Widower Wednesday: Honoring the Late Wife

Widower Wednesday

Today is the last day for widowers to submit their stories for the upcoming widower dating guide. You can get a better idea for the kind of stories I’m looking for here.

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Dear Abel,

I've dated a widower for six months and our relationship is at an impasse. For the most part we have a great relationship and I feel that the widower has made major strides in moving on (his wife died three years ago in a traffic accident). However there are two things that keep getting in the way from our relationship to become serious. The first is a photograph of them on their wedding day. It’s one of many photos but he says he keeps it up there to “honor” the late wife and their relationship. The second is that on special days like her birthday he and his two kids have cake, visit her grave and basically make the day all about her. When I ask them why he does this he says it’s to “honor” her memory. I feel that in “honoring” her, me and my feelings get pushed to the side. We've talked about this and he doesn't see a need to change and points out all the other things he’s done like finally packing up most of her things from their bedroom and taking down lots of other photographs of her. Am I being unreasonable? What, in your opinion, is the best way for the two us to honor the late wife?

Thanks for any insight you can give me,

T.

Hi T.,

No one is under any obligation to honor anyone who’s passed on. “Honoring” someone who has died is done for the benefit of those who are left behind—not the dead.

Honoring the late spouse is one of those vague terms that mean different things to different people. If you were to ask 100 different widow(er)s the best way to “honor” the late spouse, you’re going to get 100 different answers. I know widow(er)s who insist on having photos of the late spouse in prominent display in their homes. Others run races in their memory. Some want to visit the gravesite on special occasions, write books about the late spouse, or become active in certain causes. Personally, I’m not a fan of honoring the late spouse through rituals or photographs. I personally think we honor those we love by how we choose to live our lives after their gone—not by outward, symbolic acts like photographs or gravesites visits. But that’s just me.

What’s important that you and the widower work out a solution that works for the two of you. It sounds like that both the photograph and the celebrations bother you. If you haven’t already, have an open and honest conversation about it with each other. Tell him how it makes you feel and give him a chance to explain why he feels the need to do it. If you and the widower can’t find some common ground, you need to decide whether or not the photo and the graveside visits are deal breakers. If they are, that’s fine. Cut your losses and move on. Everyone has things they can or cannot live with. As painful as that decision is, it’s better to come to that conclusion early on then waste months or years of your life in a miserable relationship.

One final thought: There’s nothing wrong with rituals per se, but there should be a good reason or purpose for the activity. “Honoring” the late spouse out of habit or because one feels pressure from friends, family, or society to do a particular act is never a good idea and, I believe, hinders people from moving on. I only think “honoring” the late spouse is good if it helps people find closure. It’s better, in my opinion, to focus on things that make you happy and move one forward. Besides, the dead aren’t going to care one way or the other whether or not you visit their grave or remember their birthday. They have other concerns.

Best of luck and let me know how things turn out.

Abel

Final Call for Widower Dating Stories

A final reminder that tomorrow is the deadline for stories for my upcoming widower dating guide. Specifically, I’m looking for stories that relate to the following situations:

  • How soon did you start dating after the death of your late wife? Why did you feel like dating again? If it was less than a year after her death, how did you overcome any negative reactions from friends and family once they found out you were dating again?
  • How did you overcome any guilt that came with dating again and/or starting a serious relationship?
  • Once you became serious with someone, how did you make room in your life and in your heart for someone else?
  • How did you handle grown, adult children that weren't happy that you were in a new relationship?
  • How did you handle minor children living at home who weren't happy that you were in a new relationship?
  • What did you do with the late wife’s photographs, clothing and other possessions once you were married or had the new woman move into your home?
  • Were you able to maintain a relationship with the late wife’s family and your new love?
  • What is the best thing about falling in love and starting a new chapter of your life with someone else?

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.

Widower Wednesday: Life with a Widower Excerpt: When It’s Over, It’s Over: How to Avoid Getting Burned Again

Widower Wednesday

Don't have time to write a column today due to some unforeseen stuff. Instead, here's an excerpt from my latest book Life with a Widower. Look for a new post next Wednesday.

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Unfortunately, not every relationship with a widower is going to work out or even end well. There are lots of reasons relationships come to a close, but with a widower, it’s usually because he isn’t ready to move on, open his heart to someone else, or treat the new woman in his life like number one. But whether the relationship ends for those reasons or others, breaking up is still a distressing and difficult situation — especially if the relationship seemed promising at some point.

However, just because it ends doesn’t mean it’s over. Time and time again, I’ve seen the widower lure his recent breakup back into his web, only to burn her a second time. This chapter will help you walk away with your head held high and avoid being used and abused by widowers looking for someone to use and abuse.

He Says He’s Changed

The first thing that happens a few weeks after the relationship ends is that out of the blue the widower calls and tells you he wants to get back together. To entice you into his arms again, he’ll say that he’s had time to think things over and is going to change his behavior, and that he is finally ready to open his heart to you.

His offer can be very tempting — especially if you still have feelings for him. But I suggest that you don’t readily agree to it. Widowers usually reach out to contact a past flame when they want one or more of the following three things:

  • They’re lonely and need someone to fill the void.
  • They’re horny and want nothing more than an outlet for their sexual desires.
  • They miss having someone to wait on them hand and foot and need someone to take the place of the late wife.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that the widower has suddenly come to his senses and wants to make you the center of his universe. There’s no easier target for a manipulative widower than an ex-girlfriend — especially when he can play to her fantasy and claim he has miraculously overcome his grief and is ready to start afresh.

Widowers don’t change their stripes unless they have a really good reason for doing so. If he treated you like a mistress, was stuck in perpetual grief, or made you feel like number two again and again, odds are, you’re in for more or less the same kind of treatment the second time around. So if a widower contacts you after a breakup, save yourself further heartache and don’t answer the phone or reply to his texts or emails. Your silence will speak louder than any returned phone call or text message you could send telling him it’s over. Eventually he’ll get the message and move on to someone else who hasn’t wised up to the game he’s playing.

If you think your widower’s the exception to all of the above, and you want to reply to his overtures, I implore you to think long and hard before doing so and read Chapter 10: Giving Widowers a Second Chance. I’m a big fan of the saying, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” If you end up getting burned a second time, you have no one to blame but yourself.

Wanting Closure

The second way a woman gets burned again is when a relationship with a widower comes to a sudden, unexpected end, and she wants to know why. She reaches out to him to figure out what happened. When she doesn’t get a satisfying answer from the widower, she thinks he hasn’t told her the real reason. She keeps trying to get an answer and obsesses about it until she drives herself crazy.

Don’t torture yourself like this. In the end, it doesn’t matter if the relationship ended because there was another woman, if he was still in love with the late wife, or if he simply wasn’t ready to move on. The widower isn’t consumed by any of these thoughts. He’s moved on to the next chapter of his life, and he isn’t giving you a second thought. By focusing on the breakup and letting it occupy your thoughts, you’re getting burned again and again and again.

When I ended things with Jennifer, the woman I seriously dated before Julianna, I just told her that things weren’t working out, and that I was going to date someone else. It wasn’t the best or classiest way to end things, but I just wanted the relationship to be over. I didn’t spend a lot of time wondering if things could have worked out differently or how Jennifer was doing. Instead, I focused on Julianna and her wants and needs and moved on with my life. That’s just the way guys think.

Jennifer, however, was in fits about it. Through a mutual friend, I heard that for a long time after the breakup, she kept expecting me to change my mind and come crawling back to her — something that was never, ever going to happen. Fortunately, Jennifer was eventually able to move on and find the love of her life, but she spent a lot of time wondering about things that made no difference in the end. Don’t be like Jennifer. Focus on putting the pieces of your life back together and on being happy.

There’s nothing wrong with having a good cry and a couple of “you” days to get him out of your system — that is natural and normal — but don’t spend weeks or months brooding about what could have been done differently, or think that things will change if the widower gets back in touch. I guarantee you, the widower isn’t worried about you. Instead, he’s watching football, drinking a beer, and thinking about the next woman he can bring into his web. The quicker you can move on, the less power the widower — and the past — will have over you, and the sooner you can start a new and better chapter in your life.

Room for Two Back in My Store

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.

Widower Wednesday: Grief and Culture

Widower Wednesday

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.

 

Guest Post: The Importance of Communication and Support

Widower Wednesday

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.