An annoying bias

Our society has many biases that have been studied, debunked, and railed against. There's one that nobody will ever do any of that for, though, and it is one that really annoys me. I find that people, especially women, are incredibly biased toward second wives and second families (if there was a first family... thank goodness, in our case, there was not.)

I call people on it every time I see it, of course, but it's like the giant game of Whack-a-Mole. Every time I make one judgmental ass rethink their stance that just because my husband was married prior to our marriage, and I met him while he was married to his first wife (note: "met" is a whole lot different than "dated"), that I am the bad guy, and probably have serious character flaws, self-esteem issues, and possibly a personality disorder (yes, these are things people have said about second wives, in my presence, before they knew I am one), another springs up. I guess since divorce is so common these days, this is something most people have an opinion about, and I have noticed that almost unconditionally, people have the first wife's side, even if they don't know anything about the situation. It's always assumed that the first wife is this kind woman who's maybe not as pretty as she used to be after ten years and four children, but a great mother, and devoted keeper of his home, and the second wife is some scantily clad Jezebel type who stole him away, thus cheating the angelic first wife out of the life she so richly deserved for all she sacrificed, and sentencing the children to grow up fatherless.

That sounds really drastic, but that's society's perception of second wives. An acquaintance was talking about how her father-in-law was married twice. The first one, he divorced 37 years ago, and then thereafter he's been married to his second wife. This man has terminal cancer, and they're beginning to plan some of the details of his funeral. Well, one of the big questions is if the first wife (a known drama queen) should be allowed to attend. I say hell no! I swear, if I ever lost Thak (and he knows he has to outlive me by at least a day, so none of this is going to happen if he knows what's good for him), and his ex-wife thinks she will show up to his funeral, I will throw the biggest fit you ever saw, and hire ten Hell's Angels to pull security and make SURE she doesn't get in. It's just inappropriate! Losing your husband is hard enough without having to deal with his ex-wife at the funeral.

Of course, I was the only one who saw it that way. Everyone else had things to say about how the first wife should be allowed to come, and do whatever she wants, because she was wronged by her husband divorcing her and remarrying 37 FREAKING YEARS AGO!! They said the second wife is probably worried that if the first wife is there, that the stories she's told everyone about how they got together and whatnot, won't match up, and everyone will know what a skank she is. Um, ok, first off, none of us know this woman. Could she be a skank? You bet she could. Odds are, though, she's just a regular person like you or me. Most people are, you know.

This just illustrated for me, bigger than anything, the dichotomy. It was perfect because we know absolutely nothing about these people except that one is the first wife, the other is the current wife (of 30+ years!!!), and the first wife is a known drama queen. From where I stand, that's a solid strike against first wife, and none against second wife. Yet somehow, people automatically feel for first wife and vilify second wife, not even knowing any of the story.

Could I be in the wrong as pertaining to that situation? Definitely. I don't know these people either. Maybe second wife is the worst person on the planet. Maybe first wife really is angelic. Who knows? That's my point, though. NONE OF US knew anything about these people, yet that's the conclusion almost everyone jumped to. It is a bias that our society has. Women in particular, are incredibly judgmental toward second wives, and I have no idea why that is.

I guess this rubs me wrong since I've been on the receiving end of that judgment before. I'm sorry if this comes off as "typical second wife rhetoric" but even when trying to give this woman the benefit of the doubt, it's obvious before long that Thak's ex-wife was a joke from beginning to end. She's ugly and worn out, with 4 kids by 4 different men, none of whom she was ever married to. She's mean, and lazy, and the only thing she ever cooked was Hamburger Helper, and that only rarely. She never cleaned the house. She was demanding, psychologically abusive, and even unfaithful. She trapped men by spending all their money to the point that they couldn't afford to divorce her, and by beating them down so much that they lost the will to try to get out of there. She's a great person, right? No, she is NOT a great person. She's scum, and me and Thak refer to her as "The Mistake" because that's exactly what she was, a very expensive mistake that Thak made when he was young, dumb, and susceptible to falling for her type of BS, and then paid for well into his 30's in the form of alimony.

I am not saying I'm the epitome of awesome wife. Nobody is. I at least try, though. He comes home to a made-from-scratch dinner on the table every night. He always has clean clothes to wear. He doesn't have to clean (which is good, because he wouldn't anyhow). I don't spend money on anything unless he's approved it. I'M the mom of his ONE AND ONLY biological child, Orren, and of Erin, who is his just as much. The other thing is that I had to sacrifice a lot for years because of his first wife. Do you KNOW how expensive alimony is?!!! It's REALLY expensive, and every time we turned around for a while, she kept trying to up it. She once even said, "Why can't you pay more? You'd still have a few hundred a month to live on?" This woman DELIBERATELY tried to take food off my daughter's plate, and the roof from over our heads, because she could not stand the fact that Thak had moved on and was happier than he'd ever been in his life (Doubt me on any of this? Ask his brothers. They know the deal.)

In light of all this, is it any wonder that I totally cringe every time someone assumes the worst of some woman who did nothing wrong, but happened to marry someone who had been married before? I really just don't see the reason why a second wife should be automatically judged and vilified by so many, and why people feel so justified in it. The reason I am fairly open these days about the fact that Thak was married before this is because I want to try to change people's minds. I think I'm fairly normal in many ways. I'm not a bad person at all. I'm the mom who likes cheap cloth diapers and $300 car seats, and can sing every song from Dinosaur Train. I'm the one who tutored your kids in math and physics, because I'm the only mom we know who's any good at that stuff. I'm the one who can never seem to keep my house organized enough, although I try. I'm just a person with strengths and weaknesses like anyone else. I'm also Thak's second wife, 10 years younger than the first. I know it looks bad in some ways, but the reason I think it's important to be open about it at least a little bit is so that people can see that it's NOT bad. I didn't steal him. She wasn't good to him, ever. First wives aren't inherently good, and second wives aren't inherently bad. People are just people, individuals. That's really all there is to it. You know NOTHING about a person based on whether her husband was married before.