If you're dating a widower, at some point someone is going to call you jealous, insecure, or threatened by a dead woman. In Part 3, I show you why that's almost never the real problem — and why the actual issue is being asked to compete with something no living person can beat.
Transcript follows:
If you're dating a widower, at some point someone is going to call you jealous, insecure, or threatened by a dead woman. Today I want to show you why that's not the case and why the real problem has nothing to do with you.
This is Part Three of six in the "Till Death Do Us Part" series. If you're just joining us, we're working through an essay written by a woman in my Dating a Widower group — shared here with her permission—about what it's really like to build a relationship with a widower. And if you missed Parts 1 or 2, links are in the description.
The essay continues:
Yet death performs another remarkable trick, it edits memory. Suddenly marriages that were ordinary become extraordinary. Marriages that were difficult become beautiful, and arguments disappear, disappointments soften, imperfections fade. Some marriages truly were extraordinary. Others weren't. Some couples were deeply happy, while others were merely surviving. Death has an extraordinary ability to polish memory. She's no longer remembered as a real woman with strengths, weaknesses, flaws, and failures like the rest of us. She becomes almost untouchable because death has made it impossible to speak honestly about her without feeling disloyal.
And that is precisely what makes the comparison so cruel. No living woman can compete with someone whose imperfections have been quietly erased by memory while her virtues grow more extraordinary with every retelling, for the dead never disappoint us again but the living inevitably do. And that creates an impossible situation for the next woman. People often accuse her of jealousy, they even call her insecure and this is true even when dealing with the most accomplished women out there. They remind her that the first wife is dead and therefore “not a threat.”
But they misunderstand the problem entirely. She isn't asking him to erase his past. She's asking for the same thing every girlfriend or wife once expected for herself. Exclusivity. Simple exclusivity that he too needs unless he is not human.
My Thoughts:
If those words don't hit the nail on the head, I don't know what does.
Think about it. Before you accuse a woman dating a widower of being jealous or insecure, ask yourself how you'd handle being constantly compared to someone who isn't around anymore to have a bad day, snap at you, forget an anniversary, or just make mistakes as we all do. Ask yourself how you'd feel knowing you can never win that comparison, not because you're not good enough, but because the person you're being measured against no longer has the chance to disappoint anyone.
That's not insecurity. You can’t compete with a memory that only gets better with time, while you're standing there in real time, making mistakes It’s an impossible task.
Here's a gut check for anyone tempted to label a woman dating a widower jealous: imagine dating someone who constantly brings up an ex — a past boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife, whoever and constantly compares you to them. Every day, there are reminders of how amazing that person was. Their extraordinary cooking. The way they made everyone laugh. How they were the perfect partner in every situation that came up. You hear about it at family dinners. You see it in old photos still hanging on the wall. You catch it in the stories that get told at every holiday, every birthday, every quiet moment when his guard is down.
How would you feel? Most people would feel frustrated, exhausted, and invisible. Like you're competing with a ghost who never has to show up and try.
These feelings are a legitimate response to being measured against someone who isn't even in the room to answer for herself.
Being labeled as petty, jealous, or insecure isn't just wrong — it puts the problem on the wrong person. You're not the one who brought a ghost or a third person into the relationship. You're not the one who keeps setting the table for someone who isn't coming. The moment you bring up your feelings, you get told you're the issue — that you should be more understanding, more secure, more patient. But no amount of security fixes a relationship where you're still competing with someone else's highlight reel.
The problem was never your reaction. The problem is that you're being asked to compete with a perfect memory of someone who’s not coming back.
So, what do you actually deserve in a relationship with a widow or widower? That's next, in Part Four.
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 helping 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, and learn more at www.abelkeogh.com.