Marriage the Second Time Around

I am pretty skeptical about marriage since my divorce. There are many reasons, but I don't want to get into them all right now.
Today I had lunch with a happily married couple and I asked them a lot of questions about what it is like to be married for the second time (2nd marriage for both). There is a big part of me that wants to believe that marriage can be something much more than what I had when I was married. There is a big part of me that wants to believe that IF I did it again I could be a better wife than I was the first time (ok, I could be pretty shitty and still be a better wife, unfortunately).
I guess what I really mean is I want to be the best person I can be for my partner. I want to believe it is possible to have a marriage that makes you better than you would be if you were single. I want to believe that I can be with someone that makes me a better person, and that I could make someone a better person by being in their life.
What I wanted to know, more specifically, was how their current marriage felt different from their first. What they told me was that they were more engaged in and aware of their motivations and behaviors. More mature, basically. Being more intentional in who they fell in love with allowed them to have a better foundation to grow a lasting relationship on. Perhaps most people get married too young. Maybe it's that you really need to experience falling in love a few times as you mature as a person to learn what exactly what you want and who you want to be for someone else.
I asked them what it was like to fall in love this time compared to previous times in their life. They both said that it felt different than when they were younger, that it was more of a falling in love with their partner as a person than a flood of emotions/hormones/overwhelming crush of feelings. While there was that passionate feeling, behind it was something deeper and more mature...a friendship.
All of this made me smile. I still can't say I am a believer, but it was nice to listen to two people who are in love talk about how much they love being in love, even when they fight and get annoyed with each other and all that stuff. Mostly I loved hearing them talk about how they are each others' best friends and would always rather hang out with each other than anyone else in the world.