Di Pollitt never imagined that she would be the other woman – and certainly not to her ex-husband.
Yet there she was, on a boat in Sydney Harbour, having just dropped her youngest son at a school formal, telling the man she had split from a decade earlier that she still loved him.
By then, Grant was in a long-term relationship with another woman. “He just said, ‘You what?’,” Di, 58, recalls, laughing. “And after that we started seeing each other on the quiet.”
Fast forward eight years and Grant and Di are a happily reunited couple, once again sharing their lives with their three grown-up children and two young grandchildren.
Their story may sound odd – especially to those who would sooner poke an eye out than reunite with their ex – but studies overseas show that between 6 and 10 per cent of divorcees end up patching things up, and experts in Australia suspect the figure may be even higher.
“Whatever it was that attracted a couple to the point of getting married in the first place will often re-emerge if the circumstances are right in the future,” says Kim Halford, a professor at the University of Queensland’s School of Psychology.
“The situation that led to the break-up may have changed. For example, an affair may be over or the day-to-day grind of balancing work and family may have gotten easier as children have grown up. Those changing circumstances may reignite that initial attraction.”
You only need to look at the celebrity world to realise Di and Grant are far from alone in their cycle of divorce and reconciliation. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton are the most famous couple to redo their “I do”, while Lana Turner and Stephen Crane, Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner, Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson, Judith Sheindlin (Judge Judy) and Jerry Sheindlin, Marie Osmond and Stephen Craig, Eminem and Kim Mathers, and Pamela Anderson and Rick Salomon have also had a second shot at wedded bliss, with varying degrees of success.
In January, the singer Phil Collins revealed that he and his third ex-wife, Orianne Cevey, were back together again after an eight-year separation and $47 million divorce.
“Well, you know, we realised we made a mistake,” Phil said in an interview. “It’s simple – we missed each other.”
Di Pollitt can relate. After a decade apart from Grant, now 63, she realised to her surprise that she missed him and the life they had shared.
“We were a pretty well admired family in the community,” Di recalls. “Three beautiful children, a perfect marriage, a beautiful house. When it all went to custard, everyone was like, ‘Not them! What happened?’”
Di spent the lead-up to their reconciliation asking herself the same question. At the time of her split, she had felt so certain that she wanted out of their 17-year marriage.
“I was trying to force Grant away,” she admits. “I don’t know what it was. I had something in my head that didn’t want to be married to Grant anymore.”
Yet as time passed and she watched Grant’s loving interactions with their three children, she realised he was not to blame for their relationship breakdown.
Professor Halford says Di’s experience is not unusual. “When people are separating, they frequently decide that there is only one reason that their relationship is a mess and that’s their partner,” he says. “But, across time, people come to a more balanced view.”
A recent study asked couples who had just separated to explain the reasons for the breakdown in their relationship and then to repeat the task six months later.
“When people have had time to reflect with the benefit of an extra six months, they no longer just blame their partner, but also talk about their own contribution to the problems in the relationship, as well as the circumstances impacting the couple, such as financial or work difficulties,” Professor Halford says.
“They move from saying, ‘It’s all because he had an affair’ to ‘Well, we hadn’t been getting on and our sex life was terrible and we were so emotionally distant that maybe it’s understandable that he felt so lonely’.”
This more “balanced and reasonable” explanation for the break-up, he says, can be the first step towards a reconciliation.
Anne Hollonds, Director of the Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS), says many people are shocked to discover that they actually miss their ex-spouse once the anger and animosity of their divorce have subsided.
“They begin to wonder what they could have done differently and whether they may have made a mistake,” she says. “The pull of a shared history, especially when there are children involved, cannot be underestimated and so some couples do end up drifting back together.”
That’s exactly what happened with Brisbane couple Sally and Scott Taylor. They met at university when they were 18 and married six years later, in 1997. Yet on their ninth wedding anniversary, a day they should have celebrated, they separated, as the pressure of raising two young children took its toll.
“We went through the whole divorce process and split everything,” recalls Sally, 43. “We were both very angry and it was acrimonious, so it really wasn’t good for the first three years.”
Yet, as their circumstances changed, the frost began to thaw. Scott, now 44, ended a relationship with another woman and moved closer to where Sally was living with their sons, Jack, now 14, and Maxwell, 12. It seemed natural then that he stayed for dinner sometimes after dropping the boys back home. When Sally took their sons to their first international rugby game, she invited Scott along to share the experience.
He reciprocated by taking her and the boys to a concert and out on his boat. From there, it was a small step to celebrating the boys’ birthdays as a family again.
“It became apparent that getting back together was a possibility,” Sally says. “So, finally,
I just said, ‘What’s going on here? Are we looking to move this forward?’ ”
Even so, the couple took things slowly and kept their attempts at reconciliation a secret for the next
six months.
“There was no way in the world we wanted to give the boys false hope until we really knew that we could make things work,” Sally says. “We made it a ground rule that should we get back together, it was till serious death do us part. We were not going to put any of us through that goddamn awful situation of divorce ever again.”
Anne Hollonds says it is sensible for reconciling couples to proceed cautiously. “You need to give yourselves time to transition slowly in order to build a strong foundation for the future,” she says.
“Don’t make assumptions about the relationship just because it feels comfortable, like an old pair of slippers. You need to work out how you are going to deal with the issues that made you come unstuck in the first place.”
Anne says this ideally should be done with the help of a professional counsellor, especially when children are involved.
“It’s true that children generally do fantasise that their parents will get back together, but they also adjust to a new way of living when their parents separate. Reconciliation needs careful handling, especially if there have been other adults in the interim. The reconciliation could end up leaving children feeling insecure.”
Sally and Scott discovered this when, on Christmas Eve in 2011, they finally confided in their boys that they were back together.
“Their initial reaction was pure elation, but over the years, both boys have struggled with the situation at times,” Sally says. “There have been moments when they have been confused and terrified that we will remarry and then divorce again. Scott and I have explained that while there are no guarantees in life, this is not something we have gone into lightly. But the main thing is that we have encouraged them to keep talking to us about their feelings.”
On March 18, 19 years after they first wed, the pair remarried on the beach in Noosa. After Jack and Maxwell walked Sally down the aisle, she and Scott vowed to stay together, for keeps this time. “We were pledging it as much to the kids as to ourselves,” Sally says.
So what will they do differently this time? “If things are annoying us, we talk about it,” says Sally, adding that they have sought professional help to improve their communication skills.
“The first time, we didn’t acknowledge the pressures we were under or how those pressures were making us feel and what we could do to compensate. Instead of sitting there and working out what the problem was, our prides and egos got involved. In retrospect, we didn’t try hard enough.”
Sally and Scott are not alone in regretting their divorce. Studies overseas have found that one-quarter of couples end up wishing they had worked harder to save their marriage. Although there are no such statistics in Australia, Professor Halford says many people who believe the grass will be greener as singles end up disappointed.
“Many severely regret ending the relationship,” he says. “They are at risk of getting depressed when they recognise they have made a mistake and their lives haven’t magically improved.”
Anne says logistics, financial pressures and exhaustion can all exacerbate that sense of regret, especially when children are involved. “It’s very difficult to be a single parent, responsible for all the child care, the house, the job and the mortgage. And if you meet someone else, trying to blend two families and their schedules can be very challenging. You might end up longing for the simplicity of your former life.”
Di agrees. Since grandchildren have arrived, she relishes the joy and love she and Grant feel for them. “I don’t know what it would be like to have a blended family,” she says. “One of our grandchildren looks exactly like Grant. I would be horrified if I missed out on sharing that joy with him, if he was sharing that with someone else.”
Yet their tale may not be quite as peculiar as we think. American science writer Rachel Clark, who remarried her ex-husband in 2009, argues in her blog that all marriages involve mini-splits and reconciliations.
“People in long-term healthy marriages experience many divorces over the course of their lifetimes, it’s just that they never leave and they remarry each other,” she says. “People always grow and change over time, asking us to make room for healthy change in our marriages if we wish to keep the benefits of such long-term partnerships.
“We may find that we divorce our ‘old’ partners and start new, healthier relationships with our ‘new partners’, without ever leaving home.”
This story originally appeared in the May 2015 issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly.
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