on the first try.

Oddly enough, my daughter got me thinking about this. She told Nicole that her first husband -- the children's birth father -- considered her the "one who got away." He has been divorced twice and is currently living with a third woman. My own first wife is married for the third time, although I know nothing else about her life other than that and I haven't spoken to her for nearly 28 years. I doubt she thinks I'm the one who got away.

[caption id="attachment_129" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="The woman of my dreams"]<img class="size-medium wp-image-129" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Vacation-2005-011-300x225.jpg" alt="The woman of my dreams" width="300" height="225" />[/caption]

But I've often wondered -- as in the case of my friend married four times -- if he wishes he had stayed with his first wife ... or his second. I wonder if a lot of us who came of age in the '60s and '70s, when relationships became oddly casual, didn't know what we had when we had it.

I wonder if maybe we were a little too concerned with looking for magic and thowing away things that might have been perfectly nice. We were the generation that was going to be different, and I wonder if we just got sloppy and lazy instead. My own parents stayed together for 52 years in a marriage that ended only when my dad died. The only way I'll have 52 years with my wonderful Nicole is if we both live to be nearly 95 years old.

I hope it happens, although I'm enough of a child of the '60s to be horrified at the thought of being 95. You know the saying.

<em>"Hope I die before I get old ..."</em>

Oh well.