When someone has gone through one divorce, they can always blame it on their ex. When they’ve gone through two divorces, they have to accept some of the blame. But everyone makes mistakes – often more than once.

What happens when someone has gone through more than two divorces, though? Do they then have a stigma against them?

Judith Giuliani’s recent confession that she has been married not twice but three times before her current marriage may or may not affect Rudolph Giuliani’s chances at attaining the White House. Time will tell. But it certainly has become an issue.

Allison Wade, 58, of South Portland, whose name has been changed to keep her anonymity, said she absolutely feels a stigma because she’s been divorced three times.

With her third husband, Wade said she used to joke that divorced two times was still okay, but three was over the top.

“Three strikes and you’re out,” she said.

And what’s more, Wade said she thinks it’s worse for women because she was raised in an era where women were expected to be the nurturers. If a woman couldn’t keep a marriage and a family together, she was somehow a failure.

“I do feel a little like something is wrong with me,” she said. “I’ve been married three times and it never worked out. And now I’m an old lady living alone.”

She said she feels like the token divorced old lady of the neighborhood. Or at least she thinks that’s how people probably view her.

According to David Popenoe, co-director of the National Marriage Project, a Rutgers University program dedicated to analyzing the state of marriage in America, Wade is probably right. Regardless of whether she should feel a stigma, it exists.

Wade was first married when she was 21 years old living in New York City, where she was raised. She said she wanted a family, and getting married and having one was what she needed to do at the time. She’d had two children by the time she was 23.

After seven years of marriage, she and her husband found themselves growing apart, as often happens to couples that marry when they are young. She decided she wanted something different out of her life.

Strike one.

After the divorce, Wade moved to San Francisco for a change of scenery. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, she said a lot of baby boomers were ending up in San Francisco.

“People sort of ended up in San Francisco because they didn’t know where else they were going,” she said.

In 1980, Wade married again in a somewhat spur-of-the-moment decision on a vacation in Las Vegas. It turned out to be a whim, and a year and a half later she was divorced again. She said it was like the second marriage never happened because it was so easy and so prevalent at the time.

According to Popenoe, it’s not a surprise. He said 40 to 45 percent of marriages in America end in divorce these days. On top of that, the divorce rate gets worse the second time around. Despite conventional wisdom that second marriages would be more successful than first marriages because the partners learned from their bad experiences, more second marriages fail than first marriages, he said.

Strike two.

A few years later Wade met a man she eventually married and with whom she spent 18 years. They moved back to the East Coast and raised Wade’s third child together, one she had on her own before meeting her third husband.

With the third marriage, Wade thought she was home free. But it wasn’t meant to be. Her husband found himself wanting something different and ended the marriage two years ago, leaving Wade reeling.

It’s only been two years, Wade admits, but she still feels burned and not very hopeful about her love life in the future.

“I don’t think I’ll ever have another person in my life,” she said. “It’s so hard to think of falling in love again.”

Strike three.

But in a year from now, she admits, she might feel differently. It hasn’t been that long since the last break-up. For now, she’s not dating and has no plans to.

Meanwhile, Wade now has to deal with what she feels is a tangible stigma of having been divorced three times. She said she doesn’t feel like she should have a stigma against her, despite wondering if she’s lacking something because of her low success rate at marriage. But she feels it, nonetheless.

She said she hates being asked when she goes to the doctor’s office or when doing her taxes to fill out either “single,” “married” or “divorced.” She said she’s single, so what’s the difference to the doctor whether she’s single single or divorced single.

According to Popenoe, it’s going to be hard to get rid of this stigma, particularly in a society that is trying so hard to strengthen the institution of marriage and halt its decline. Aside from divorces, marriage rates alone have dropped by about 30 percent since 1970 and out-of-wedlock childbirths have increased from about 10 percent to more than 30 percent of all births.

“Some believe that pro-marriage polices can not be put forth without stigmatizing and penalizing those who for one reason or another, sometimes through no fault of their own, are not married,” said Popenoe.

So, in a society that reveres marriage, it looks like Wade may have to wait a while to unload the stigma, but that doesn’t mean she can’t give it another go… if she’s so inclined.