Marriage promises exclusivity — emotional and otherwise. So what happens when death ends the marriage, but nobody tells the emotional expectations that the marriage is over?
In this first video of a six-part series, I'm reading an essay written by a woman in my Dating a Widower Facebook group — shared here with her permission — and adding my own thoughts as we go.
Part 1 sets up the core question this whole series is built around: why society applauds widowers for staying loyal to a marriage that's already ended, and who's actually cheering that on.
This is Part 1 of 6. New parts release each Sunday — subscribe so you don't miss the rest.
Transcript follows:
A woman in my Dating a Widower Facebook group wrote—and gave me permission to share—one of the most honest breakdowns I've read about what it actually feels like to build a relationship with a widower. It's called “Till Death Do Us Part, But for How Long?”
Now, over the next six videos, I'm going to read it to you section by section and tell you exactly why every word of it is important.
So let's start with the promise that marriage actually makes.
She writes:
“Marriage is unlike any other relationship we form in life.
We have parents, children, siblings, and friends, and each of those relationships carries its own irreplaceable place in our hearts. Marriage, however, asks something entirely different. It asks for exclusivity.
You know what I'm talking about. Not merely sexual, but emotional exclusivity, too.
When two people marry, they promise that no other romantic relationship will occupy the same place in their lives. We celebrate and declare that promise at our wedding ceremony, shared with family and friends gathered as witnesses. We even involve God. We call it fidelity. And we've built an entire institution around it.
Which is why I've often found myself asking a question that makes many people uncomfortable: What happens when death ends a marriage, but not the emotional expectations surrounding it?”
Now, that is a great question, and that's something I talk about a lot in my books, Dating a Widower and so on.
But really, it comes down to this: If you're widowed, how do you open your heart to someone new without forgetting your past or erasing it?
And here's what I've learned through coaching widowers throughout this: It's very possible. And, in theory, it's not even that complicated.
Now, in practice, it's a lot harder.
But that's because the widower doesn't know how to love again. It's hard because the expectations placed around him make it difficult.
For example, family expects him to stay loyal to a marriage that is over. Friends praise him for still missing her even though she's been gone for years and he's in a new relationship.
So the widower, in trying to open his heart, isn't just fighting his own grief. He's also—snorts—fighting a bunch of people who have decided that he can't open his heart.
If he's too happy, too moved on, too present with the new person, he's somehow betraying his late wife who died.
Now, this pressure is real, and if he doesn't push back against it, it becomes this third person, this ghost in the relationship that he's trying to build.
So the essay continues. She writes:
“There are few people in society more protected from criticism than widowers.”
She's spot-on there, by the way.
The loss of a spouse is a tragedy, and no compassionate person would argue otherwise. However, compassion should never prevent honest conversation, because the moment a widower chooses to enter another serious relationship, the conversation is no longer only about the woman who died. It also has to include the woman who is alive.
Yet society has created a chorus of contradiction.
We encourage widowers to find love again while simultaneously encouraging them to remain emotionally married to their late wives.
We applaud annual wedding anniversary tributes even though the marriage itself ended when death occurred.
We turn a blind eye when a home is preserved exactly how she left it.
We romanticize declarations like, “She will always be the love of my life.”
Then we act surprised when the second relationship struggles.
And here's who's usually doing the applauding: It's people who have never buried a spouse and people who have never dated someone who has.
Think about who shows up in the comments on a widower's anniversary post, gushing about how beautiful it is that he still loves her so much.
It's rarely another widow or widower.
It's rarely someone currently dating a widower and living with that reality.
It's usually friends, extended family, acquaintances—people watching from a safe distance, romanticizing something they never had to build a life inside of.
And that distance is important.
It's easy to call something beautiful when you're not the one competing with it.
It's easy to praise a shrine when you don't have to walk past it every day wondering where you fit.
So, when society hands out applause for keeping her memory alive in a new relationship, remember: It's usually coming from people with nothing at stake in that relationship.
And a widower who's serious about building something real can't afford to let people with no skin in the game set the terms of his new relationship.
So how do you actually know if someone's moved on?
It's not about how much time has passed.
In Part Two, I'll show you the real way to tell.
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 help the women who love them understand what's really going on.
Subscribe to this channel so you don't miss the rest of the series.