Since ancient times, humans have tried to predict the future, searching for clues from anything on hand: chickens, oracle bones, stars. Women were especially drawn to divination to take the guesswork out of who would make an ideal mate. Some flung herring fat against walls, interpreting the shape it took. Some deciphered patterns of molten lead. In the Middle Ages, women engaged in tyromancy, writing the names of possible suitors on pieces of cheese, then excitedly waited for the first one to mold to reveal their one true love. With current divorce rates of forty to fifty percent for first marriages, we need all the help we can get.

I’m now close to fourteen years into my fourth marriage, and many marvel at my faith in this institution, while questioning my sanity. Conventional wisdom tells us that the odds of a lasting marriage go down with each subsequent marriage: there’s a sixty to sixty-seven percent divorce rate for second marriages, and a seventy-four to eighty percent divorce rate for third and fourth marriages. Expressed in a slightly different way, the odds of my finding lasting love are now down to roughly one in four.

If you knew the odds were one in four, would you still take the bet? The Peruvian poet César Vallejo died on a rainy day, as he foretold in his poem, “Black Stone on a White Stone,” but was wrong about the season—only a one in four chance he’d be right. (He died on Good Friday, rather than during the predicted autumn.) The odds are one in four when you toss two pennies into the air and bet on, say, two heads. Or two tails.

Am I an optimist? Although I hope for things to work out, I don’t expect them to. Indeed, I make it a practice to manage my expectations. In this way, I keep myself from sinking into the abyss of defeat yet am still able to savor the elation that accompanies each unexpected success. Some might argue I’m not fully living if I’m not putting myself out there, time after time, never tempting the universe with any expression of doubt. I think my chosen mindset actually enables me to set my sights on reaching the stars. The brightest ones, of course. Unsuccessful, I can brush off these failures, like dandruff from a lapel.

I don’t think any of my friends from high school would have predicted I’d be the one who’d marry so many times. I led a sheltered life, and was not permitted to date until senior year, and then only Jewish boys. Living at home throughout my four years at Queens College, where I majored in French literature, my love life consisted of experiencing vicarious pleasure through the amorous adventures of Zola’s Thérèse Raquin and Flaubert’s Emma Bovary. As soon as I could, I fled the family hearth, diploma in hand, for a graduate French program at the University of Maryland. My first husband, part of the wave of veterans returning to school after Vietnam, was one of the French students in the class I taught as part of my graduate assistantship duties.

My first marriage lasted eighteen years, but could not weather a decade of childbearing disasters, although by the time we called it quits, we’d produced two healthy children. Surprisingly, the literature indicates that most couples who have lost a child stay together, though I’m not sure about multiple losses. Neither one of my next two marriages suffered from any fatal flaws—indeed, both husbands, like my first one, loved me, my children and my dogs, donned yarmulkes to lead the Passover Seder, and hid all the kitchen knives I’d collected as wedding gifts, since they brought back the trauma of a break-in during my undergraduate days; the intruders had left our butcher knife on the living room couch, where one of them had obviously been the lookout for any surprise interruptions.

I met my second husband (as well as my third) contradancing at Glen Echo Park. He was much younger than I, and other than a few celebrity couples like Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins, Courteney Cox and David Arquette, and Geena Davis and Renny Harlin—all of whose marriages eventually ended in divorce— I didn’t personally know any other couples with a big age gap, with the wife the older of the two.. At the time of my second marriage, there wasn’t even a label for an older-woman-younger-man relationship, though “May-December” now seems in vogue for any relationship with a large difference in age. Around the time of my second divorce, Demi Moore had begun dating Ashton Kutcher, fifteen years her junior, and they were together for ten years, eight of them married, before they parted ways. Their relationship resembled mine: my husband was also fifteen years my junior, and we were together for ten years, though only six of them married. The similarities end there, as Bruce Willis didn’t attend my wedding, and the intimate details of our split did not make the Hollywood tabloids.

There seems to be a growing trend of marriages with “cougar wives.” A study from 2015 found a sixty-seven increase in such marriages in the last fifty years. Another study found that while these marriages initially result in marital satisfaction, the odds are they’ll fail over time. Studies also suggest that marrying an older man negatively impacts a woman’s lifespan, but marrying a younger man shortens a woman’s lifespan even more. I don’t think the age difference was a factor in our decision to divorce—or maybe not a major factor. What did us in was his preference for the fast pace of city life to the stodgy suburbs. Except for a few years of conjugal visits downtown, I stayed put. Ironically, I also lost my third husband to the lure of the city. Six years his senior, we were only married for three years.

So what were the odds my current marriage, a Match.com success story so far, would survive the coronavirus pandemic? I’ve heard that at the end of lockdown, some Chinese cities, like Xi’an, the capital of the Shaanxi Province, experienced a spike in the number of people filing for divorce. However, the AstroTwins, nicknamed the “astrologists for the stars,” told me, mid-lockdown, that I was living in auspicious times for me and my fellow Leos, with the moon and Neptune, the most intuitive of planets, in a “magnetic mashup” in my eighth house. They said if I’m “quarantine-canoodling” with someone, I should make them my priority. They said a calculated risk could lead to a big payoff. That seemed a very good sign.

Four years later, we’re still together. My husband still loves me, my children, and our dog Gracie, adopted two months before the pandemic struck. He hides all the kitchen knives. He’s the first one up with Gracie, so I can sleep in. Despite not owning a yarmulke, even though he’s the only Jew-by-birth I’ve ever married, he wasn’t a bad quarantine buddy. As during pandemic, each day, weekday or weekend, we awaken, eat, work from home, eat, work some more, walk the dog, eat, run up and down flights of stairs (70 for me; 140 for him), work, stay up late writing (me), and sleep. Repeat, with occasional time off for good behavior, a Riesling on hand to sweeten the night.

As it happens, as of today, we’re back to isolation, both sharing a first covid infection that cut short my AWP 24 conference. In truth, he gave it to me, but I don’t hold that against him. Indeed, the fourth time seems to be the charm!