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Marriage itself is a challenge - challenge to one's freedom, independence, sexuality, interpersonal skills and egotism. It is quite natural that being a second wife throws up more and tougher challenges on a woman.

SECOND HAND SYNDROME

If the woman who gets married to a previously married person (divorcee or widower) is an unmarried woman before, she, in all probability, starts off her life with a sense of imbalance; she starts her life with a feeling as though a brand new product is exchanged to a secondhand product.

Unless the woman has made her choice with open mind (perhaps by falling in love with the man or by a well thought out and deliberate choice) this sense of imbalanced exchange is likely to haunt her. Since women are essentially emotional creatures by nature, the second wife may vent out her frustration on her partner at some time or other, putting him in discomfiture and a sense of guilt. Unless a healthy and mutually enjoyable sexual relationship develops between them, the possibility of the woman getting frequently irked by the fundamental discontent can not be ruled out. Depending on the man's inherent nature, either he may become too defensive or offensive. In either case, relationship has the tendency to deteriorate.

COMPARISONS

The second challenge the woman might face as a second wife is in receiving comparative comments. All said and done, the husband cannot help but compare his second wife with his first one. If, per chance, the second woman turns out to be much better in his standards, all would be fine. On the contrary, if the first wife happened to be better in his standards of expectations, the man would find it extremely difficult to keep his mouth shut. Right from cooking, house keeping, spending money, dressing sense and up to the intimate bedroom behavior, he would start offering his comparisons with his former wife, with a purported ideal of giving guidance and course-correction to the second wife.

Such a behavior of the husband may prove to be the greatest irritant for the second wife, sooner or later. The second wife requires lots of level-headedness and diplomacy to deal with such a husband, particularly if the first wife had died and the husband still posesses a sentimental emotional hang over.

In case the second wife too is one who was married earlier (and became widowed or divorced), the problem of comparisons may tend to take ugly repercussions. Having been irritated by her husband's comparisons, she might get tempted to compare

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