42 million adults have been married more than once

42 million adults have been married more than once
(Image credit: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty)

If at first you don't succeed... get a good lawyer and try again.

Increasingly, that's exactly what Americans are doing with marriage, Pew Research explains in a comprehensive look at how the institution has changed over the decades. Forty-two million adults who were married in 2013 had been married before, almost double the number from 1980 and triple 1960's count. As Pew's graphic below illustrates, 40 percent of all new marriages involve at least one previously married spouse:

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Mike Barry

Mike Barry is the senior editor of audience development and outreach at TheWeek.com. He was previously a contributing editor at The Huffington Post. Prior to that, he was best known for interrupting a college chemistry class.