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With people generally getting married at a later age than in our parents’ generation, it sometimes feels like we have to throw out the whole rule book on marriage and starting a family in order to write a brand new one. But what do you do when your potential partner already has a bunch of crossed-out pages? Japanese website MyNavi Woman conducted a survey of 111 women between the ages of 22-34 and asked them, “Would you marry a man who’s been divorced”?

The dreaded “batsu-ichi” (once-divorced) stigma can be hard to shake off, which is why there’s an increasing demand for dating services that cater specifically to batsu-ichi men and women. The results of this survey show why such a trend has come about – the majority of the survey participants weren’t open at all to the idea of dating a man who has already “blotted his copybook”.

“Would you date a man who has already been married, and divorced?”

Among the women who responded “yes”, several voiced concerns and named certain conditions along with their answer:

“As long as there was nothing wrong with him, then yes.”

“I wouldn’t care if I wanted to marry him.”

“If he’s a good person I don’t care about his past, but it would depend on the reasons behind the divorce.”

“I’d want to know the reasons for the divorce, but they say that failure is the best teacher.”

“As long as he doesn’t have kids, it’s fine.”

“I can foresee problems if he has kids, but apart from that I’d have no problems.”

The women who voted “no” seemed to have several very clear reasons for their opinion – ranging from concerns about a man’s interests being divided between ex-wife/family and his new partner, to simply wanting to be “the first”.

“If he’s paying support to the ex-wife, that’s going to be a drain on our finances. No way.”

“There has to be a reason for the divorce, so that would concern me.”

“I’d worry about the reasons behind the divorce. Maybe he’s just not suited for marriage.”

“I’m dating a man who’s divorced right now, and honestly, there’s a lot of issues to consider.”

“No way. I have to be the first.”

“I’d feel sad getting married for the first time to someone who’s already done it all before.”

While the ratio of yes/no answers is almost an even 50/50, it’s interesting to note that many of the “yes” voters provided conditions for the “yes”, making their answers more of a “yes, IF condition x”. It seems that generally women in Japan would prefer their partner to not have been married before. We’d certainly be interested in seeing the same survey conducted with male participants. Would you marry someone who has already been divorced? If not, why?

Source: Nico Nico News
Image: Flickr (Paris)