If you thought your spouse was dead...

[Mr. Laser Beam]

...and you remarried, then later your first spouse turns up alive (just like what is happening right now on

Spoiler: comics

Funky Winkerbean - they just found Wally, who's a POW in Iraq

), what would you do, if anything? Would it change, or even endanger, your current relationship?

For that matter, if you *were* the second spouse, how would you react? Would you be afraid of being dumped?

 

[FrontLine]

M? Id buy a bigger house.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ YOU stay out of this.

 

[miraclefan]

M? Id buy a bigger house.

I think those Mormon FUNdamentalists have the right idea! Family ORGY!

 

[An Officer]

Isn't that also the plot of Move Over, Darling starring Doris Day?
I'd have kept both.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Well, there goes any hope I might have had of starting a serious discussion...

 

[An Officer]

^ You should know better than that.

 

[miraclefan]

Well, there goes any hope I might have had of starting a serious discussion...

^ You should know better than that.

My ''Cuba'' thread went from funny to serious & yours has gone from serious to funny in nothing flat!

 

[Vulcan Princess]

Getting back on topic, I'm not sure what I would do. Disclaimer: I'm not married, and I've never been married.

I think that would be a heart-wrenching situation. On the one hand, I would still feel bound by the first marriage vows (for better or for worse, for as long as you both shall live, and all that), but I would also be in love with my second husband. I suppose I would take some time to do some serious soul-searching. Family counseling would be a definite must in that sort of situation. I would avoid having sex with either one of them until I made a decision, since it would feel adulterous either way.

 

[trampledamage]

I don't know how long a period is involved in the comic, but I really doubt I'd end up in that situation because I wouldn't have re-married. I'm so anti-social it's a miracle I got married in the first place!

 

[Kestra]

Depending on how long we're talking about, if I was with my second husband for a decent period of time, I'd likely end up staying with him and feeling really guilty about it. It would depend on what the first guy was like, if he had changed, if I had changed, if we still wanted to be together.

Or I'd fake my own death and go run off to have a romance with a third guy in some faraway land.

 

[tharpdevenport]

She better come back BEFORE the insurance company pays off, otherwise I would have to kill her.

 

[Aragorn]

This happened to me once. It all started when my father-in-law Dimitri Ivanovic kidnapped me and replaced me with a lookalike who would assassinate the most powerful man in my city -- Victor Buchanan -- and frame me for it. When I escaped and found out that my wife's father really wasn't her father, that Victor was her father, we chased Dimitri to his yacht where he tried to escape. But in the struggle the yacht exploded with both Dimitri and my wife onboard. We found Dimitri's body but never found my wife's. With the explosion and everything taking place in the middle of a hurricane, we thought she was dead fo sure.

I remarried a few years later, and that's when my wife returned. She had amnesia and didn't know who she was. Shortly after, my second wife discovered she was the long lost sister of my first wife. We made a decision to try and figure out what happened to my first wife during her missing years, and that's when we found out that the doctor who took care of her is actually Victor's presumed-dead illigitimate son who had plastic surgery to hide his identity.

And that's where we're at currently.

 

[Candlelight]

Check the back of the neck of my first/returned wife to make sure she hasn't been taken over by the Shadows.

Then shag them both.

 

[JustKate]

I have no idea what I'd do. None at all. Assuming I had had a good marriage with husband A and was currently having a good marriage with husband B...no, I really don't know.

How long husband A had been gone might be a factor. A marriage is a living, breathing, growing thing, and goodness knows people are, so if he had been gone so long that I was no longer exactly the same person...maybe that would have an effect.

I don't have kids...I wonder if that would make a difference? I mean, if I had kids with one husband or the other, that might affect my decision. If there were kids with both...yep, right back where we started.

And it might depend on the length of the two marriages. I mean, if I had been married to husband A just one year, maybe, whereas I'd created a life with husband B, or vice versa...that might make a difference, too.

This is a situation is which there there truly is no good solution. Heartwrenching, really.

 

[Kestra]

The clear solution would be to post the question on TBBS, start a poll, and let the denizens of MISC decide.

 

[TheLonelySquire]

...and you remarried, then later your first spouse turns up alive (just like what is happening right now on

Spoiler: comics

Funky Winkerbean - they just found Wally, who's a POW in Iraq

), what would you do, if anything? Would it change, or even endanger, your current relationship?

For that matter, if you *were* the second spouse, how would you react? Would you be afraid of being dumped?

I would never remarry. But I can see where this would present a problem.

 

[TrekkieMonster]

Isn't that also the plot of Move Over, Darling starring Doris Day?
I'd have kept both.

Which is a remake of the 1940 Cary Grant & Irene Dunne classic, My Favorite Wife.

I love them both!

As for me ..., I like Frontline's idea.

 

[Daneel]

See, this is where legal polygamy would solve all the problems...

Okay, if I found myself living in a soap opera and faced with this situation, I'm not sure what I'd do. I suppose it would depend on my feelings for wife A and wife B, how different they are, and (I almost hate to say it) whether or not I feel like I love one of them more than the other.

It would also depend on some other factors (i.e. if I had children with one or both of them, how long wife A has been presumed dead for, how long I've been married to wife B, etc.). Hm. That polygamy idea is starting to look better and better, but I doubt both of my wives would be keen on the idea.

Ah well, I doubt I'd ever be able to convince one woman to marry me, let alone two, so it's kind of a moot point anyway.

 

[Jadzia]

The ideal outcome is that you all get along together. The first spouse should be aware that people do move on, and the second spouse should be aware that I only sought a second partner because I believed my first had died. There needs to be that understanding on both sides. I can honestly see it easily going either way. Either partner could express their understanding and offer to stand back.

The new situation wouldn't invalidate my feelings to either of them. I'd be delighted that the first was alive, and I wouldn't turn my back on them. So I would aim to keep both in my life.

Ultimately though, the years change people, and when a couple are separated, they do grow apart, and it isn't immediately obvious when they re-meet that they may have lost their compatibility.

It's impossible to choose.