I’m coming up on the seven-year anniversary of my second marriage.

And I’m really, really happy in my relationship with my husband.

But I can’t help thinking back to this same time in my first marriage, when I was unhappy and contemplating divorce. Which I followed through with just a year later.

What a difference the second time around has been. I have no doubt that this marriage will last for an eternity.

And I’m not alone. A study by the Marriage Foundation found that second marriages are less likely to end in divorce. While 45 percent of first marriages break up, only 31 percent of second marriages follow suit.

I like those statistics. And I agree with the reasons that go along with them: age and experience.

How's this for a crazy statistic? Approximately 1,300 new stepfamilies are formed every day in America. We've come a long, long way from the days when Ward and June Cleaver were "average" Americans.

But you wouldn't know to hear some stepmothers and stepfathers talk. Stepparents hear some real head-scratchers. And then there are the truly infuriating comments from folks who really should know better.

Afraid you might have foot in mouth disease when you talk to your friends who have stepkids? The Stir polled parents from blended families to find out what they're really sick and tired of hearing:

It's not that unusual to start out a new relationship thinking you've found The One, only to eventually end up feeling you've found The Wrong One. How exactly does that happen? Well, people change. And sometimes they change a lot -- and not for the better. Imagine being 17-year-old Nadine Ascencao, who lost her virginity to her first boyfriend, who happened to be none other than Boston Marathon bomber suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

When I got divorced 10 years ago, I stayed in the house that my then-husband and I had bought. After everything was finalized, I slowly began making some changes at home to reflect my newly single status.

The things I tackled first were the ones that were the most intimate between my ex and me. Anything that touched his bare body? Gone. Things that reminded me of long-ago promises? Gone. (Except, of course, our children. I didn’t get rid of them. They’re wonderful, and probably my best reminder of what was good about my marriage.)

After I finally got around to making those changes, I realized I should have made them a lot sooner. Because they stopped me from looking around the house and seeing memories of my failed marriage. Instead, I looked around and was able to see my bright future.

Out of everything I replaced, these 10 were the ones that made the most impact in my day-to-day life.

I've heard of divorcing parents pulling some pretty crazy custody battle stunts, but none so crazy as what one dad in recently (allegedly) did to mess with his ex-wife. Apparently, both 37-year-old Chad M. Holm and his ex "used methamphetamine together" for years while they were married. After they broke up, the couple's 5 and 7-year-old children were temporarily placed with Holm while their mother underwent voluntary drug treatment (whether Holm stopped using drugs or not is unclear). Either way, the mom had reportedly been clean for a year in September, so she was pretty shocked when she failed a drug test ... until she remembered the "unappetizing cookies" her kids baked several days earlier at their father's house.

A recent conversation in a CafeMom discussion group got me thinking: Would I feel comfortable with my husband having a straight, female friend? One who wasn't attached to a guy friend? Hmm. I feel that it's very, VERY rare that two straight people of the opposite gender are truly, 100 percent "just friends." There's more often than not some sort of complicated feelings harbored by at least one of them, during at least some part of the friendship. I have not just personal experience, but science on my side in the matter of whether platonic relationships truly exist. 

Yet, yet, and yet again -- in anticipation of all the comments I can imagine this post getting about what great guy friends you have and how you LOVE your husband's best friend who happens to look like Cameron Diaz ...

It’s been two weeks. Two long, psycho behavior-less weeks since I last texted my ex. Hooray for small victories and for easing up off of crazy. It was sparked, exactly two weeks and one day ago, by a revelation. I’d been sitting on my sofa, cellphone in hand, about to fire one off to him for the 1,000th or 100,000th time (only Verizon knows the exact figure) and randomly express my undying love in what probably would’ve been the text message equivalent of a Keith Sweat song. I am impulsive, and paired with unlimited texting and rambling thoughts, I am downright dangerous sometimes. It’s a steep, slick slope into pathetic, and I was about to aim right at it and launch. I didn’t know what I was going to say exactly, but whatever it was was going to put me under love’s stiletto boot heel. For the 1,000th or 100,000th time.

Some folks ruin pictures. Not because they’re not photogenic, but because you hate them. Especially the ones who take your relationship south and drag you through an emotional cesspool of bitterness and despair. Yeah, them. OK, not every breakup is that dramatic. Sometimes the dude just dangles on your last nerve and you know, without a slivery shadow of a doubt, that you can’t bear to be with him anymore. But you’ve taken some really, really good shots together—you looking skinny in your string bikini in Acapulco, you looking adorable outside the Rita’s Water Ice in the Village, you radiant in your PJs on Christmas morning three years ago—and it seems such a shame to crop them into individual shots because sometimes people you actually like are also in them, too.