Why Do People Marry High School or College Sweethearts Late In Life?
A world-class novelist suggests an answer

A surprising number of my friends have married their youthful loves after being divorced or widowed late in life. I used to think I was seeing this, in part, because social media have made it easier to reconnect.
But there’s clearly more to it. Some people have gained the confidence to marry people their parents might have faulted. Others have come to appreciate in potential mates qualities they once underestimated.
Anne Enright suggests, at least obliquely, another reason in her Booker Prize-winning novel The Gathering. She writes:
“There are so few people given to us to love. I want to tell my daughters this, that each time you fall in love it is important, even at nineteen. Especially at nineteen. And if you can, at nineteen, count the people you love on one hand, you will not, at forty, have run out of fingers on the other. There are so few people given to us to love and they all stick.”
Enright seems to be saying that, when you’re 19, you don’t know how rare love itself is, apart from any qualities you see in a potential mate. The older you get, the more you realize it. That may help to explain why, among people I know who’ve married their old flames, I’ve yet to hear of a divorce.
Here’s my full review of The Gathering: