Widower Wednesday: Leap of Faith

I’ll be sending Marring a Widower off to my editor tonight. That means I’ll be going through all the submitted stores over the next few days. Hopefully by the time I get the manuscript back next week I’ll have read through all of them and will know which ones will be included in the book.

Also, if you’ve sent me an email in the last week or so about widower-related concerns, I’ll be catching up on emails as well over the next few days. I’ve been so busy with the book I’ve been neglecting email as well. I apologize for the delay. Look for a reply in your inbox soon!

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Yesterday Marathon Girl and I celebrated our ninth wedding anniversary. During the day I thought about our courtship and all the issues we had to work through in order to reach a point where we could tie the knot.  It took a lot of effort on both our parts to make it that far but we both wanted things enough that we were willing to put in the necessary effort to make it happen.

Even after all our work it still took a leap of faith for both of us to take the ultimate step. Marathon Girl knew she was the center of my universe because of my words and actions. For example, there were no guarantees that it would be smooth sailing. There was always a chance, however small, that I could decide that I had made the wrong choice or wasn’t ready to move on. On the other side even though I knew Marathon Girl was working through her concerns but there was no certainty that she wouldn’t just throw up her hands and say that she couldn’t take it anymore. Despite this we pressed forward and pledged our love to each other for all eternity.

I bring this up because sometimes I read through my emails or posts on the Dating a Widower Facebook group and see a lot of GOWs and widowers who are madly in love with each other but have just enough doubt about the future that they’re scared to take that next step because there’s a chance that, for whatever reason, it may not work out.

Marrying someone is a journey. And whether you’re marring a widow(er), someone who’s divorced, or someone who’s single, you can only see so far into the future. Every act of marriage is a leap of faith as there are never any guarantees what will happen one, five, or 10 years down the road. Sometimes our spouse makes choices that throw a monkey wrench into the marriage and destroy it. Other times life events (job loss, illness) come and add stress and other issues into the relationship. But trials and tribulations will come no matter what choice we make. Hard times are simply part of our life on Earth.

There are no guarantees that anything in this life will turn out the way we hope or want them to. But I’ve found that more often than not sometimes you just got to take that step into the unknown then work hard and pray that things pan out. Taking a chance after you’ve done all that you can do is better that living in a constant state of worry about what to do.

Not all of my leaps of faith have panned out but most of them have. Even those that haven’t worked have taught me enough that I’ve been able to make better decisions down the road. My marriage to Marathon Girl has far exceeded both of our expectations. I’ve never been happier with someone even when hard and challenging times have presented themselves. No matter what difficult circumstances have come, we’ve held each other’s hand and worked through them together.

So if there aren’t any major red flags in your relationship, don’t let unfounded worries hold you back from marrying the person you love. There will always be hard times in our lives, but often these hard times are easier to deal with when we have that one special person to walk by our side and help us out along the way.

Widower Wednesday: Forgive and Forget

Thanks to all those who submitted stories for Marrying a Widower. I’m currently taking some of Marathon Girl’s feedback and working feverishly to hit the March 1 deadline to send this version to my editor. I’ll be reviewing the stories and getting back to those who submitted them the first week in March.

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From the inbox:

I just wasted the last year of my life dating a widower. From everything he said I thought we were meant to spend the rest of our lives together. We went on vacations, met each other’s families, and were even talking marriage. Yes, there were signs he was struggling but he always seemed to bounce back and assured me he was working through any issues he was having.

Last week he dropped the bomb. He told me it was over and that things couldn’t move forward. He confessed that he never really loved me and but was never able to be honest with me about how he felt because he didn’t want to be alone.

All I have done for the last week is cry. But I’m also furious at this man for deceiving me and using me for his own selfish purposes. I know I need to move on but can’t because I feel used and abused and want to strangle the man that just last week held me in his arms and said that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me. What’s the best way to get over a widower who broke my heart?

First, I’m sorry the widower led you on for a year. Breakups are always hard but they’re worse when you learn the person has just been in a relationship for all the wrong reasons.

If moving on is what you want to do, you’re going to need to forgive widower for everything he did. Forgiving someone isn’t an easy thing to do especially when someone has intentionally hurt or won’t admit any wrongdoing, but that’s ultimately what has to happen in order for you to find peace in your life.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all formula for forgiving someone since everyone had different ways of coping and moving on. Forgiveness is an act of the mind and of the heart. Some high level suggestions that have helped me include:

  • Get rid of anything that reminds you of the widower. There’s something cathartic about getting rid of physical objects that remind you of him or the relationship. Anything that reminds you of him and your relationship will only hold you back and stoke any anger and resentment you have. Take anything that reminds you of him and give it away or destroy it.
  • Have one good venting session. Whether you need to talk to a friend, go someplace private where you can scream at the top of your lungs, or write you feeling out on paper have one good session where you can get all the pain and sadness out of your body. Make it a good one because in order for it to be effective, you can only do it once.
  • Don’t get even. When someone hurts us it’s normal to want to hurt them back. In the long run that’s not going to do anything other than make the situation worse. Hold your head up high and don’t lower yourself to his level.
  • Stop being a victim. You have no control over the actions or thoughts of others. What happened, happened. Stop seeing yourself as a victim. Doing this will help release the control and power the offending person and situation have had in your life
  • Do something good for someone else. There’s always someone out there that is hurting more than us. Try to do at least one kind thing for someone else every day. Doing good and focusing your thoughts on others goes a long way toward moving on and finding that inner peace.

Even though I don’t have a clear cut way of doing this, I personally know that forgiveness is possible. There is no way I could have married Marathon Girl or started a family with her if I hadn’t forgiven Krista for killing herself. If you’re serious about wanting to move on, you’ve got to figure out a way push the anger out of your heart and mind. Until you can let go of the hard feeling you have, your life is going to be stuck in a rut.

 

Widower Wednesday: The Wrong Question

FINAL REMINDER! Today’s the deadline for submitting a story for my forthcoming Marrying a Widower book. If you’re interested in submitting, read the submission guidelines then email me your story.

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From my inbox comes the following:

I’ve been with a widower for eight months. (He’s been widower for a year and a half.) Saturday night we went out for dinner. Everything was going great until a lull in the conversation occurred. I noticed he was looking out the widow with a distant look in his eyes. I asked him if he was thinking about his late wife. He said “Yes.” Those words stung but I would have been okay with it if he had stopped there. Instead he continued and told me the story about a time their car died on them in the middle of nowhere during a thunderstorm. (A big storm was going on outside at the time.) He could tell the story upset me and apologized for going into such detail but the night was already ruined for me. I understand he thinks of the late wife but why did he have to tell me that story? He’s apologized but now I’m worried that every time I ask him about what’s on his mind, I’m going to get a story about the late wife. Help!

Frequent readers of this column know that I’m a big advocate of learning how to communicate with a widower. If you can’t communicate with him, odds are the relationship isn’t to survive very long. But part of knowing how to talk to a widower—or anyone else for that matter—is knowing what questions to ask, when to ask them, and when to keep your mouth shut.

In the above email, did it the GOW really need to know what the widower was thinking right then and there? Everything had been fine and dandy until she noticed he was looking out the widow. She could have started talking about something else or simply asked if he was okay. However, asking specifically if he was thinking about the late wife asking intentionally opening a can of worms that didn’t need to be opened in the first place. Perhaps the widower’s answer could have been more diplomatic or maybe he could have shortened the story to one or two sentences but I have a hard time getting upset at him for giving an honest answer.

You don’t need to know everything that’s going on in the widower’s head at any given moment. If you have a trivial question that you really don’t want the answer to, don’t ask the question. Instead focus on learning how to communicate on the more important aspects of your relationship—the ones that bring you closer together and move the relationship forward—not the minor or insignificant parts. If you feel the need to ask about frivolous things, don’t get upset at the widower if you don’t like his answer. There are some questions that are better left unasked.

A Tale of Two Kindles

Marathon Girl solved our eReader dilemma a couple weeks ago when she gave me a Kindle Touch for my birthday. It was an unexpected gift since I haven’t completed about reading on the iPad in months. Thankfully, I don’t have to deal with the iPad’s backlit screen. As a result I’ve been reading a lot more the last two weeks—almost double the amount of reading I did on the iPad. As for the Kindle Touch, it’s superior in every way to its keyboard predecessor except for one important thing: turning pages. The great thing about the keyboard version is that it had buttons on either side of the device that allowed me to rest my thumb and push a button when I was ready to go with the next page. With the touch version I actually have to tap the screen to turn a page and I’m starting to find that a tad annoying. I’m so tired when I get around to reading some nights that it’s a lot easier to keep my hand in one place and read instead of touching the screen and letting a small smudge develop after a night of reading. (Yeah, I know I had to swipe the screen with my iPad to turn pages but it was an iPad. It’s never had buttons to turn pages.)  It’s almost like Amazon got so caught up in the touch screen craze that they never stopped to think whether or not touching the screen or side buttons made for a better reading experience. It’s not just me that misses the button. After swapping Kindles for a night, Marathon Girl said she preferred having the buttons to turn pages too. (She hasn’t traded Kindles since then. Hmmmmmmm.)

When it comes to browsing, highlight, taking notes, buying more books or anything else I do with the touch version is miles ahead of earlier version. Though still not perfect, note taking has improved so much that I’m actually starting to read non-fiction ebooks on it. So the only suggestion I would send to Amazon (who I’m sure is reading this) is to put some page turning buttons on the next generation of the Kindle Touch. Please, please, please put those wonderful page turning buttons back on both sides of the device and let readers decide whether they want to touch the screen or push a button. That would make this wonderful reading device absolutely perfect.

As for the iPad, I’m not going to use that for reading again unless one of our Kindles breaks. The backlit screen is a much bigger annoyance than touching the screen to turn pages. The Kindle’s E Ink display makes reading a thousand times more enjoyable and I will gladly touch the screen to turn the page instead of having my eyes feel like they’re going to pop out of my head.

Where I'm At: LTUE

Life, the Universe, & Everything (LTUE), speculative fiction writing conference starts today and runs through Saturday. Friday morning I'll be on a panel titled "Stealing from historical and current events." I'll also be participating in a book signing that night.

It's a great conference and for $30 admission, it's a steal considering all the awesome workshops and authors that are participating. See LTUE's full schedule here.

Hope to see some of you there!

Widower Wednesday: Dating a Widow

REMINDER! If you’re engaged or married to a widower or even divorced from a widower, I’m looking for real life stories to share in my next book Marrying a Widower. If you’re interested in submitting, read the submission guidelines then email me your story. Submissions are due February 15—that’s one week from today!

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Occasionally I’ll get emails from men who are dating young widows. They stumble across this blog, read it, and want to know if I’d give the same advice to someone who was dating a widow as someone who was dating a widower. Since I’ve seen to gotten more than normal of these questions of late, here are my thoughts on the subject:

For the most part, my advice would be the same: The widow should make you feel like the center of her universe and you should expect the same kind of behavior from her that you would from a single or divorced woman. Like widowers, widows are ready to stop grieving and move on will figure out how to put their feelings for the late husband in a special place in her heart and give the rest of it to you.

Where I have a hard time offering advice is how widows move on from the late husband to the next husband. Widowers are a lot easier. Once they find someone they really love they put their feelings for the late wife to the side fairly quickly and move on. Widows are, well, more complicated. Yes most of them eventually move on but the process seems to take a lot longer. Why? I have no idea.

The best explanation I’ve read comes from Annie who wrote earlier this year:

Biggest difference between dating a widow versus a widower, off the top of my head, is that women tend to comb through the still smoldering ashes of any relationship once it is over – regardless of why it ended – and they will do this until the ashes cool, go stone cold and even begin to scatter to the wind as often as they feel the need to (or have an audience for it) until they “get over it”.  And by “get over it”, I mean put the experience into a context that they can live with to an extent that allows them to move on.  Men don’t seem to do that as much or as obsessively.

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Men are good at this acceptance thing, which is not to say that you won’t find men who brood or are endlessly bitter about past failures or lost love, but you find far fewer of them than you do of women. I have yet to meet a woman who can’t recall for you, in minute detail, how her first love evolved, blossomed and eventually went up in flames. Minute detail.

You read about first loves reuniting a lot these days thanks to Mark Zuckerberg, but I am willing to bet that the women will spin tales about how they never got over the guy and how their subsequent loves and even about marriages that never held a candle to the first love. Ask a man about his first failed romance. Go ahead. Ask. He might remember the sex, or the lack thereof, but he won’t be holding a lit flame. Nor will he necessarily be compelled to reignite it if he is okay with where he currently lives his life. Men ground themselves in now, which is why a woman’s obsession with past, or future, perplexes and/or irritates them. Most men went on to have love, children and good lives with nary a backward glance at that first love. Sure, they may be pleased to have a second shot later in life with a girl whom they can only recall as a girl, but if they’d never heard from her again – they’d have found someone else to be happy with. Because that’s men. Practical in a cold-blooded way that (most) women aren’t.

What she writes sounds true to me but I’m not a woman or a widow. In countless ways women are still an enigma to me. I know on the occasions I’ve talked face-to-face with (young) widows, I can tell they approach grief and moving on very differently than (young) widowers. It’s not a bad thing just an innate difference between the sexes. You know, the Mars/Venus thing.

That being said my main advice to men dating widows remains the same: You should feel like number one when you’re with her and shouldn’t have any doubts or concerns whether or not she’s ready to start a new life with you. If you don't feel like she's making you the priority, re-evaluate the relationship and don't be afraid to move on. As for how widows sort through a relationship and move on, I have no idea.

Any widows, women, or those dating widows who have insight about dating a widow this please leave a comment. I and men dating widows would appreciate the insight.

Books Read January 2012

A Series of Unfortuante Events #8: The Hostile Hosptial by Lemony Snicket

I've been reading this series of books to the kids before they go to bed every night. The first four or so seemed to be pretty much the same. However, they've been getting much better as the series goes on. This one was by far the best. And the older three are pretty much glued to the book when I read. Always a good sign. 4 starts out of 5.

Hour Game by David Baldacci

I like most of Baldacci's books but was disappointed in this one. Most of the characters felt flat and I had a hard time caring about them. A little more sexual tension King and Maxwell would have made their relationship more believable. And there were just some scenes (bullets colliding in midair) that seemed too far fetched. Baldacci's a good writer but I recommend checking out his other  books first. 2 stars out of 5.

The Secret Knowledge by David Mamet

Like all of Mamet's works, this book isn't a light read. Like a rich dessert, It's best read (or re-read) a chapter at a time so you can absorb the material then come back to more when you're hungry. It's also the first politically themed book I've read that written in a stream of consciousness like way. The best part of the book was seeing ideas expressed through the prism of a reformed liberal. The chapter about him giving a lecture at a prominent university is especially revealing on what a complete failure liberal arts education has become. The only place I found the book lacking and would have enjoyed reading more was his personal journey from a liberal to a conservative. 4 starts out of 5.