For those who have been wanting signed copies of Room for Two, the good news is that I finally have some copies available for sale. The bad news is that I only have a small number of copies available. If you've been wanting them, you can order them here.
And, yes, still of out copies of Marrying a Widower but should have those in stock sometime next week.
Someone finally made Alanis Morissette's Ironic actually ironic. Wait, isn't that ironic?
A recent post from a midwife on the Dating a Widower Facebook group got me thinking about how culture helps or hinders widowers from moving on. The story she posted goes as follows (posted here with permission):
Attended another beautiful homebirth yesterday. One of my Amish ladies. She had a baby girl, number nine and they named her Mary, in honor of her husband's father's wife, who is not his [birth] mother. His [birth] mother died a couple years ago and his Dad remarried this lady. They usually name their children after family members. The Dad said that he wanted to be sure that his Father's wife knew that they all loved and accepted her and that she was family. They wanted to honor her for loving his father and taking care of his younger siblings. She is too old to have children of her own so this is the only way her name would live on in their family. His father just remarried a few months ago and only courted her for a few months prior to that. The Dad said to me that while they all miss his mom and remember her fondly, in their culture when a man remarries she is not the "new wife" she is just "the wife", it's a very "the old has passed away, now we go on with life in the here and now" kind of society. I found their naming of their daughter to be such a touching gesture.
I don’t know much about the Amish culture but, like the GOW who posted it, I found this to be a very moving way of accepting the new wife into a family. In fact, I can’t think of a more tender way of letting a WOW know that she’s officially part of the family.
What culture that the widower grew up in can have a profound effect on when or if he starts a new chapter in his life. Some cultures, like the Amish example above, do a better job of helping members of the community with loss and moving on. Others don’t.
For example, Popular Western culture (as it’s defined by movies, books, news, music, etc.) doesn’t do a good job in my opinion of handling issues of grief, widowhood, and marriage. In books and movies, widowers are generally portrayed as lost forlorn souls who’s pain can only be fixed by a new woman. Despite their immense pain, they’re generally portrayed as good dating material because they’ve already opened up their heart to someone else and know how to express their true feelings.
Movies and books about widowers falling in love again make good entertainment, but they usually don’t translate well when we use them to influence real world relationships with widowers. Think of the opening scene in Sleepless in Seattle when the Tom Hank’s character calls in to a radio show and talks about how much he loves his late wife. He gets hundreds of letters from women who want to date him. In the real world how many people actually fall in love with someone because of how much the talk about their love for another person? No many, if any. Yet movies and other entertainment like Sleepless subtly influence the way some widowers and GOWs go about their relationship.
I grew up in a strongly religious community and as an adult have chosen to remain part of it. In my culture, we believe families can be together after this life and the bonds of marriage can transcend death. Though those beliefs weren’t the sole factor in my ability to move on and start a life with Marathon Girl, the values and beliefs I’ve chosen to follow did strongly influence my ability to forgive the late wife for her suicide and open my heart to someone else.
That’s not to say that all religious cultures do a good job of helping widowers transition to a new life or that more secular cultures don’t. The point is that a set of values and beliefs that a widower currently has or was raised with can strongly influence the way he, his family, and others grieve and moves on to the point that it may help or hinder any relationship he enters.
So as you’re dating and getting to know a widower better, keep in mind any cultural influences that may be holding him back or moving him forward. Understanding the ideas and philosophies of someone you’re dating are only part of getting to know someone but doing so might help you understand a widower’s words and actions as well as knowing whether or not he’s capable of starting a new life with you.
Due to recent events, I think everyone in the United States would benefit from taking today off from your normal day-to-day routine and read To Kill a Mockingbird
Hats off to whoever tricked this news station. I can't stop laughing.
Read the full story at TV Spy.
While I’m on vacation, I’m having some guest columnists fill in. Today’s Widower Wednesday column is written by Cindy Bale Tanner.
I started dating my former widower three years ago. His late wife of many years with whom he has two children and several grandchildren had died six months earlier. Soon after she died, he dated a friend from a service club they belonged to. She broke it off after a few months. The widower and I have been married for two years now.
We dated for six months before he started to introduce me to his friends. Over dinner the widower would tell his friend stories using “we” to start each story, as in “we went to a concert”, “we had a delicious dinner at such-and-such-a-restaurant”, and “we took a drive out to such-and-such a place.” Each story gradually revealed itself to be about him and his deceased wife. In all of the stories the late wife was one-upping the widower, being a great mom to their kids, or otherwise being the ideal wife.
Initially I was hurt by his constant talking to everyone about their adventures. Eventually I asked the widower that he use his wife’s name, as in “Sally and I”, instead of “we” when starting these stories, and over time he does remember not to start out those stories with "we." Over time the widower thinks twice before telling these stories, and sometimes asks me first if it is okay for him to tell a particular story that I have already heard.
Fortunately, I never felt jealous of the late wife. I didn't really feel compared to her either. I knew instinctively that she was not a saint! That being said, the most valuable tip that I can give anyone who is dating a widower is to never say a negative word about the late wife. I have never said a single negative word about her to anyone. For that matter, I have never had any reason to think anything bad about her. Every once in a while, my husband mentions to me how much it means to him and his children that I have never said anything negative about the late wife.
After we started dating I learned that the woman he dated before me was still a part of his life as they often saw each other at the service club they belonged to. I was very jealous when I found out that they were still running into each other. He told me that they were just friends and that their relationship was a "mistake." I called his bluff and asked to meet her. He introduced us the day after we were engaged. Afterwards the two of us went for a two mile walk and had a good heart-to-heart talk. We exchanged phone numbers and she ended up being a good resource when the widower did or said things that confused me.
For me the biggest challenge of dating a widower was trying to figure out why he does what he does. Is he remembering his relationship with the late wife? Is he trying to rekindle his relationship with this other woman? Is he thinking about me or someone else? Is he comparing me to someone else? Is he seeing me for who I am? Is he just being a guy? Having a relationship with the other woman was invaluable to me when I needed the advice of a woman who knew the widower very well. I cannot emphasize enough how worth it was to me to have that contact and ask things about the widower that no one else would know.
Early in our relationship I felt I didn't have the widower’s full attention. But as time went on, the stories about the decreased and I felt like the relationship became more and more about us. I've learned that learning how to communicate with the widower and having someone else I can talk to about widower-related issues has helped my relationship with the widower. I know I wouldn't be married to him if I felt like second place.
I still prefer ebooks but this was very, very well done. Bravo! (Hat Tip: The Passive Voice.)
Yesterday Marathon Girl and I decided to take the kids to park to eat dinner. We drove around for a bit and stumbled upon a park that was like something I remember from childhood. There was a merry-go-round, teeter-totter and big tires. In addition there was fine gravel on the ground. I haven't seen any of this in playgrounds in at least 20 years and was kind of surprised that this park still had them. Best of all, my kids enjoyed playing on these "new" toys. Kind of glad we found the park and the kids had a chance to play on them. Probably just a matter of time before someone gets hurt and the city is forced to get rid of them. Photos below.
While I'm on vacation, I'm having some guest columnists fill in. Today's Widower Wednesday column is written by Heather Massey Coker.
Dating, loving, marrying, and living with a widower is an emotionally trying and, in my opinion, hugely rewarding experience. It requires patience, compassion, and most importantly, the ability to maintain healthy boundaries. My husband and I met and fell in love rather quickly. I am fortunate that when we met: I was 35 years old, had earned a graduate degree in counseling, and had experienced some voluntary and mandatory (for the degree) counseling. I had also lost my father one week after he had lost his first wife. It is not clear to me which of those things helped me most to navigate this unique situation. I am willing to bet it was the combination of them all!
I felt drawn to my husband’s honesty; he was up front about his grief, his desire to move forward, and his plans to establish a life for himself and his children based in the present and facing the future, rather than staying stalled in the past. However, that being said, this loving, kind, tender, and gentle man had not only lost his wife of nearly ten years, but the mother of his children, a son, 7, and a daughter, just four weeks old when she died. His heart was broken while discovering it could love again. He was imagining a life with me while trying to close the door to his life with his late wife. He wanted me to be a mother to his children while trying to reconcile that his daughter would never know the woman who tried for 6 years to bring her into the world. Did I understand all of this? Yes. Were there days when it was so hard to be the living woman in his life when his grief overwhelmed him? Absolutely.
The first boundary I set in our relationship was to “unfriend” him on Facebook. This is how it went: we talked on the phone until 3 a.m. and I pulled up Facebook at 11:00 a.m. to find a status update that touted his love and affection and mourning for his late wife. I sent him an email the size of a short novel outlining how hurtful that was to me and how duplicitous I felt it was and explained that I would not be on his friends list anymore. I understood that he was in a truly conflicting emotional place and needed an outlet to express his grief, that he was unable to tell the world that he was falling in love with someone else less than 6 months after her death, and, most importantly, that I did not have to subject myself to it. My guy was shocked at the hurt that his status had caused me. Grief is a very self-centered experience. Fortunately, for us, I was also grieving at the time so I understood that well. I believe that if I had failed to set this boundary for myself, I would have been unable to maintain my relationship with my guy. I would never have been able to withstand the outpouring of grief and affection towards his late wife repeatedly.
Early on, my guy and I agreed that we would keep our relationship known only to close friends and family. I was not going to meet his son until we were sure of ourselves and knew that this was going to be a relationship leading towards marriage. We set a date for when we would “go public.” The day came and I changed my relationship status and requested that he confirm that we were in a relationship. And, I waited. Several hours passed and it had not been accepted. I admit that I panicked. I doubted myself. I questioned his willingness and ability to love me. I overreacted a little. Okay, maybe a lot. Nonetheless, I pointed out that this was important to me and he recognized that I was important to him.
There would be other boundaries and limits in our relationship in regards to his late wife, her parents, and my role in his and now, our, children’s lives. As in any relationship, healthy boundaries are important in a relationship with a widower. Boundaries tell someone how they are allowed to treat you. If you are a person who struggles to set boundaries for yourself in your relationships with others, then dating a widower is going to test you, push you, and perhaps, hurt you.
Widowers are no more likely to hurt a woman than any other man. Though, they are not dealing with the same issues as a man who has been divorced, separated, left, dumped, etc. It is different. The woman they loved died. He did not leave her and, in most cases, she didn’t leave him. She died. He can and will respect her and love her and miss her. He can and will do that while falling in love with you. Sometimes, he will grieve. Sometimes, it is not going to be about you. If you set limits with the way you need to be treated, he will honor them. Or he won’t. Then, you have to decide what you are willing to accept for your life.
Are you ready to date a widower? Taking care of yourself in any relationship is paramount and it is even more so when you’re involved with a widower. Set boundaries and limits. Communicate them to your significant other. Be compassionate and empathetic. Know that you are capable of leaving a relationship that is not honoring you. Then, you’ll be ready to reap the benefits of a love that will hold you a little closer because he knows what it’s like to be unable to hold the woman he loved.
Many of you have asked about the status of my dating guide for widowers. Well, the good news is that the book has finally reached a point where I’m ready to accept stories from widowers as to how they've moved on and started a new chapter in their life. Specifically, I’m looking for stories that relate to the following situations:
Your story doesn't have to have a happy ending. If things didn't work out, I want to hear from too as there’s something to be learned from good and bad experiences.
To submit your story for consideration, send it to me via email. Please keep submissions between 250 – 700 words. You can submit more than one story but please send them in different emails. (This way I can sort them by topic better.) All submissions must be received by July 31, 2013. The author of any story that makes it into the book will receive a free copy of the yet-to-be-titled dating guide upon publication. To protect your privacy, you can publish your story under a pen name if you wish. I’m hoping to have the dating guide available sometime this fall.
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Note: I’ll be on vacation for the next couple of weeks. Look for some guest Widower Wednesday columns from readers during that time. If you’re interested in submitting a guest column, email me.