Haven't seen Part 1 yet? Watch it here.
How do you actually know if a widower is ready to open his heart — not in theory, but in the way he talks and acts every day? In Part 2 of this six-part series, I continue reading an essay written by a woman in my Dating a Widower Facebook group — shared here with her permission — and add my own thoughts along the way. This episode breaks down the real marker of whether someone's moved forward: it's not about how much time has passed; it's about how much airtime the person he lost still gets in daily life.
We also dig into the real difference between grieving a death and grieving a divorce, and why saying the right words about being "ready for love again" means nothing without the actions to back it up.
Transcript:
Welcome back. This is Part 2 of 6 in our series on “Till Death Do Us Part... But for How Long?” — an essay written by a woman in my Dating a Widower group and shared here with her permission.
Last time we talked about the promise marriage actually makes, and about who's usually cheering a widower on for staying loyal to a marriage that's already over. If you haven't watched Part One yet, go do that first as there’s a link in the description. This video builds directly on it.
Today we’re going to disucss how you actually know if a man has moved on.
Going back to the essay: the woman in my group writes:
Now imagine exactly the same behaviour after divorce: a man tells his new partner that he never thought he'd find anyone who could compare with what he had before. That his former wife will always be the love of his life, she's the mother of his children after all... Her photographs dominate every room of the house. He celebrates her birthday, and their wedding anniversary every year, the divorce date is like a national day of mourning, her clothes still hang untouched in the wardrobe. And somehow, every conversation circles back to the marriage they shared:
“My wife and I built this house together.”
“My wife and I were supposed to live here forever.”
“My wife is an amazing writer.”
“Watch her video about...”
“Read what she wrote.”
“My wife handles all of that stuff, she knows best.”
“I don't know anyone who could raise two daughters and still maintain a successful career.”
He may spend a day feeling beaten and depressed because of his loss. Not take your calls...yet you have not stopped hearing about his wife in the present tense. So you begin wondering if she's still his wife then what exactly am I? The mistress who somehow wandered into a marriage that never really ended? Most people would conclude he had never truly moved on.
OK, here are my thoughts: I want to be clear — divorce and death aren't the same thing. Nobody, including the writer, is disputing that. But here's what's true across every kind of loss: you can always tell whether someone has actually moved on by how they act and talk about their loss, not by how much time has passed.
This is true if you’ve lost a spouse, gone through a divorce, or loses a job. It's true after someone moves away from a hometown and every story still starts with “back home, we used to...” Time isn't the marker. Language and behavior are.
So when you're dating a widower, pay attention to how often she comes up. How often do her accomplishments, her memory, her role in his life get celebrated versus mentioned in passing? A widower who's moving forward will mention her from time to time in the right context. A widower who hasn't moved on makes her the centerpiece of nearly every conversation, every milestone, every story about his life now.
That's the real marker is how much airtime she still gets.
Back to the essay: SHE WRITES:
At first, you tell yourself you're being petty. Then you realize you're not reacting to one story, you're actually reacting to a pattern. Every conversation somehow becomes another opportunity to remind you how extraordinary she was. Every meaningful compliment belongs to another woman. Every admiration is directed backwards instead of towards the woman sitting right in front of him. After a while, you stop asking yourself whether she's wonderful, you start asking yourself why he isn't looking at you that way. It's a fact that love grows where attention is given. If all of your admiration continues flowing towards yesterday, don't be surprised when tomorrow never has the chance to flourish. Yet change only one fact—that the marriage ended because of death rather than divorce—and suddenly those very same behaviours become admirable. Because death deserves compassion, of course it does. But compassion is not the same thing as exemption from every expectation that accompanies beginning a new relationship. In fact, divorce is often no less psychologically devastating. Death takes someone from you while divorce may leave you living with something entirely different: rejection. The loss remains active because the person remains alive while death, by contrast, has a finality that divorce often lacks.
My thoughts:
This is an excellent breakdown of the real difference between the two losses. Divorce carries rejection — the person is still out there, having chosen someone or something else. Death carries finality — there's no ongoing relationship to compete with, no active choice being made against you. Both are painful. They're just painful in different ways.
But here's what matters more than the type of loss: what someone does with it afterward.
No matter which loss someone's carrying, it's not enough to say the right things about being open to love again. You actually have to make room in your heart for it. Lip service is easy — "I'm ready to move forward," "she's not competing with anyone," "you have nothing to worry about." Anyone can say those words. The real test is whether their actions back it up. Does the new person actually get the space, the attention, the priority those words promised? Or is she living alongside a heart that's still full from before, with no real room made for her?
That's the difference between someone who's grieved and is genuinely ready, and someone who's using grief as a permanent explanation for why the new relationship never quite gets what it deserves.
So what happens when the comparison itself becomes impossible to win? That's what we're covering next Week in Part 3.
I'm Abel Keogh--a remarried widower and author of the book “Dating a Widower: Starting a Relationship with a Man Who’s Starting Over” I help widowers build healthy new relationships, and women who love them understand what's really going on. Subscribe to this channel so you don't miss the rest of the series, and you can learn more about me and my work at www.abelkeogh.com.