My experience of being a partner of a Widower - and advice

Hi,
My friend’s wife sadly passed away in June. On Saturday her ex husband passed away. All of them our friends, my friends, especially the widower and her ex husband. It’s a long story and I loved both guys and the wife they both shared.

What I am trying to say is, it is quite difficult for me at the moment.

Seeing my friend grieve, I realized he needed to talk about his wife and the life they shared. Issues with her children, he has none of his own.

He really wants, feels he should, move on in his life, somehow still in the life they had.
But the reality is, everything has changed. He keeps busy, or at least tries to, he has no family, everyone has passed away, but he has friends.

He went through a very angry phase, he has since calmed down being a very peaceful man.

He likes to talk about things they shared and how great it was.

Through our conversations, I realized that it means a lot to have respect for his life with his wife, but equally he needs to have a future. We just spoke yesterday both shocked from the news we got a day before and it was the first time he suggested we meet up with my husband included.
No one can live in the past.
I would suggest you show interest in his past life, his wife, remember he did not divorce her. I would even suggest you go to the cemetery and bring some flowers or whatever he does, join him. He will feel safe with his memories by your side, knowing you don’t feel threatened by his past.
It’s a new life he seeks, but has his own views and habits, as we second timers or how many timers have. Baggage.
His wife liked to cook and they had a wooden burner in their house where she would make excellent bread. He had to speak about it enthusiastically and then was able to move on with discussion about what we are going to do together. Just an example of how to put them at ease.

I know it’s early days with my friend, but once he gets it out of his system he is ready to move on to something new.

I think your partner is further along. You can test the grounds and simply ask questions and include your comments. I would be honest and open, but still gentle.
You need to find out where he is at and what he wants, what you want. Talk openly, be curious and insert your opinions experiences.
It’s better for both of you to get to know each other. Don’t put it all out, but do open up, especially if you like him a lot. Don’t tiptoe around him. It will eventually make you miserable.
He either is or he isn’t.
With more experience we are more careful and at the same time we want to move forward in relationships.

Hope you find some of this helpful.
Keep well.
 
Hi Mistie - two years isn't very long. He could still be adjusting over the next couple of years as well. I can understand you finding it difficult to know what questions about "him" as "him" involves 26 years of being married to someone.

Maybe you could say - I didn't want it to be an interrogation of questions and thought we could gradually get to know each other naturally as time goes on. Unless you're going to tell me you used to be a mad axe murderer.

Eg - make a joke about it maybe? I wouldn't know what to say either. Do you know if you have any common interests in the way of hobbies etc?
 
Member ID5 said:
Four years ago, as a lonely, divorced single mother of two young children, I had no idea that deciding to go on a date with a single father of his own two young children would change my life and turn into one of the best the relationships of my life, with someone who I completely fell in love with - like in the fairy tales – heart, body and soul. I genuinely do not think any man has loved me the way he does - fully and completely - and many of his actions in the last few years has confirmed this.

At the same time, it has been more emotionally challenging than I ever could have predicted., especially in the early days. This is because my DH, is/was a Widower - he had already loved and lost one great love of his life – not by choice - but due to her death. His world fell apart, he still loved her and planned to grow old with her and I have to live with the knowledge that he will always love and miss another woman. No matter how much we are in love and no matter how grateful he is to have a life with me - he did not choose to have to leave her.

As a consequence, there are specific challenges to dating and loving a widower and If you are reading this, you may be experiencing some of these emotional challenges yourself. You may feel guilty for being human and wanting to be your partner’s priority and focus now, you may sometimes resent having to share his heart with someone else – even if that person has passed away. You may have irrational, but completely normal, feelings of being in competition with a dead person, and struggle with feelings of being second best.

You may have had to adapt to having people in your life who were related to the late wife and do not want or accept that your partner has moved on and loves someone new - someone other than their daughter/sister/niece/friend. As a consequence of their own grief and anger over her death, you may be, or have been, excluded and treated with rudeness and unkindness; you may have to had to dig deep some days to remain polite, kind and graceful in their presence.

Then there is the Widower himself, who declared he was ready to move on within a few weeks or months of meeting you, but the first time you visit his home, you realise he still lives as if he is married to another woman – her photos are all over his home and her clothes are still hanging in his wardrobe - suddenly you feel like an imposter and the “other women” in some kind of affair - and , if you’ve already developed feelings for your widower, it’s a complete gut-punch to see photos of the man you love with another woman – even if she has passed away.

I’ve cycled through all of these emotions, yet at other times, just felt complete love and sadness and empathy for the man I love because of everything he’s been through.

I have found different ways to cope with everything so far, in the last four years, and I have received wise advice and support and this forum is a place where you can let some of the feelings and worries out, without upsetting anyone.

My own advice is that time really does help – widowers move on in stages – even if they will always have a place in their heart for their late wife – they gradually, if you’re lucky, make space for you – e.g. in practical ways – my widower put the photos away and eventually sold his home and made a fresh start in a new town with myself and our combined children.

I’ve also managed to lower my expectations and detach as far as my relationship with his late wife’s family and friends goes. I remain polite and kind, but I no longer want or expect more than this now. In the early days, I hurt a lot over the exclusion and rudeness and took it all very personal; but I know it has never been personal, they’d have been the same towards any woman he chose to love after their daughter, they’re still grieving and it is hurt people that hurt others.

I also make sure I surround myself with my own family and friends who I have known for years, and love me exactly as I am and will never compare me to a woman they never knew. Its also important to build up your own self-esteem because a lot of these feelings stem from our own insecurities and can surface no matter how many times our widowers show and say they love us.

The main way I manage my own thoughts and feelings is to change my mindset and listen to the wise advice of others – including one lady who is a divorcee, a widow and now married to a man who also lost his first wife. Her advice to myself was the following, I have paraphrased it. I hope it helps anyone reading this who needs to hear it:

“Our widowers don’t choose to lose their late wives, but they do choose to meet us, date us, fall in love with us and make a new life with us. They choose to open up their hearts to us and risk the chance of having their heartbroken all over again, and they risk it because they love us and feel we are worth the risk. They never see us a consolation prize or second best – they see us as a second chance at love and happiness and a new chapter in their life. Our widowers get to have a once in a lifetime type of love – twice.

Life is not a competition – we are not in competition with his late wife. There is no such thing as a perfect relationship or perfect person. He will have had is ups and downs with her, just as much as he does with us. Real life is the day in and day out. The arguing over whose turn it is to vacuum or empty the dishwasher, then doing it together because its quicker. It laughing over something funny that happened in our day. And having in -jokes. It’s not perfect because perfect doesn’t exist. They are our partners now, we go to bed with them, get up with them, they confide in us when they’re stressed and hug us. We are each other’s best friend now. if it wasn’t for my h I wouldn’t have loved again. I’m glad I took the risk to love him again. He is no consolation prize. I hit the jackpot when I met him”


Obviously, I am writing this from the perspective of someone who is four years in, and I am now married to him – but I hope this helps to show you things do get better over time and its normal to have some of the feelings we do. That it gets easier over time. I know there are some widowers who do show red flags and are still deeply entrenched in grief and you need to watch out for these and make sure they aren’t using you to escape their grief, rather than genuinely trying and ready to move on, but normally you have a gut instinct yourself over these things.

You won’t find any judgment here – I know many forums where we are judged for having any feelings at all because someone passed away and this should usurp any emotions or hurt we feel, but you will find genuine support and a listening ear here.
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I am in this situation been married 3 years now and my only advice would be don’t marry a widower at all. Specially if there are grown up kids. He runs to his in laws without me on invites and celebrates with his kids her birthday and anniversary and god knows what else while I live in the shadows. I’m not suppose to have feelings or even feel sad I’m suppose to tolerate all this because it comes with the territory. Better to stay single for both.
 
Junaki said:
I am in this situation been married 3 years now and my only advice would be don’t marry a widower at all. Specially if there are grown up kids. He runs to his in laws without me on invites and celebrates with his kids her birthday and anniversary and god knows what else while I live in the shadows. I’m not suppose to have feelings or even feel sad I’m suppose to tolerate all this because it comes with the territory. Better to stay single for both.
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I'm so sorry. I am sure situations vary but yes there will be one common denominator. I went on a date with a widower once, and it seemed clear to me from the outset that he was a bit "closed" and spent the whole date talking about his former wife. He maybe wasn't ready (it had been two years) but it did put me off dating widowers.

It can be very difficult after divorce or when no longer in the prime of youth, anyway. On my list of "don't dates" was "widowers, men who were only separated and going through a divorce", men who had never been married. And obviously not married men! It didn't leave many options!

I ended up with a man who had never been married and they are blooming hard work as well!
 
Hi,
I am sorry you are suffering.
It took me a few years to actually become a wife in my H head. He was divorced 6 yrs and 2 yrs separated, yet he did not distance himself from his ex. He thought it was normal to jump when she said jump. I was put through hell with 5 lawsuits, don’t even want to go there.
It’s in the past, but the damage to our relationship was quite devastating. His in-laws also sided with her and she turned everything against me. They wanted my money, as if I have to pay to be with H, she filed lawsuits against him and my EDD and yet they supported her until they were informed their their entire house with several apartments had a seal on it. It was based on lies, their lack of cooperation and help - they had all the documents, and so on. We resolved it, but years went by.
The only upside, if I can call it that, was that none of his friends liked his ex. They all thought she was a pathological liar and narcissistic playing the victim.

What I am trying to say, I may not be in the exact same situation, but the issues with stepchildren and the insanity of the situation is similar in many way.
I cannot attend any event where both parents are present, not that I want to now. I was taken for granted, but needed to play my part and than pretty much blown off.

I discussed the pain women go through in second marriage, be that with divorce or widowers.
After over 17 yrs together, he told me that he knows how crazy and painful it can be and my comment to that was “I know”.
He said I know you know, it was in the past, can we just move forward.
At least he said it out loud and admitted that his attitude was so messed up towards me.
He was saying something in terms, we survived this far, now let’s just move on and try and forget the bad stuff.

I didn’t ask for more, I know my husband and I know it could lead to a major blow up, because despite the fact that he acknowledged everything, I felt like screaming my head off, and that would only spoil everything.

The advice given to me when I was in that situation was detach.
I had no idea how to do that, I was hurt and my life was turning into hell, something I never signed up for.
It took practice to just say, I don’t have to deal with her crap, in your case their crap.

I did talk to him several times, but couldn’t come through. We fought a lot. I was so shell shocked that I couldn’t react calmly.

My marriage was on the verge of collapse many times, but somehow we always came back together. It was difficult and we both know it. He knows it.

It’s not the type of marriage I would advise. But H is a specific type of personality. On one hand he is very good, on the other he is easily manipulated and preferred to believe others, because he couldn’t admit to himself that his marriage wasn’t what he made it out to be. He told me all about the good times they had as a family and introduced Bfh as a good person. My stomach hurt the minute she spoke. I didn’t know how sick the whole situation was, but my body sure did.

I think you should talk to your H and tell him that you imagine marriage as an equal partnership and that you frankly don’t want to be put last and left alone, having others be rude to you. He needs to step up for you, protect you, make sure his family or her family know that he is married and expects people to treat you with respect.

Maybe you have said all this already and it didn’t make any difference.
You have to decide whether you want to be with this man. Can you talk to him, is he generally good to you?
I couldn’t tell my SSs to treat me nicer, I was just excluded. But I did tell my H. He knew what was going on and felt he couldn’t do anything about it. So he tried to shut me up.

Is your H aware of what is really going on, or does he feel it’s his right, no matter how much it all hurts? Can he make the situation more bearable? Is he willing to compromise and correct his behavior? Can you build new friendships? Can he tell his friends to cut you some slack?

My H had one interesting comment for what usually goes on in those situations. He said that women are just surrogates for the former wife and they should avoid men like that.
He meant himself included. If he finally saw the light for a brief moment after so many years together and was actually saying, you should have run away as fast as possible, I was an idiot.
He that added that women should leave and let the men feel what they lost.
Easy to say, we are still married and it’s not that easy to leave.
You try to have a good life with your partner, but only to realize that parallel situations/relationships are also kept and you are not a part of that world at all.

You have to decide if it’s worth it. And I surely know it’s painful and difficult.
I had to accept that H has his relationship with his sons and we barely have anything to talk about and that he is sorting through his relationship with his siblings on his own, as I have been completely pushed out and things were said that I will never get over in terms of ever having a relationship.

It’s ongoing and I will see. Sad to say that after so many years together. We are still discussing to what degree we will support each other financially or otherwise and I am still not certain that it won’t go sideways.
We had ups and downs, too many of them, but are connected on many levels and that has so far kept us together.

Hope some of this is useful to you, ignore the rest. It’s never easy, but if it’s good in general, than maybe you can reach an understanding and maybe you can put some distance between his relationships with people that don’t accept you and he can see it as, if you have no respect for my wife, that you have no respect for me.

If the friends are really true friends, they will put an effort into getting to know you. I have personal experience with that, I am the friend, be it due to divorce and remarriage and death, sadly.

If others feel they can run his life and your life with it, they are not friends. They are selfish people.
Also advice, be polite to his children, but set boundaries. They can be very mean and take all their frustrations out on you. Just pull away, don’t fight them, but let them know that they are not your top priority if they can’t be civil towards you. It’s doable. It hurts at first, but after about a year it stopped in my case.
When we got married his younger son was only 10. I really cared and wanted to make the most of it, but bfh made sure that they knew, I am not a part of the family. My MIL was also in agreement with her and it spread like a virus to everyone around.
Before she dies, I think it was two years before she passed, she actually apologized to me in front of H and told me she was misled and wrong about me.

H didn’t want to believe that his mother was the origin of all the negativity, I told him many times, he told me it’s not true. He didn’t want to see it. For him it wasn’t there.
I couldn’t breathe in her presence. I could feel the dislike towards me physically and just opted to leave early.

Sorry, I was long, but it brought back a few very unpleasant memories that I wish I could forget.

Regardless, a marriage can withstand a lot if the feelings are mutual and strong. And if you see that there is some genuine care for each other.
 
Junaki said:
I am in this situation been married 3 years now and my only advice would be don’t marry a widower at all. Specially if there are grown up kids. He runs to his in laws without me on invites and celebrates with his kids her birthday and anniversary and god knows what else while I live in the shadows. I’m not suppose to have feelings or even feel sad I’m suppose to tolerate all this because it comes with the territory. Better to stay single for both.
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That's so sad. I'm so sorry to read this. It sounds so exhausting for you and inconsiderate of your husband and the rest of the family.
You do have feelings and you should be able to have those feelings validated
 
Hello
I’m new here and have been reading through lots of posts. Such a helpful forum I’m so pleased I found it.
I have been dating a widower for 2yrs, he’s been widowed 3. I’ve never been married and have always dreamt I would be one day.
When we met he said he loved being married and would be open to it again. After 2yrs I thought I’d mention it, he’s never been great at talking about important things, he said we are still getting to know each other and doesn’t really want to get married, he even said he wasn’t bothered about getting married to his wife but she said she’d leave him if he didn’t, albeit 25yrs ago.
I suddenly feel a bit lost, I don’t want someone to marry me because they ‘have to’ I want them to want to… feeling a little used and almost led down the garden path a bit whilst I eased the grief? I don’t want to sound awful but it’s really thrown me.
 
Hello and welcome. I am so sorry. It sounds like the timing has gone adrift somehow. Maybe he wasn't quite "ready" when he met you and now is in a comfortable rut and feels better.

I would also feel a bit lost and upset. I don't know what to suggest, except possibly a trial separation. You don't want to feel used as a "stepping stone" for his recovery only for him to think this.

Maybe you could suggest you have some time apart to think. I know that's hard, but it sounds like carrying on as now and waiting would also be hard, and affect you.

I had a similar situation. My OH wasn't a widower but didn't feel free to marry because he was scared of losing his child - ie the ex would stop him seeing his child if he got married. She was extremely hostile to him having a new partner.

I went through some real grief when he said no. I decided to accept his reasons and it did affect me in our relationship for a while, but I stayed anyway. Things changed over time and while he would be happy to get married now, I don't particularly want to! It made me feel insecure and I like to keep some self protection now - both emotionally and financially. The difference is - I have been divorced before so have my own hang ups!

I think some space to think would be good though.
 
Thank you for your reply, it’s always good to hear what someone thinks who doesn’t know me, but knows the facts of you get me!
Yes, I think a little break might be a good idea. There’s enough to navigate dating a widower without doubting your worth.
Thank you for replying x
 
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