Cheryl Cole Married! Is Chez Suffering From Second Spouse Syndrome?

There’s no better way of getting over the agony of a failed first marriage than to embark on a successful second one.

Second marriages prove to us that fairy tales can really happen, and that good guys really do exist. They show us that failure is a blip rather than a lifelong habit, and they allow something good to come from all the pain, as we learn valuable lessons that allow us to get it right next time.

At least that is the theory.

In reality that ‘happy ever after’ can all too often be a headlong sprint down the same track as the first.

Why? Because being in love and lust often means giving logic and reason the elbow yet again. We might think we have picked differently but our friends will often secretly see similar patterns emerging.

So how will Cheryl’s approach to her marriage to Jean-Bernard be different from her first to Ashley, and how will she manage to ensure that this one really is ‘for keeps’?

•    "Low-key suggests less desire to please"
Cheryl’s behaviour in announcing her ‘secret’ marriage to Jean-Bernard Fernandez-Versini suggests she has learnt a few timely lessons in love since her nuptials with Ashley, which was a massive Posh and Becks-style extravaganza that included them both posing on clouds wearing matching white outfits that even Liberace might have found OTT. Low-key suggests less desire to please in terms of PR and celebrity profile.

•    "Love at first sight sounds risky but there's something to be said for going with your gut"
Hands might have been raised in horror at the eleven week timeline, but Cheryl probably felt she knew Ashley inside out by the time they tied the knot, and look how much good that did her! Breaches of trust can happen at any stage of a marriage and even someone you’ve lived with for twenty years can still have the capacity to surprise in terms of having an affair. Love at first sight might sound risky but tests prove that what we call a gut reaction might be based on a process of very complex box-ticking responses. The fact is that we never really know another person and often the longer we do know them the more assumptions we make about their thoughts and personality, meaning you can be wrong about them after any length of time.

•    "He's a normal bloke. Sort of..."
Well, if you can call a seriously handsome entrepreneurial French restaurant owner ‘normal’! Cheryl went for the celebrity footballer option before dating a backing dancer. Clearly the clashing egos of the first didn’t work but neither did the scale-down of the second. Jean-Bernard is hardly the plumber who came to fix her U-bend but I suppose he’s not ‘celebrity’ as such. But he is still very pretty and still presumably a bit of a star in his own circuit. Should we be concerned? Perhaps. Cheryl’s career is back on the ascendant and I’m assuming Jean-Bernard won’t want to spend too much time away from the office or hanging around on outings with Simon Cowell and co. Hopefully they’ve got a roster pinned on the fridge somewhere to work out who spends what time where.

•    "Beware of over-idealising your new partner"
When you’ve been hurt, cheated on or generally humiliated by your first partner it’s common for a rabid optimism to suddenly rear up through all the natural, appropriate but depressing sense of cynicism. To survive we need to trust. But turning your new partner into an exact polar opposite from the rat you divorced is patently unwise. How often do you hear over-idealised descriptions of the new spouse, as in ‘He would never lie to me’ ‘I trust him 100 per cent’ or even ‘He would never look at another woman.’  Setting the bar of expectation this high this early can be dangerous. You can hope, you can be cautious and you can believe, but people are never all good or all bad. Expect a grey area somewhere; it’s what humans are all about.

[Cheryl's engagement ring - ALL the details!]