The death of a spouse often feels like losing a part of your heart. It’s the kind of heartache that reverberates through every single facet of your life. It’s fear. It’s insecurity. It’s anger. It’s shock. It’s isolating. It’s pain. It’s hell.

But all of those horrible things can merge into something beautiful. It becomes resiliency. It becomes independence. It becomes living boldly. It becomes compassion. It becomes a new appreciation for all the things you previously took for granted. 

When (and if) we ever decide to open our heart to the possibility of love, we do so with eyes wide open, fully understanding that we will not find our spouse 2.0. Having your husband or wife die is one thing. Facing the cold, harsh truth that he or she is never coming back and accepting that is a whole ‘nother beast. 

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It takes balls to mentally and emotionally put ourselves out there to date again. It’s overcoming the fear that death will again take someone we hold dear. It’s pushing through your deepest, darkest thoughts and embracing the “now”. It’s living as though you’ve never lost while Iiving knowing you’ve lost. 

We expect to encounter our share of jerks, widow-chasers, scammers, etc. It comes with dating in the online age. What many in the widowed community have been blindsided by are the people we let into our lives who feel the need to attempt to erase our past. 

Our partners are dead!

There is no competition if the other person isn’t alive.

As the new partner, you went into the relationship knowing we were widowed. You knew the “baggage” that came with loving us. You had to have realized that our heart was capable of expanding. You had to have known that we are capable of loving you – even while holding onto the love we have for our late-spouse. 

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But, here you are, so blinded by the jealousy you have for someone who isn’t even alive, that you’ve resorted to ultimatums and even worst, “Fling It Out Fridays” (where items associated with a late-spouse are thrown away behind the widow’s back).

You know what kind of evil it takes to throw away the last physical memories a surviving spouse holds onto? You know how unforgiving such an act becomes when it’s ultimately discovered? 

It is impossible to love us to the point where we forget they exist.

You can toss out his/her possessions, but you’ll never remove them from our heart.

You can’t delete enough photos or donate enough of their things to make us love them any less.

You are not competing with a ghost! Unless we were loved by our former spouses and encountered all that we did with that spouse, we would never have become the person we are today, right now in this moment. The person that you fell in love with. 

In fairness, there will be times when our grief is so overwhelming – death anniversaries, birthdays, etc., – where it may cause us to be insensitive towards you. Where we allow our pain to interfere with our present. Where our grief isn’t respectful of our new relationship. We own that.

Widowhood and loving post-loss is difficult. 

It’s complicated even more when a partner feels resentment towards our late spouse or is threatened by him/her.

In an ideal world, a widow would just never be with someone who feels this way. But the sad reality is that many in the widowed community are in fact dating, engaged or married to someone who incorrectly believes he/she is playing second fiddle to a spouse who died. 

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Instead of dishing out ultimatums, consider the following:

  1. Communicate. Communicate. Communicate.
  2. Don’t assume it’s grief – we may just be having a bad day.
  3. Check yourself – are we really comparing you to our late spouse or are you comparing yourself?
  4. Allow us the time and space we need to cry, recall a memory or talk about a late spouse. It takes nothing away from the love we have for you.
  5. Remember that a dead spouse isn’t an “ex”. Though they each come with their own special circumstances, don’t expect a widow to treat a late spouse as an ex-husband. 

Mom to a feisty preschooler, Kerry runs a support group for young widows and widowers venturing back into the world of dating and is a contributor to Open to Hope. She is the author of “The One Thing: 100 Widows Share Lessons on Love, Loss, and Life” and her articles on widowhood and grief have been featured in HuffPost and Love What Matters. She was recently featured on the podcast, Moments of Clarity.

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