Dating While Widowed: Staying Present in a New Relationship


Marriage Day

Marriage Day (Photo credit: Fikra)

I read a lot about widowed in new relationships and the push/pull that goes on between the new love and the dead love. That might sound a little odd. Dead people really haven’t anything to say about the moving on business of their still live spouses.
Which is as it should be, really. But a surprising number of widowed who are just dating or newly involved in relationships of a serious nature seem to feel that they owe some sort of respect and continuing vigilance to their departed love.

I won’t say that when embarking on new relationships isn’t a trigger for occasional tugs backward on the heart-strings. It is a decidedly odd feeling to date again when you never really had an inkling that you would ever need to step back into that arena again in your lifetime.

Divorced and long time singles tend to scoff but most widowed folk I know really never contemplated a life without their deceased partner. When you are settled in a relationship, for the most part, you don’t dream of wandering among the single again in a predatory fashion. Most widowed were – faults and all – fairly content to stay with and work on their marriages, so it is a shock to their systems to be thrust back into the dating world. There is push/pull between resenting it and allowing oneself to be caught up in the excitement and pursuit of new love and new future.

Some work through this rather quickly. It helps if they don’t have extended family or friends or recalcitrant children haranguing them, but even those who do eventually find their inner back bone and assert their right to live their lives as suits them best.

However, there are some people who go back and forth and the reasons for this are as individual as the widowed themselves, but some of the bigger ones are as follows:

1) Guilt – Widowed feel guilty moving on and being happy with someone else. They just don’t see how this can be and it torments them and consequently their new partners. It’s partly a survivor thing. Why me? Why her/him? Why us? How unfair! Blah. Blah.

It’s also likely a personality thing. Some of us are just very dramatic. if late spouses could come back and chat, they’d likely have more than a few words to impart to new partners about the award-winning drama tendencies of their spouses, so my opinion is that if a widowed is someone who can’t seem to not get caught up in the melodrama of anniversaries and looking for sympathy on Facebook, it’s probably something that won’t change. It’s just who they are. They’ve bought into the idea of the ghostly threesome, aided and abetted by like-minded friends and relatives, and the new love can learn to put up with this or move on him/herself.

2) Benefits – Some widowed discover that there are benefits to the widow status that they simply don’t want to give up. If they are “fortunate”, they might have had a support network that encourages them to stay in the comfy cocoon of widowdom. Widows make new friends among their widowed peers, join groups, – real and virtual, blog, start foundations, write books (that sometimes sell, make them quasi-famous and become movies) or simply discover a new life’s calling. These are all hard, even incredibly difficult – to walk away from, even if the reward is a new relationship. And again, a new partner might have to make a choice between finding a way to live with someone who loves widowhood as much as he/she loves the new love, or walking away.

3) ambivalence – Despite the emphasis our culture (and I am talking first world here) places on the individual and the awesomeness of being independent and on our own, the truth is that we still hold coupledom as the holy grail or existence. Some widowed discover that being single is not hell on earth. They enjoy relationships and even love again, but they are not interested in co-mingling on a marriage minded level again. Signals are mixed. Feelings are hurt. Mostly because the widowed person can’t/won’t be clear about what they really want. Love and companionship but not marriage. In this case, it is important for all parties to be honest, recognize that everyone’s needs are valid but that time/patience isn’t going to change anything and that it is sometimes better for the commitment minded to move on.

So what’s with the title “staying present”?

If you are in a relationship, whether you are marriage minded or not, it’s imperative to be with your new love when you are with your new love. Not mixing sadness, backward glancing and any other griefy- ness with the rather serious business of showing your new love that they are front and center. And if they aren’t always front and center, you should be honest about it so this person can move on to someone who will value them more than you do.

But I do value and love my new boy/girlfriend, you say. Indignantly.

Not if, in my opinion, you are expecting them to be okay while you moan, groan and weep over your late spouse, or if you are constantly praising and glorifying said dead spouse right in the face of new love.

If you had to listen to your mate sing arias to their last partner, how would it make you feel? Especially if this was the norm rather than the rare, rare exception.

But I only blog, you say. Or I only volunteer for hospice, on messages boards or dead spouse only comes up when I promote the book or foundation I started in his/her name.

Think about. How would you feel if you were the one in your new love’s place. Probably not someone who’s been widowed (although even fellow widowed can lose patience with this) and who really takes to heart all the effusive praise heaped on the dead one and the previous relationship? Even the most self-actualized person is – over time – going to start to feel like warmed over shit on burnt toast. It’s human nature to want to be the most important person to the person you love. You want that yourself, right? So why aren’t you giving this to someone you say you care about and love – maybe even want (or have) a future with?

Looking back, should be, something that becomes occasional and private. If it is in the face of your new love/spouse, you need to be pretty damned sure that he/she is 100% okay with this and not merely tolerating it and seething silently. Silent sucking up always erupts at some point and the fissures never really heal over.

Despite the fact that we are living through an era in which widowhood is again romantic, glamorous and glorified, don’t buy in to the point where you are cutting off  – one by one – the facial appendages of your new relationships. If you must “widow”, don’t expect your husband/wife/boy or girlfriend to stoically support you. Widowhood and it’s side hobbies are not couple activities. Know that you are being unreasonable and even an asshole to ask that much from your new partner and relationship. Don’t make a widowhood widow out of them.

Obama, Romney or Brain Munching Zombies


Soccer Mom Zombie

Soccer Mom Zombie (Photo credit: juco)

Apparently three scenarios exist for the Tuesday POTUS election in the States.

Obama wins comfortably while Red Staters gnash teeth, rend clothing before donning sackcloth and rubbing themselves in ash to sit shiva for the next four years.

Or Romney rejoices in the bounty of a landslide courtesy of his God who believes in clean living and underwear while Blue Staters learn the sad truth – that Canada really doesn’t want them.

Or finally, the race runs to the wire. Recounting and lawyering-up follow with the nation bracing for Armageddon, which can only be realistically followed up with a zombie apocalypse.

Seriously not a great time to be an American regardless but the mood ranges from weeping toddlers who wonder who this Bronco Bama is and why he and Mitt don’t just get along to Liberals and Conservatives, ironically, accusing each other of being incapable to carry on a discourse about the political direction of the country without resorting to harsh meme’ing and snarky tweets and FB status updates.

Can’t we all just get along, indeed.

I’ve run the gamut on this election from Obama to … well. not Romney ever … but to vaguely considering the Libertarians and the Green Party and ultimately concluding that for a change, I am going to worry about my own interests and simply sit this one out and concentrate on becoming a Canadian (because I actually have that option, living here, being a legal resident and married to one.)

So why worry about it?

For the obvious reason. The United States is due south. Running the entire length of our border. And a bat shit crazy with sore loserness America is a bad neighbor at best and a potentially encroaching threat to Canadian stability and freedom at worst if the folks down there can’t get their shit together and behave like the adults so many of them pose as on FB.

If one is inclined to go with that fact based, statistical analysis of Nate Silver, it’s time to take a Xanax or five (most people I know on FB carry a veritable pharmacy in their handbags of all places) and trust that the process works.

The process. You know the process, right? Both sides present their slightly to completely altered and deliberately misleading interpretations of events, the future and themselves to the public for two years until John and Jane Q are moved to finally give up their land lines and only watch Netflix to avoid them. And then they vote.

Endlessly they vote. For weeks and weeks.

Does the idea of an election day have no meaning anymore? According to the media, they’ve been lining up to vote down there since early last week despite the fact that, officially, the election is held on the first Tuesday of November.

If you aren’t a Nate Silver fan, however, let me point you to Michael Barone, who thinks that Romney wins it by a good margin. Which doesn’t mean anything really though it gave Andrew Sullivan a moment or two of pause because Barone, “knows every inch of every district in a way few others do; he’s deeply knowledgeable about the electoral process”, which muddies waters already quite brown with a giddy Media crowing, “it’s a tie! omg, it’s an effing tie!? how did we get so lucky? 2009 was historical and now a fricking tie!! praise be!”

Okay, they might not have said all of that, but they aren’t the tiniest bit sorry to promote the idea that their guy, Barack, who they have propped and protected since they fell in deep like with him during the Democratic Primaries back in 2008, could possibly lose. Not that they are fine with this, but it’s just better tv. You understand.

And we do, don’t we?

A comfy win is dull but a tie that might end in brains being eaten is entertainment, and at the end of the day, isn’t that what an election cycle every two years that lasts for a solid two years is about?

On Tuesday someone will win the POTUS and someone will lose, and basically nothing about the events impatiently waiting to play out between the acceptance speech proclaiming vindication of one or the other great vision for America and the new year will be affected in any tangible way. The world at large will shrug along with Atlas and continue to wonder how exactly the US got to be a great superpower and how much longer will they have to be suffered.

And there probably won’t be zombies, which is too bad because that would make it more interesting than it’s likely to be.

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alberta summer landscape

alberta summer landscape (Photo credit: Jodene)

Yesterday I renewed my driver’s license. I have been here that long. Alberta doesn’t have an equivalent to the DMV offices down in the States. The provinces farm out as many petty bureaucratic tasks as possible to private contractors, so in The Fort, we renew our driver’s licenses at an insurer’s, which allows handles marriage and vehicle licenses in addition to registration for provincial health cards and voting.

Depending on the time of the month and the time of day, wait times range from 5 or ten minutes to literally seconds. I walked in and right up to a woman behind the counter who I vaguely know because her son goes to Dee’s school and they have been in the same class on and off since kindergarten.

She took the notification I was mailed, scanned it, asked me if my height and weight were roughly the same – so I lied about the weight part, which is a bit more now, had me sign twice and took my money. Next came the non-smiling photo in which I look grim but on a good hair day and I walked out with a temporary license and the assurance that within a week or so my new license would appear by post.

Five or six minutes – tops. Couldn’t help but remember my last trip to the DMV in Des Moines, which I had to strategically plan for minimum time suckage and it still took over 30 minutes and required me to pass through security. Everything even remotely governmentally related means passing the inspection of this or that rent a cop. Aside from the passport office, I have yet to need to run a security gauntlet for anything here in Canada. Even then, the security guards were jovial types who allowed Dee to go inside and wave to her Dad as he waited to renew his passport last spring.

As the time comes closer for me to take my citizenship test and acquire Canadian status for Dee and myself, it’s little things like these that reinforce for me that I am more home than I ever was in the Midwest state where I was born in the U.S.

While the Roman circus that is a POTUS election cycle drives the bigger discounts – among that Dee and I have more civil rights here than we did there – the smaller things have bigger impact.

Two weeks ago, our ward councillor threw an open house for those of us who live on the outer edges of our county. Rob and I attended, chatted with him and though it is obvious that he is an ambitious young guy who undoubtedly has a future on the larger provincial stage, it was also clear that he knew our area, its issues and that he wanted us to come to him when we need help navigating the bureaucracy.

Back in Iowa, whether it was Dubuque or Des Moines, ordinary people aren’t afforded access to those that make or influence the rules even at the most local level, which is where it matters most of all. Access comes with status that is acquired mostly by birth but also by wealth and network. Our councilor owns businesses where he can be found and will take the time to talk with you (and take notes while he is doing it). He answers emails personally. He usually knows about the issue before you bring it up.

Even at the provincial level, our MLA representative replies promptly to emails and follows up. I have even gotten prompt replies from our MP’s (Member of Parliament) office offering advice and assistance.

Granted, Canada is smaller and Alberta is smaller still, and maybe that’s some of it, but there is a commitment to the importance of citizens that I never witnessed in the land of my birth.

“You should have been born here,” Rob said once. “Meeting me just set the universe right in that respect for you.”

It’s difficult though to disengage from the U.S. Just stop caring about what a cess pool Congress has become and how corrupted the office of the Presidency is after Bush and now Obama.

There was an article in a UK paper this week discussing the fact that while the rest of world realizes that whoever the POTUS is, he’s nearly powerless to affect matters in his own country let alone the world (unless it is through military meddling), most Americans labor under the delusion that they and their government is a vital player and that other countries care deeply about the outcome of this election. The truth though is that while they think that Obama might be a slightly better choice, nothing catastrophic will happen if it ends up being Romney.

My concern is mainly for the state of freedom, which is losing ground daily down there. People I know, well and only virtually, vehemently believe that the American way is the freest and bestest of anywhere but it’s not. And that they don’t know this … is a bit maddening.

I want to tell people “emigrate!”. If you are young(ish) and have skills, there are countries aplenty that will welcome you. Places where health care is a healthy mix of government control and private enterprise. Privacy is a right worth prizing above all other concerns. The common good is just taken as a given. Court systems routinely side with the people in matter of government over-reach. Your vote actually counts even if you don’t live in a “swing state”.

I have to work on the letting go, but someday I plan to be just as bemused by Americans and their elections as any other Canadian. It’s a process.