From the original 1958 theatrical trailer for the film Vertigo Frame taken from (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Normally, I ignore Dear Prudence when it comes to her advice to widowed who are in new relationships. Although she married a widower years and years ago, she’s often of the mindset that her husband’s widower experience, and her having navigated dating and marrying him, is a shared one, and that she “gets it”.

You can’t be or understand widowed vicariously. It doesn’t matter how up close the view.

Today, however, I noted a letter from a newly dating widower, who wondered if it was okay to give his late wife’s vibrator to his new girlfriend. It was an expensive, top of the line model that they’d barely had time to enjoy prior to the wife’s death.

Prudie said “no” and added an “ick” sentiment to her reasoning and I agree totally.

Which brings me to my point for the day, you can certainly bestow the material goods of your late spouse on friends, relatives and children – as long as said goods aren’t sex toys or other intimate in nature possessions – but when it comes to new significant others, just don’t.

While I know of cases where new girlfriends have been offered, and accepted, jewelry, clothing and even footwear, most new loves will be puzzled, hurt or even slightly repulsed by the idea of such “re-gifting”.

It’s difficult enough to deal with objects that are simply too vital or expensive to be replaced. For example, beds and other furniture or cookware and dishes. No one expects a widowed person to replace shared everyday items before they begin dating again or cohabitation with a new love. That’s not only impractical but it’s going way overboard with the idea of starting over.

But being sensible has its limits. I would never have offered my late husband’s clothing to Rob. And not just because their styles were quite different or that they are different sizes and body types.

It would have been “creepy” as my ten-year old daughter would say.

Hitchcock’s Vertigo centered on the attempts of a man to recreate his dead love’s appearance and mannerism via his new, look-alike love interest. The movie culminates in an incredibly disturbing intimacy scene that makes it clear this new woman is merely a stand in for the dead one.

Dressing up your new friend in clothing worn by your late spouse or making your Friday night dinner date at the restaurant you and late spouse loved – is kind of like that. An attempt to recapture someone and something that’s over and gone.

You should be careful with anything that is essentially a “rerun” for you. Vacation spots. Gifts that are things you would have given your late spouse. Pet names. If it is something you shared with them, be careful when sharing it again. A new love is expecting, and deserves, a space of his/her own in your heart and in the laying of a new relationship foundation.

I’ve read about women whose widowers think honeymooning or romantic get-aways at places shared with the late wife are great ideas and who become petulant when their new loves feel second best when they find out about the locations previous encounters. While a woman can be understanding about the mattress on your once shared bed, she isn’t going to be as thrilled about sharing a romantic locale. Beds are a practical matter. Romance is a matter of being creative, thoughtful and taking your new love’s feelings into account.

Not long after we married, we had a garage sale to try to clear out some of the clutter that the joining of two, very grown, adults can make. There was a box of Rob’s late wife’s clothing that needed to be sorted. He wasn’t keen but was willing to let me do it. And it was easier for me because I had no context to place the clothes in.

But before I started, Rob made an off-hand comment about my taking anything I fancied for myself.

Even if she and I had been the same size, and she wasn’t his dead wife, I still would have declined, but I also felt the need to point out that my wearing her clothing was a creepy factor beyond which I was comfortable and wouldn’t it bother him to see me in her clothes?

He conceded the point and didn’t offer me anything of hers again. Though I will admit that while I have kept and used many household items, and have no issue with them, I have always simply chucked others – even if they were perfectly usable – when I felt inclined. If my step-daughters didn’t want them and I preferred not to use them … out they went. It’s been enough for me to live in her house and integrate myself into her community. I didn’t need to keep everything simply because it might seem silly to replace them. I needed to establish myself as the lady of the house. Things that were mine alone were important to that process.

And it is a matter of comfort, so being willing to ask and have discussions with those you date or establish serious relationships with is a must. What might bother one person could be perfectly acceptable to someone else. Just remember to allow the other person their own feelings and don’t expect these feelings to mirror your own or that with a little pressure, you can persuade them to see things your way.That’s just selfish. While you might think you’d be fine living in a house that  your love shared with someone else, your new love doesn’t have to feel the same way and you should respect their feelings.

But getting back to sex toys- sex anything really – just don’t go there. Well sanitized or not, there are privacy issues where the late spouse is concerned and sharing items and details from intimate moments is, my opinion, not only disrespectful to the new love but to your late spouse as well.

A new relationship, if it is to work, should have as much “just us” to it as possible. Even if that means giving up your favorite vacation retreat or buying a new bedroom set. It certainly means springing for a new vibrator in any case.

Related articles

• Dating While Widowed: When Dating Goes “Wrong” (anniegirl1138.com)
• 7 Dating Tips For Widows (From A Widow) (huffingtonpost.com)

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.

Related articles

• NATE SILVER: Obama’s Odds Of Winning Have Now Hit 85% (businessinsider.com)
• Barone: Romney wins, handily (politico.com)