Basically what the subject says. Youv’e been married to the same women for 35 yrs. She has just died of cancer. How long do you wait to start dating?
Bonus question… You have a 27 YO son that is devastated by his mom’s death. How do you explain to him that it is all right to start dating after 3 months?
Youv’e been married to the same women for 35 yrs. She has just died of cancer. How long do you wait to start dating?
As long as is comfortable for you.
Bonus question… You have a 27 YO son that is devastated by his mom’s death. How do you explain to him that it is all right to start dating after 3 months?
You say something along the lines of, your life with his mother was so wonderful that you’d like to experience something like that again.
I’d say it’s bad form to bring a date to the funeral. After that - to each his own. You can’t put a time limit on these things. I know a man who remarried within six months of his wife’s death, while others aren’t ready to date ten years on.
As for the son… it’s difficult and a lot of sensitivity is required. Scarlett67’s response is good, but I think with a little discretion, perhaps he doesn’t even need to know for a while?
My uncle remarried withing 6 months of his wife’s death from cancer (to a woman he met a support group while my aunt was still alive). My mother and I were the only family members to attend the wedding.
I’m sorry for your loss. (Assuming this is you we’re talking about.)
In the Old Days[sup]TM[/sup], there would have been precise rules, dictated by Etiquette, to answer just such a question. That way, as long as you followed the rules, you wouldn’t have to explain yourself or worry what other people would think.
For better or for worse, those days are over. You’ll have to do what seems right to you.
There probably isn’t a good way. Maybe something about how his mom wouldn’t want you to be alone (if you believe that to be true).
I would NOT say this. It sounds too much like you are trying to replace or to replicate your old relationship. If it were my mom less than a year in the ground, I honestly think “I need the release of mindless sex” would be more comforting to me than “I want to love someone else as much as I loved your mom” would be.
Anxiety about parents dating are often rooted in a sense that you’ve lost one parent and here the other one is going off and forming a new family that you won’t ever really have a place in the way you had a place in the old family–and that’s TRUE, that is what happens. That doesn’t mean the old relationship between the father and the son will have to be weakened, but there is a very real chance that it will be, so anxiety over that possibility is not crazy talk. How you soothe that anxiety is going to vary quite a bit, but it ought not be downplayed or dismissed.
As soon as I have reason to.
“You weren’t dating your mother.”
My wife died four years ago (2003) this July 11th. This September would have been 25 years.
I started dating July 2005 only after talking to my kids about it, and my inlaws to as my wife was their only child and my children are subsequently the only link they have left to their daughter. I also asked their permission when I asked this one person to marry me.
My only answer is: you’ll know you’re ready when it happens. And nobody else has the right to judge how long that should be.
Just sit your son down and talk it out. He’s an adult now, and should understand these things. But he will, nonetheless, have some major feelings to work through. Give him time.
And when you finally introduce the two of them, it would be really insensitive to be openly affectionate in front of him. Just cool it for a while.
Agreed. Picking up an attractive mourner, OTOH, is perfectly acceptable.
I married a widower with three mostly grown children. He waited almost a year before going out. But if the children of the single parent are going to resent the parent finding companionship, they may be unpleasant about it five, ten or twenty years later.
When my own father died, I encouraged my mother not to watch the calendar. Why should I be selfish about her having companionship? That had nothing to do with how much she had loved my dad.
As a result, my mother has been comfortable in talking with me about a relationship with a gentleman that has lasted for several years now. It’s quite a love story. She’s ninety-four.
A friend lost her mother to a cancer a couple of years ago. Mom was only 47. Her dad was doing very poorly on his own. He met a lady in less than six months, they hit it off, and married last fall. Now this lady (who’s 45) has ovarian cancer 
I feel so bad for that poor man. This new lady was a real tonic to him; I think he’s one of those gents who needs to be in a relationship and his daughter realized that; while she was somewhat upset at what happened, the new lady was very nice to her and my friend realized that her dad was much better off with a nice lady in his life.
I’m having a hard time understanding how “I liked being married/in a relationship” equates to “I want to replace your mother.” If anything, I would see it as a tribute to how the deceased partner made the husband a better person, happy to be in love, etc. Sort of the flip side of bitter people who get burned/divorced and then are afraid of commitment/“against marriage”/ etc. Perhaps my original wording could be tweaked a bit, but I don’t see any problem with the sentiment.
I would think that once you’ve been (presumably happily) married for 35 years, it would be mighty hard to go back to being single, especially in an empty nest. And if the kids are well into adulthood, they need to deal with Dad dating. It’s not like he’s trying to bring a new mommy into their home.
I speak with a good friend very much in mind. His wife (a warm and lovely person) died of cancer just this past week, after 25 happy years of marriage. The kids are grown, although I think one may still be living at home. They basically got married right out of college, so he has never “been alone.” Mr. S and I decided that we wouldn’t be surprised if, after an appropriate amount of time FOR HIM, he found another special someone.
(I can’t speak from he perspective of the adult child, unfortunately. I won’t shed a tear for my father when he goes, and I doubt my mom would even go looking; if she goes first, I don’t give a rat’s ass what he does after that.)
(Looking at the OP’s previous posts, it appears he is talking about someone else, not himself as either the parent or child. Is that correct?)
Enright 3,although I don’t think that’s required behaviour, that’s very decent of you.
I agree with Scarlett’s posts. My grandfather became a widow after 20 years of marriage (and three kids). He dated after she died, and 4 years later married a woman who is the only grandmother I know and recognize.
They were married for almost 40 years. My grandfather died a couple of years ago, and about 6 months later, my grandmother renewed the friendship she had with a childhood friend, and eventually he asked her to marry her. She was 82 while he was 80, and their wedding was beautiful. Before the wedding, they went to the cemetery and talked with their respective deceased spouses.
Why would I be concerned? I wasn’t, I was happy for my grandma! She was married and in love all those years, she shouldn’t be sad and lonely at the end of her life!
My grandfather had mentioned that he thought marrying after the spouse died was a better way to honor the deceased partner than not doing so. I guess because of what Scarlett’s said.
I think each person is entitled to live their life as they see fit after the loss of a spouse. We had an instance in our family where the widow was pregnant and married in six months following the death. There were small children involved and she received a LOT of insurance money. The shit hit the fan and it was years before some family members would speak to her. They STILL don’t speak to her new husband, and never will. It got very ugly, but hey…she’s the kind of person who can’t be alone and she filled the void she felt. That’s her business.
I waited just under a year, but like everyone here is saying, what works for you is appropriate; especially since dating is an overall learning experience anyway; it was too soon, you’ll know.
I learned that I wished there were more widows in my age group. Not that I wish more guys would get knocked off; just that a lot of the single women I meet are single due to divorce, and so they tend to be angry because their ex is driving around in a corvette with some bimbette half the ex-wife’s age. When your ex is in an urn in the next room you don’t have these issues, so it’s hard to relate.
Plus, I really hate sympathy; or rather, I crave it and then I realize it’s an unhealthy craving. The women who make a big deal of offering it are just playing with you, but the women who don’t take your grief into account don’t care about your feelings in general.
I’ve had it used as a convenient deal-breaker: “I’ve decided I was just stressed out about my job/relationship with my kid/divorce/etc, and I was just acting-out sexually with you. I don’t really have feelings for you (but just so I don’t look like the bad guy here) I don’t think you really have feelings for me, either: you’re just insecure because of your wife’s death.”
Or how about this one:
“So where is your wife” (valid question - there’s a lot of players out there)
“She died early last year.”
“How did she die?”
(Oh shit, another direct question, but this one isn’t as easy)
“She committed suicide.”
“GASP - WHAT DID YOU DO TO HER?”
So when’s a good time to start dating again? Oh, never, since “good” and “dating” are 99% mutually exclusive concepts. Ah, what the hell, why should our suffering as widowers exempt us from what everyone else suffers as daters?
As for the son, well, my daughter took it better than I did. They know they got their lives ahead of them and are ready to move on. We old guys have to grapple with the possibility of “oh shit - was that it? Did I just get involuntary early retirement?”
Isn’t it “Until death do us part,”?
Not “Until death, and the unrealized fantasies, unsolved guilt, secret fears, undiagnosed neuroses, and assorted hang-ups of various descendents, ancestors, meddling friends, and hangers-on, are resolved, do us part.”
Sailboat
I think your explanation is a good argument for the position of “I don’t like being alone/I want an opportunity to socialize with other people/I enjoy companionship and miss it.”
But saying “I liked being married/in a relationship” jumps one step even further ahead. The former says “I like the company”, the latter suggest “I’m looking for another mate.” How could a grief-stricken kid not interpret that as “looking for a replacement”?
I would think framing the situation in simple emotional terms (solitude vs. socializing) and not ambitious ones (looking for love) would not only be more honest, but less threatening to anyone else seriously hurt by the recent (or even not-so-recent) passing.
I think that it can be quite different with something like cancer - where you generally know for a long time and go through a lot of the grieving process before the death. You also often seem to meet other similarly aged survivors - the “I married someone who lost their partner that I met in support group” seems like a common scenario. For that reason, dating after terminal illness seems to happen faster than in sudden death situation - often within months. And doesn’t seem inappropriate since everyone is ready to move on.
As to grown children, sensativity is important, but so are establishing boundries. Explaining that “you loved their mother very much and will always have a hole where she was” while also explaining “I’m lonely, I want to find someone to share my life with, this is the rest of MY life and I’m not going to clear my dates with my children.”