Dating While Widowed: On Giving Advice


Dear Prudence

Dear Prudence (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Dear Prudence over at The Slate received an email from a widower recently asking for insight into an issue he has with this girlfriend. Seems the girlfriend, in the opinion of the widower, is “touchy” about anything to do with his late wife and the fact that he is close to his in-laws.

Nothing surprising about that. If you haven’t been widowed yourself, it’s hard to wrap your mind around the fact that widowed folk really don’t go through the same separation process that one does when a relationship ends in a mutual or acrimonious break-up or when a marriage ends in divorce. Different end games result in different emotional processes.

Prudence aka Emily Yoffe is the second wife of a man who was widowed young. She’s written a rather touching essay on the subject and occasionally outs herself and him in her advice giving. That said, her experience hasn’t made her particularly sensitive to the plight of the widowed. You can’t really be a vicarious widowed person even if your contact with a widowed is rather intimate, so her advice veers off into the cliché, the assumption and the insensitive more often than not when anything widowed comes up.

A person could get speculative here. Perhaps her marriage has experienced more than a few unsettling moments due to her husband’s widowhood and advice seekers on the topic get to bear the brunt that her husband doesn’t. But assuming gets a person into trouble as does reading between lines. Let’s not go there.

Instead, the focus should be on the term “insecure”. Prudie/Emily replied that she felt the girlfriend in this widower dating scenario was simply being insecure and that he need only reassure her before laying down the facts that 1) he had a past and that past includes a deceased wife for whom he will always have feelings though these feelings didn’t preclude him from loving her just as much and 2) his in-laws were his family – get over it.

The insecure wife/girlfriend trope is not exclusive to widowed dating scenarios. It’s a rather effective way to disarm women who have issues within a relationship that their partners simply don’t want to admit are issues that need to be discussed and dealt with in a mutually agreeable manner.

Labeling a woman “insecure” is the first step in making her feelings irrelevant by labeling them irrational. It’s a great way to win any disagreement provided you are totally okay with stomping your opponent into the mud by using such a disingenuous douchebag method.

So why am I talking about advice giving?

It’s easy to give advice. Advice is like opinions, which as we all know everyone has – just like they have assholes.

And it’s also quite easy to fall into the trap of believing that because you’ve experienced something, you are automatically an expert and therefore qualified.

I am not an expert. Nor do I play one on the Internet.

I’ve been widowed. I’ve dated in the aftermath. I’ve remarried.

If one were looking for a bit of wisdom on the topic of successful dating, relationships, remarriage and marriage to a widower, I would be a safer bet than someone who hasn’t managed any of those things or who isn’t married to a man who was widowed himself. However, I have only my individual experiences to draw from and I am not you. Therefore anything I might say needs to be weighed heavily against your own reality.

Prudie is my example of this. She’s married to a man who was widowed, and yet she mostly gives sketchy to bad advice on the subject of widowhood and relationships in the aftermath. Her experience hasn’t translated into much of anything worth seeking out or following.

Of late, I’ve had emails from widowed and comments from those dating and I have tried to reply as best I could. I really do reply to all emails and comments because I know what it is like to have questions and no one to ask. Or to ask and have no one reply or reply in less than helpful ways.

But I am firm believer in weighing everything. There are blogs, books, message boards, Facebook groups and even conventions. All well-meaning but of varying degrees of useful. Certainly there are no experts. Just people with experiences to share and who are no more qualified than you are to solve the issues in your life.

I have written quite a bit on dating, grief and moving on. All based on my experience. Just the opinions of one “asshole”. If there is something that you can take from these writings and put to good use, wonderful. I am glad to have helped.

But there is no one size fits all.

When I was teaching middle school, I would run across this or that student who really didn’t mesh with my teaching style. The best solution was always to find a teacher who did. My seventh grade English teaching partner and I probably traded two or three kids a school year based on our philosophy that for every student there is a teacher – somewhere.

It’s good to shop around. I am flattered and humbled by the blog traffic I generate on widow dating. My husband thinks I should write a book – or at least blog more often -, but I am not a fan of the self-help genre, and I don’t write it for the same reason I don’t write about my first husband’s illness and death. It feels wrong to make money off it. That’s a personal thing rather than a judgement. I admire people who can write and do real good rather than simply exploit an issue for personal gain or fame. Those people do exist. I just question the idea of being one of them myself. It’s too easy to get full of yourself and I am as human as anyone.

So when surfing about, shopping at Amazon or joining this or that group, be careful. Be a critical thinker. And remember that you really do know yourself best. Take and apply only that which fits you and your situation.

I don’t know what ultimately happened to the man who wrote Prudie. Hopefully he did not approach his girlfriend from the stance of “I know you are insecure, dearest, but here is why you are wrong …”.  Don’t be that guy. And don’t worry so much. Whatever issues has brought you here in search of answers are likely as not fixable with a little bit of thought, open honest discussion and taking a few good deep breaths. The yoga teacher in me feels we should just all breathe more because all things pass. You are going to be okay.

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On Not Voting for Obama This Time


Vote Oregon!

Vote Oregon! (Photo credit: jugbo)

I should actually say that I am not voting period in the 2012 POTUS race. I did in 2008 though I declined to vote at the state level and didn’t vote at all in the 2010 midterm.

Part of the reason is that I am committed to the immigrant thing here in Canada. My ancestors left their homes in Ireland and Sweden and became United States citizens first and last and that is the right way to do it. It’s the Christian bible, I think, that says one can’t serve two masters and that is about right too.

Though the U.S. doesn’t have an official yea or nay on the dual citizenship thing, it is clear about having first dibs and could care less if a person has chosen to be or was previously a citizen of another country.

This policy has vague and ugly undertones that imply indentured servitude at best and ownership in pre-Civil War Mississippi plantation sort of way that grates against my entitlement attitudes regarding personal liberty.

And so, for this reason, first and foremost, I am abstaining from casting a ballot. I’ve just come to the realization that I am a Canadian though not quite in fact yet, it’s inevitable.

The other reason is that like many others who voted for Obama in 2008, I don’t think much of his effort, the direction of his policies on civil liberty, financial regulation or foreign policy. I don’t think he has any idea of what to do about the economy that isn’t tired and already a proven failure. And the whole secret warring thing and the way he whole-heartedly endorsed all the loathsome police state policies of the Bush II era makes my skin crawl.

Although, I have to admit, the guy gives a good speech.

We were in Iowa when he was bus stopping through the center and northeast. In fact, we got re-routed in Waterloo when his motorcade came through and the local police blocked off our exit strategy while we were stopped for dinner.

There were no more tickets available for his appearance in Dubuque the next day, but we watched him on the local television station.

Dee sat on Rob’s lap and occasionally asked him, “Is that true, Dad?”

And he would explain, “Sorta”. Then give her the actual facts.

At one point my 11-year-old nephew walked into the living room, saw Obama and announced, “I will NOT listen to that man!” and stomped off in the kind of huff only a preteen can manage with any semblance of dignity.

His mother, DNOS, explained later that N2 listens to Rush Limbaugh in the afternoons when he gets home from school. Like his father, he is quite the conservative.

In addition to addressing the misinformation issues for my daughter, I had to correct some of the misleading details of the “scare the old people about their entitlements” with Mom and my Auntie.

“Nothing will affect you guys,” I said. “All the reform is directed at people under 55 whether it’s the Democrats or the Republicans.”

“Well, I don’t know who to vote for,” Mom said.

“Dad would have voted for Ron Paul,” I pointed out. “You can always just write him in and not vote for either Obama or Romney.”

“I can do that?” she was genuinely amazed and seemed a bit relieved.

She didn’t vote the last time. Dad had just died and the election came and went pretty much unnoticed by her.

I used to rail at my Dad for “throwing his vote away”. I don’t think he voted for anyone but 3rd party candidates since Reagan. He was hardcore Republican prior to Bush I. He hated the senior Bush. Thought he was shifty and power-hungry.

“Can’t trust a man who headed up the CIA,” was his opinion.

And a fairly sound voting rule, in my opinion.

Now though, I think Dad had it right. Defensive voting is a losing game. You are forever setting yourself up to be disappointed and not substantially better off in the long run.

Vote for Obama because Romney is the harbinger of the Zombie Apocalypse. Or something like that.

Nothing, however, is going to change really regardless of who wins. There are too many snowballs rolling down the mountainside and no one can stop them or mitigate the damage they are going to do once they roll into the populated areas in the foothills. Perhaps when the powder settles and the people have started digging out, they will get serious about putting into power positions candidates who care more about achieving something than simply the power game itself. I won’t hold my breath but stranger things have happened.

Finally, I am not voting because my best interests aren’t served by involving myself again. I compromised my integrity by letting myself be somewhat peer pressured into accepting Obama as the Democratic candidate in 2008 despite my thoughts that he played dirty with Clinton during the primary and my estimation that he really didn’t have the experience at that point. His rather ham-handed performance in his first term proved the latter and the distraction issue campaign he’s run against Romney has confirmed the former – that he is a politician first and foremost. He is not change at all.

On Facebook, I have been nothing if not contradictory, putting up articles that make it seem that I am a liberal while simultaneously posting conservative views. The fact is that I am neither. I am too much of a realist. There is good and bad on both sides in terms of policy and opinion. To mire myself too far inland on either side would leave me unaware and uninformed on too many important issues.

While it would be nice to be someone who is okay with following for the sake of acceptance and warm fuzzies that has never been me.

So I am not going to vote although that won’t keep me from commentary. George Carlin once said that it’s only those who don’t vote who have the right to complain. People who participate in the system are the ones who should shut the fuck up because by voting, you are agreeing to be okay with the outcome.

The outcome is going to suck. I feel sorry for whoever has to clean up the mess in 2016.

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Happy 34th to the Miracle of IVF


 

English: Blastocyst on day 5 after fertilizati...

English: Blastocyst on day 5 after fertilization Courtesy: RWJMS IVF Program (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

It was thirty-four years ago today that the first baby of IVF was born. Inaccurately dubbed a “test-tube baby” (it was really a petri dish but that doesn’t have the catchy ring to it), the little girl known as Louise Joy Brown became the first of the estimated five million children who would follow her.

 

I clearly recall the news of the day. The wonder and the fearful predictions of a future where babies need no longer be created or born the “natural way”.

 

However, aside from the lack of intercourse, nothing substantial changed in the way babies were made. Mom’s eggs, Dad’s sperm, fertilization, cell division and a womb to implant and grow in were still basic requirements. Then. And now.

 

That fall, sitting in Sr. Kay’s freshman religion class, I listened without comment as she railed against little Louise’s existence in defiance of God’s will. Now, of course, I realize that if there is such a thing as G0d’s will, no way would some puny mortal be allowed to circumvent it. At the time I thought only that it strange that Sister didn’t recognize a miracle when it was leaping off the headlines at her. And I also began to suspect that the woman had been drawn to her vocation by something unhealthy in her psyche.

 

Personally I was a bit sad that my parents, who’d suffered greatly through six fruitless years of trying to conceive, were now too old to give IVF a go themselves but wasn’t it a lucky thing to have been discovered just in case I needed to use it myself one day.

 

That thought took on no small amount of irony when it proved to be prophetic twenty plus years later.

Today as I was watching the Today Show clip from July of 1978 about Brown and IVF, Dee wandered into the office.

 

“What’s a test-tube baby?” she asked after listening for a few moments.

 

“You are,” I told her.

 

Her face screwed up in that curious non-verbal “what?” she has, and I continued, using the smallest but most accurate wording for a girl who is days away from ten and going to enter grade five come September.

 

“I see,” she nodded as her forehead wrinkled in thought for a nano-bite of time before lightning struck.

 

Grade four marks the beginning of sex ed here in Alberta. Dee was already versed in plumbing and menstruation, so little of the curriculum was new to her. She also knows the bare bones of where babies come from minus the actual sex part. I’ve answered truthfully every question she’s ever put to me but not felt it was necessary to explain the exact mechanics. She’s a kid for whom “just enough info” has always sufficed.

 

Until today.

 

“So if that is how babies are made if you can’t make them the normal way, what is the normal way?”

 

Too clever by half. She’s been devious in her meanderings around this topic for a year or so, but having genetically bequeathed  her the clever genes, I have gracefully avoided “going there”.

 

The look on her face was a mixture of  “Success at last!” and “Oh my god that’s the most disgusting, horrifying thing I have ever heard in my life. Please hand me a scoop for my mind’s eye.”

 

“Do you have any questions? I asked, pretty sure what the answer would be.

 

“No,” she said in her “this conversation is over until such time as I have fully digested implications of this most unexpected bit of knowledge”.

 

Be careful what you ask, Pandora. And Happy Almost 10th birthday.

 

 

 

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