The trouble with people reading your blog is that you lose it as an outlet for meaningful thought and feeling processing. It becomes a venue for others as they search for
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information, entertainment and a place to share their own musings.
And I am not complaining. There was a time when few people even stumbled across this blog let alone came in search of it. Progress has its drawbacks as well as its perks.
Sometimes, however, I still feel the need to mindlessly run thither and yon across the keyboard, qwertying my way back to a more zen place.
Lately, the search terms have tipped decidedly in favor of widower dating queries. They read like lamentations. Desperate pleas for any scrap of insight, inspiration or tool to help the googler make sense of what is more likely fairly obvious but they just aren’t ready to accept.
Sometimes people who’ve been widowed are dating even though they aren’t ready, and sometimes widowed daters are just dating without any intent beyound spending a few hours here and there, sharing good times and possibly swapping bodily fluids.
The problem? Is the dead body in the room. The single and the divorced, who have only their perceptions of dating to work with, mistakenly place too much emphasis on the idea that widowed people are emotionally shell-shocked and that any hesitation, game playing or even hurtful behavior is somehow mitigated by this common grief myth.
The best thing a person dating a widow/er can do is ignore that fact. The widow thing. Just expect the same courteous, interested and emotionally genuine behavior that one expects of everyone they date. Be upfront about how you feel, what you are looking for and where your personal “crap” lines are draw. Remember too that dating is about getting to know someone not fixing them. Falling in love with someone’s potential is stupid regardless. A widowed man may seem like a great catch because he was a terrific husband to someone who is dead and can’t actually attest to the veracity of that anymore, but if he is a crappy boyfriend, odds are he wasn’t all that great of a husband either.
But here’s something I have noticed. Women tend to fill in the gaping holes in a relationship with narratives they will pull from the thin air if needs be but more often are variations on past relationships they have had with other men.
Don’t do that.
And here’s why. Heartbreak might have common denominators but the most basic fact of being widowed is that someone died on you. Literally died. A person with whom you plighted your troth, shared with more intimately than anyone you’ve ever known so far. You had sex with this now dead person. Possibly made babies with them. They took all your secrets with them when they left. You will not see them again across a room or when you swap children on weekends or inadvertently run into them when they are out to dinner with their new love. They are dead. The dead molder or are scattered to the wind or sit like knick knacks on a mantle.
Relationships end. Painfully. The lingering can be bitter, filled with recriminations, animosity and torturing self-doubt. But relationships, though coupled with people, are not people. You do not go to the morgue to identify a dead relationship any more than you hold its hand while it sucks for its last breaths like a fish on dry dock. It’s heartbeat doesn’t gallop like a herd of frightened horses beneath your fingertips before fluttering to stillness like a butterfly smashed up against the windshield of a car at highway speeds.
The flotsam of a relationship is divided up with each partner taking his/her half. Dead people are not very helpful cleaning out closets, basements or alerting the post office to their change of address.
As much as you might be tempted to overlay your break up experiences onto your widowed boyfriend, it will be an ill fit, resulting in continued misunderstanding and frustration. And it’s the little frustrations that sink budding love and undermine existing love.
Here is what matters:
- People who love you show you that love consistently through their actions
- Falling in love with someone’s potential is like having an affair with your own reflection.
- Being in love with “being in love” leads to disappointment and frustration for both parties.
- Everyone comes with a past. Fixate on it and be miserable or live in the now and build a future.
- While you can impress someone with your patience and understanding, they won’t necessarily grow to love you for it.
- Make sure you are over your own issues before assuming your problems stem from your mate’s “issues”.
Love is actually pretty simple, but it’s the most simple concepts that are the hardest to grasp, or so I learned during the years I spent teaching 7th graders. Abel Keogh recently wrote a piece about trusting your gut. Love is love. It feels right and gets better over time because even the issues that come up as relationships progress become a part of the growth rather than detours or roadblocks that must be continually negotiated . Doubts that become nags are trying to tell you something you need to know. Don’t rationalize them away. Don’t assume that the issues that keep or kept you from moving on after your last relationship can help you understand his or that patience is actually an admirable virtue where romance is concerned.*
He loves you when he shows you day in and out without time-outs.
*I have to admit a certain curiosity about the whole “be patient with me/I need more time” excuse that my gender so willingly accepts and would love to meet the woman who turns it around and says “I could use a bit more patience as I learn to put up with your need to keep your late wife’s toothbrush and a bit more one on one time dating that isn’t a dolled up booty call.” But I am unlikely to ever find her.
Related articles
- Dating While Widowed: How Soon Is Too Soon (anniegirl1138.com)
- How Do You Know If a Widower Is In Love With You (anniegirl1138.com)
- Widowhood is Not Divorce (anniegirl1138.com)
- Art of Dating (belledate.wordpress.com)
anniegirl1138 
I get searched more than directly questioned and I often wish I knew what prompted a search that says “how do I know if a widower loves me?” because if you are asking Google, you might as well consult The Magic 8 Ball.
It saddens me to know there are women out there who are with men intimately and don’t know if they are loved.
And I agree with you. Just because we have moved on doesn’t mean we were lucky or had some special dispensation from the Fates that others weren’t granted. Relationships always have issues – whether they are big/small/manageable or insurmountable depends on the way they are approached and dealt with.
Because I am dense this way, I had not even considered the fact that you likely get a pile of emails on this subject. Wow. Patience indeed.
I could not agree more with your post. Maybe some would say, “oh, it is easy for you to agree, your relationship with a W worked out and turned into marriage and a baby.”. I actually had someone tell me that once. The insult implied that I must have had an “easy” W aside, no, I don’t agree with this because I happened to find a W who was Prince Charming. I agree because I found my Prince Charming, and he happened to be a W.
His loss was NEVER the central focal point of our relationship. I was not asked to be patient while he finished some undefined grieving “process.”. He wanted me, he came after me, he won me. That is how it is supposed to go, W or single or divorcee or whatever breed you fall for. Yes, we had some LW/W issues we had to work through. But they got worked through by us together …he did not simply expect me to put them on the coffee table and keep them dusted.
Better than nothing is not good enough. If I ever write a book, this will be its title. Better than nothing is not good enough.
Your list of “Here’s what matters” is pretty universal… particularly love the “falling in love with someone’s potential…” nugget. How easy it is to misinterpret the quiet ones (male/female). So easy to project our own ‘stuff’ onto that quiet, blank slate…
Universality is the key and so easily kicked to the curb when what we want crashes headlong into reality.
Great post. I found through my own experience, the importance of accepting that everyone has unique ways of dealing with issues and everyone has a right to that difference. We may or may not be talking about the same type of situation but in that, we cannot assume them to be resolved on the same level or in the same way. When a relationship dies we go through a process but when a person dies there is a finality that cannot be compared alongside to just moving on. Although never widowed, I have had relationships (and marriages) end and can relate to the line about dividing up the remnants of a failed relationship. The comparison you make – THAT is what we have to accept as not comparable by any means; although there is an ending, it is not the same. Points you make in “here’s what matters” – THOSE are universal to love and relationships – great guideposts to looking at yourself before considering partnering with another. It’s too bad that time is the teacher of these qualities for it seems we must experience first before we can make amends to ourselves.
Time is the teacher, indeed. It’s the rare person who can simply accept the lessons someone else learned the hard way.