The question comes up a lot among widowed and those who are interested in dating them – how soon after the death of a spouse is it considered appropriate to begin dating/or pursuing?
It depends on who you ask.
Other widowed people like to trot out the tired cliché – “If you have to ask, it’s too soon.” It’s such a circular and unhelpful answer that I’d like to ban the phrase from the grief lexicon because given the minefield of rules and expectations surrounding widowhood, asking is the only way to clarify whether the signals you are receiving from your peers, family and friends are about your welfare or their self-interest.
This isn’t Gone With the Wind times. Scarlett knew the rules on widowed decorum because society at that time spelled it out. Mourning lasted for one year. You wore black. Attempted to look resolute and somber, smiling wanly as you sat out your “black-shirted” year on the wallflower bench. It may have sucked, but everyone was clear on the time frame and waited (while perhaps discreetly lining up suitors for once the deadline had passed).
Today? Not so clear. Whereas the newly broken up or divorced are free to take the field again as soon as they like, the widowed must navigate religious, family and community rules on the subject, and they vary. Sometimes a lot. Sometimes simultaneously.
So how soon is too soon?
The best answer I ever heard was something along the lines of “taking a date to the funeral, or hooking up in the crying room of the funeral home, is probably a faux pas, but otherwise, it’s up to you.”
And it is. Up to you.
Stereotypes say that men date sooner and remarry more quickly than women do, and there is statistical validity in this. Average time frame for widowers who remarry is about two – three years while for widows, it’s three to five years. But, having children or not, being younger or older and your general state of resiliency in the face of tragedy plays into this as well.
Younger widowed date and remarry sooner, and at higher rates, than older ones. Once a widow hits 65, the odds for remarriage fall off sharply.
Widowed with children date and remarry with ease or not depending on the age of the children, and believe it or not – adult children can be the worst to deal with when it comes to dating and remarriage with teenagers coming in an unsurprising second.
But when? At what magical point in the days, weeks or month after a spouse dies is dating permitted?
I signed up for eHarmony at just shy of six months out from my husband’s death. eHarmony wasn’t a good format fit for me, and I abandoned the effort after a few weeks and only meeting a police officer who looked like Lurch with a bad comb-over. Next I tried to cultivate a dating minded relationship with an industrial tech teacher I’d met through my master’s program that summer. He suddenly wanted to “just be friends” when he found out I had a child. Then it was back to online with Cupid.com, which I found out after the fact is a well-known “hook up mostly” site. The majority of men I met through it were varying degrees of depressing in their hunt for on-call girlfriends.
It was while taking a break from dating that Rob appeared. Our relationship began online, and as friends, but when it was clear to us that this could be more, we deliberately took that step, kept moving forward and haven’t looked back.
So it’s always technically an option to date. More widowed than will admit to it try to date at some point within the first year. Some people even begin dating with weeks or a few months. But there are those who wait out the so-called year deadline of propriety too, and others who buy wholeheartedly into the notion that they must “work at their grieving” to get it all out of their system before trying to move on in any aspect of their lives, dating included.
You can date whenever you like. In my opinion, and experience, when thinking about it begins to more of a logistical “how will I do it” rather than a daydream to chase away sadness, you are probably ready to look into it at the very least.
A couple of cautions:
1) Your family and friends will be at different stages of “ready for you to date” than you are. Taking their feelings into account is good, but don’t forget that they have their own lives to mind and should leave the minding of yours to you. If you weren’t living your life by committee prior to your spouse’s death, don’t start now. You can’t please everyone, and what other people – even your kids – think about you isn’t your business anyway. Generally, if you have good, supportive relationships with kids, extended family and friends, this will all work out and they will be happy and supportive. Be patient. Don’t be a doormat.
2) You are dating. Your kids are not. Try to avoid a revolving door of dates where underage kids are concerned. Only introduce them to people you feel you have a future with, and when you do, expect them to behave like well-brought up humans. Disrespect shouldn’t be tolerated.
If problems arise with adult children, remind them that they should spend their time and energy minding their own lives. You don’t tell them how to live or who to love and they don’t have the right to tell you anything either. Once you hand the keys of your dating life over to your kids, they won’t give them back, and do you really want to be that old man or woman, whose adult children talk to them as though they were small fluffy purse puppies?
3) Be honest about what you want out of dating with yourself and the people you date. If it’s just fun and sex, say so. If you are in the market for more – act like you are.
4) Which brings me to this: if you are in the habit of using your widowhood to manipulate situations and people, you aren’t ready to date. And don’t look so innocent. You know what I am talking about – playing the “widow card”. Widowed who are truly ready to date do not use their widowhood to control the pace of a relationship or coerce their girl/boyfriends into accepting unilateral terms of engagement. Playing the widow card in the relationship arena is a no-no. It’s manipulative and unfair, and frankly, widowed who do this are the worst kinds of assholes.
Finally, it’s okay not to date. Or even ever want to. Some widowed find contentment and even a lot of joy in being single and unattached. If the idea of dating makes you nauseous, or seems like something best put up on a shelf for the time being, there’s nothing wrong with that.
The point is that the days of donning mourning for public displays of grieving for specific periods of time are long over. Anyone who is spouting rules and timelines at you has an ulterior agenda, and you are within your rights to question them and it.
It’s your life and only you know what’s best. Even if you aren’t sure, meeting a guy or gal for coffee never hurt anybody, and enjoying the occasional Starbuck’s isn’t a commitment to anything.
Related articles
- Dating A Widower by Abel Keogh (anniegirl1138.com)
- How Do You Know If a Widower Is In Love With You (anniegirl1138.com)
- Just because I’m a widow; doesn’t mean I can’t be happy anymore. WORLD WIDOW WOMENS DAY (ispeakab.wordpress.com)
- ‘Where You Left Me’: 9/11 widow regains ability to love (today.msnbc.msn.com)
my father in law died in March, and my mother in law was involved with (I use that term loosely, as no one knows who it was but she confided that there “was someone”) a man since his death. And I don’t know why she didn’t find someone sooner. Like 15 years ago. Kidding, kidding. Sort of. They were married 35 years. He wasn’t a bad guy, but I would have never been his wife. Or even his friend.
I’d love to say I miss him, but I don’t. I miss his presence in my child’s life, but that’s about it. He was sort of a pain in the ass.
Wow. That feels good to get out.
You’re right, everyone is on their own timetable about the dating thing. When it’s right it’s right. And not a minute sooner
Exactly. Whatever works. Trouble is that ppl feel pressured one way or the other.
Hard to cop to not missing someone -especially when they are dead. Being dead elevates even the worst person to vaguely untouchable heights.
It’s entirely up to you. Blessings!
Indeed. Thanks for commenting.
Annie, you are at your honest and unabashed best in this piece. I couldn’t have said it any better…
Thanks!
Deborah
Thank you.
I love this. I appreciate your honest and straight forward discussion about dating. I did a brief stint at dating, then decided to take a break. I’m still open to it, but realized that until someone special comes around I was not interested in putting too much energy into it. Now I am feeling ready to get back out there, but more for fun and the occasional romp.
Knowing yourself and what you want/need is so important. I think in the widow culture we are encouraged to pay more attention to the sadness than to our real, normal need to seek out ppl and activities that make us happy.
Observing other people’s attitudes and assumptions about this issue has been really fascinating for me in a sort of anthropological way. Generally, it seemed that around a year was when people started watching me for signs of dating–not in a negative or judgmental sense, but with leading questions and knowing little smiles. Between two and four years they started asking “don’t you want to find someone?” or flat out telling me that I needed to (or in a couple of memorable cases, passing that message on from their mother/auntie/grandma/whoever), and between four and five years they sort of seemed to give up on me as a lost cause. Pretty much, I think it’s safe to say that no matter how soon or late you date, someone is going to have an opinion about it, so you might as well do what you want.
Exactly. I got dating questions even before my LH died b/c he was vegetative and I’d been alone really for over two years when he did die. It’s natural for people to wonder and worry or just be noisy where they don’t belong.
I always knew I would date and probably remarry if the right person came along. I’d been single long enough before my first marriage that I knew I could take care of myself and that single was not some feminist manifesto that I needed to revisit in order to “know myself”. Not that some women don’t have that as an issue, I just think that anymore young widows grew up in an age where independence and career and stuff was a given. It’s just not the same as what older women who didn’t grow up in the shadow of the Women’s Movement have to face.
Society though has such a straight-jacket set of notions about grieving and widow behavior that seems very Victorian on one hand and steeped in 12 step culture on the other. You aren’t going to win, so you might as well forge your own path and not worry about it.
Great advice, as usual. It seems that widowers (don’t know about widows) usually get involved in comitted relationsihps long before they’re ready to emotionally commit to someone. That’s why it’s important to know how they’re feeling inside when they start dating again. Nothing wrong with just spending time with someone so long as you set expectations.
Exactly. Though, given what I know about men, I think that most do realize that they are playing a bit of a disingenuous game. They know that there are women who won’t involved themselves seriously or even sexually unless there is a commitment, so they play along with it to get the companionship (and by companionship, I mean sex) that they want without pondering the consequences too deeply (or at all).
And widows do this too. I can’t even count the number of posts I read on Ye Olde Widow Board where women were dating but not really “feeling it” and were told by other widows that it was perfectly okay to do this AND to expect the new SO to be okay with the arrangement (and the commitment to grief over moving on).
Trouble is, in my experience, that grief is treated either as life-long illness or it’s seen as something that can be worked through to the point of it vanishing. Neither is true. This leaves widowed folk struggling in new relationships and their new partners stuffing their needs and feelings. Not a recipe for success. That’s why, I think, it’s important to open your mouth and state your needs for both parties. It heads off misunderstanding which leads to hurt feelings or worse.
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“Playing the widow card in the relationship arena is a no-no. It’s manipulative and unfair, and frankly, widowed who do this are the worst kinds of assholes.” Never a truer word was spoken. I have just had my heart broken by someone who had started having sex with their next door neighbour THREE DAYS after her husband died and who was in that relationship when we met. All unbeknown to me of course, and hidden by the “friends who set us up” until after we broke up when the truth comes out.
From someone who considers themselves a kind, considerate person I would offer the following advice to widows thinking of dating again.
(1) Get your house in order (literally) – If your house is still a shrine to your late husband with holiday, wedding and family photos everywhere that is not fair. Have a few special photos (after all, he’s not a secret and a decdent man will respect your previous love) but leave the rest for a memory box.
(2) Address your late husband and your relationship but leave the reminiscing to with your friends. The new person in your life wants to be your future not be trapped in your past. Try and not talk about him too often.
(3) Be honest about your past relationship. Acknowledge his flaws as well as good points – noone can compete with a saint. A good line is “You and XXXX are different people. I loved him and of course I miss him from time to time but I your are my future and I love you and you have your own unique qualities that XXXX didn’t have”
(4) Get your house in order emotionally. If you don’t have a plan for your life and are waiting for a guy to make you happy you are not ready
(5) If you have children, DEMAND (away from you) that you are shown respect. You are not a guest in their life. Defend your new partner against rude behaviour or even worse a child that simply refuses to acknowledge you in any meaningful way. Defend your new partner in front of your child in such instances and talk it over later. Allow your new partner to have a say in house rules – do not say “XXXX and I decided that this was how we would approach this” Discuss issues and alllow your new partner rights – he should not be a spectator in his own life.
(6) Finally, and most importantly, if you realise you are not ready and cannot cope with the new relationship, BE HONEST and tell your new partner, don’t make keep him there for comfort whilst playing emotional cat and mosue. Don’t play the Widow Card – be an adult and explain gently and kindly that you think the world of that person but you are simply not ready.
Hope the above does not sound bitter….
No, not bitter, and you are entitled to feel however you feel in the aftermath of a break-up.
I read widow blogs here and there, and run across widowed who are dating but still living, and wanting to be treated, as widows. You really have to resolve to be just a man or woman when you decide to date again. You’ll always be someone who was widowed once” but you have to leave the active state of it behind and allow the title to be just one of many on your life’s resume.
My advice to those dating widowed is don’t play counselor and don’t let your new bf or gf’s tragedy colour the way you react to things. If you wouldn’t tolerate it from someone else, don’t tolerate it from them. People make the mistake of thinking that if they put their feelings second that somehow they will end up first in the widowed partner’s eyes and affection. It should never be a competition.
I’m sorry you had a bad experience. Thanks for commenting.
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