Am I wasting my time

Hello. I have been with my partner for almost 3 years. He is a wonderful, and complicated full of issues, as am I’m sure. He is a widower going on eight years coming up on New Year’s Eve. He has said many times that he was ready for a new relationship. He keeps things around of his late wife’s stuff. He keeps a Tinker Bell trinket hanging in the window picture that she bought in the bathroom as well as pictures she had made in the bathroom. He keeps his wedding photo in the dining room on the wall. He keeps her living will posted on the refrigerator. And strangest of all he keeps the tortilla chips from the night. She passed away in the pantry as well as a jar of homemade succotash in the fridge. He has her toiletries in the bathroom still in the drawers. Is it wrong of me that these things bother me and occasionally make me wonder if he is not ready? He tells me continuously that he loves me. It breaks my heart, and hurts to see these things, while he doesn’t feel like there’s anything abnormal about these things still being around. I have never wanted him to forget his wife and I encourage him to have good memories of her all the time. He gets very down when he gets memories of her, which I know is natural. But he doesn’t seem to be able to ever focus on the happy memories. I have told him in the past that she would want him to focus on the happy memories. Just hoping that me wanting him to put these things away in a safe place is not being awful. And I’ve only brought it up a couple of times without success.

Hi,
Welcome.
I read your post yesterday and needed some time to think about my answer.
It is complicated. On the one hand you are with a loving partner, on the other hand there are some extreme practices that he is unwilling to recognize or even consider that he may be hurting you with.
You’ve been together for 3 yrs and 8 yrs since his wife passed.
What I sense is that he wants to keep her alive at any price regardless of having a loving relationship with you.
It feels like he has not been able to dedicate one place to his past, but has integrated it into almost every aspect of his being.
I don’t think he knows or wants to let her go. Having their wedding picture on the wall is sorry, a bit extreme. He feels he needs to be in a postmortem, spiritual relationship with her, on a friendly bases.

Can he focus on your relationship or things you do together, or does he just wonder off mentally at times into his past or into his other relationship with his deceased wife.

Does he have any children? Have they accepted you into their lives?

I agree that what he is doing is on the extreme side and can hurt you very much.

I married a friend of my ex boyfriend who committed suicide.
It happened when he was 19 and I felt responsible, because I was supposed to meet him the day before and never showed up. He almost begged me to come. I didn’t cope well afterwards.
Marrying back into the same neighborhood had its ups and downs for me.
I have been married before to my ex boyfriend’s neighbor, they lived in the same apartment building just one floor apart.
We met at college and I had absolutely no idea where he lived and when we started dating it was quite a shocker for me to find out.
But exh was never a part of the same community and had different friends so I managed to eventually put it all behind me.
But every time I went to the building, I felt a bit tense.

My H (I am in my second marriage for 17 yrs) and all of his friends grew up together with my ex boyfriend. We hang out together with their wives.
I had flashbacks, periods of time when all my guilt and other feelings came up and it was difficult to cope. I even briefly met my H at that time (never thought I would marry him, he is a year younger than me, at 16 that was a lot).

So, I understand a bit of complicated and trying to keep someone alive.
I needed to talk it out, because for me it was just incredibly painful.
Whenever I go to the cemetery, I light a candle for him and H accompanies me. My grandparents are there too, so it’s not a special trip.

In your situation I would be feeling as confused as you are, but having had my own experience and dealing with my feelings over decades, brings a very different understanding.

My feelings didn’t have much to do with exH or H. It was me, my feelings I couldn’t come to terms with. He wasn’t supposed to die and I knew he was in bad shape emotionally. I wanted to punish, hurt him, because he hurt me, but I was still in love with him, puppy love, so very naive and childish. Suicide is a whole different chapter I think and leaves a certain mark.

I am very reluctant to say you are wasting your time with him. It all depends on the relationship you have and what you can offer each other.
I don’t how serious you are, do you plan to get married? Maybe you can comment that you hope that he will hang up a picture of you two at one point.

Men are slow, thick, inconsiderate in comprehending that these extreme obsessive behaviors are pushing you/us away.
Some men can be equally obsessed with their ex wives and they let them control their lives and basically control our lives. This is the reason I am on here.
I really suffered because of it and needed a space where I would be understood and not considered jealous and crazy as if I imagined the whole thing.

What I can say is that it is almost impossible to force someone to forget, but I do believe that sometimes it would have benefited me, to be told to move on and live in the now. No one can take my past away from me, but equally I have no right to push anyone into my past.

H and I decided to move out of the city and buy a house instead of living in an apartment.
I was drawn to a house, not understanding why. It turns out the owner is someone I had a short relationship with, almost two decades ago before I met H. The man died of cancer during Covid and I didn’t think much od it, because it didn’t end well and we never had any contact afterwards. He just never called after a while, I deserved better.
Back than he invited me to his newly remodeled house and I liked it. It had some features unique to the house that I really liked. I forgot all about it, or so I thought.
I slowly put two and two together remembering where I saw the features that were pictured on the add. No address, so I couldn’t be sure after such a long time.
We saw the house this week and I did tell H about it, because I couldn’t keep it to myself, it would be a lie on my part.
It is a house we are seriously considering buying and remodeling if we get an acceptable offer for our apartment.

Life has some strange ways, too many coincidences in my life at least.
My whole life I have been running away from my past, trying my hardest to mingle with very different crowds and look where I end up.

I think your partner needs to talk to a no nonsense person that he trusts that he has to make some choices and not forget, but put in a special place his past, his life with his wife.
You are equally important and you also have a past you have managed to put it aside and move on.
I can also say with some certainty that those memories never disappear, they may change, dim, or become obsessive, preventing the person to move forward and have a life after.
It is never the same. The experience stays with you, it’s what you do with it.

I spoke to a good friend of ours whom I trusted with my feelings. Basically he told me, I made my ex boyfriend into something much bigger that he was. I blew the memory out of proportion. I didn’t kill him, although I was mentioned in a letter he left behind as the final stop.

Maybe a male friend of your partner should talk to him, to tell him he should get his act together and stop with this insensitive practices and have the guts to really move on with you and take the step into the unknown.

I sometimes think we hang on to the memories because it is easier to have a good backup memories in our head, instead of dealing with our current situation and really living.
Life is not easy. It can be great and it can have its many challenges.

Hope some of this makes sense.

Keep well and stay in touch.

Hello and welcome. I'm really sorry to hear you're in this situation. I wouldn't like it because it's your home too. I take it you're living in the house he formerly lived in with his former wife? It might be better if you had a fresh start and a new home of your own, and during a move it could be discussed that maybe it's time to put these items somewhere where he can look at them when he wants, but you want to have a home of your own with your own memories in.

Or do you think he wouldn't want to move either? I assume you've tried discussing the odd thing with him. Maybe some couples counselling might help. They might see you both separately at first, and then together, as his has an element of grief counselling. It's a very difficult situation. I think you've done well to live with these things - especially the fridge items.

He probably doesn't see it as disrespectful to you and thinks it's more about himself. I assume you're not married as yet or there would be another photo on the dining room wall as well. Has marriage been discussed at all? Nobody wants to feel "second best" and I hope he reassures you how special you are to him and how much he loves you.