Being the Wife of a Widower — Stages of Grief
When I first met my husband I knew he’d lost his wife two years prior, but I assumed he’d “moved on” because he was pursuing me. I had no idea there were stages of grief. Yes, I’d lost grandparents and pets. Of course those losses can’t compare to the loss of a spouse, child, or parent. I dealt with a great deal of pain in my relationship with my husband because he’d not worked entirely through his grief, and I gave him all my heart and soul believing he had. I hadn’t felt sorrow so deeply in any other point in my life. In a sense I was grieving myself. Grieving over the man who had become the love of my life, and though he loved me, it seemed I would always be a shadow…
Even now, almost 9 years after the beginning of our relationship began, at times I will see my husband in my mind’s eye sobbing in his mother’s lap over the loss of his wife, sobbing with his children as he lay in his bed with them cuddled up next to him, and with these images in my mind I feel my own pain for his loss. The loss of someone you have spent 2 decades with is not an easy thing. Sure, their relationship was tumultuous, but they had shared so much together, both great happiness and great despair. His loss was greater than I could comprehend, and I was both naive and ignorant in the beginning.
Being in a relationship with and loving a widower is a difficult task. I found myself caught between feeling sorrow for the loss he and his children endured, but at the same time a thankfulness that he was now mine. It’s a difficult emotion to get across to other people. Am I happy his late wife passed away? Not exactly. I wish the separation had been divorce rather than death because her death created a great deal of pain and suffering for so many…including those who never met her (namely me), but am I happy he’s mine now? Without a doubt! The fact of the matter is, if she were still alive he wouldn’t be mine. It sounds selfish and cold, but it’s the truth no matter how you look at it. Her loss was my gain…and in this we become bombarded with twisted, heart wrenching emotions when we fall in love with a widower, and when he falls in love with you…because he also knows happiness with you would have only happened through the death of his loved one. So comes his confusion and guilt because now he somehow feels he is happy about her death…
Before I go on, there was research done by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross in 1969 for a book she authored entitled On Death and Dying which outlined 5 stages of grief. Doing my own research, reading what those stages were and their descriptions, as well as what I witnessed my husband go through in our relationship, her information isn’t entirely correct. If you’d like more information on Kubler-Ross’s 5 stages of grief, you can find them here:
When I went through the stages outlined in the link above they didn’t seem to match up with what my husband experienced, at least not in the way they were described via the website. I later learned through a review on the book The Truth About Grief: The Myth of its Five Stages by Ruth Davis Konigsherg, much of the research by Kubler-Ross in the 1960s was interviews with psychologists and people diagnosed with terminal illness. Her research did not appear to include those who were left behind: the widows, widowers, and other loved ones. The 5 stages of grief may be pertinent to those who know their life is coming to an end, but do not pertain to those left to mourn their loss.
In my search to understand my husband better, and to help me with my own grief since my expectations of how I felt I deserved to be loved were not being met, I found 7 stages of grief. The 7 stages of grief seemed to fit more of what my husband experienced. The stages of grief don’t necessarily follow a certain order, and because a person has gone through a stage doesn’t mean they won’t re-enter that stage for some reason. I do believe my husabnd had to go back through several of the stages of grief when he met me because of the guilt he felt for being happy again. Not everyone will do this, but mine did, and it was the most painful experience of my life. I didn’t understand it for what it was, and he didn’t know how to communicate it to me…so he didn’t communicate at all.
Here is a quick rundown of the 7 stages:
1 — Shock and Denial (lasts a few weeks in general and is characterized by numb disbelief)
Shock is like a wall with a small door. It’s the method by which a person’s brain helps to slow the overflow of emotions so the person is not overwhelmed by everthing all at once.
Denial is what it sounds like. It’s denying that what has happened is truly real. It’s another protective measure for the emotions. It helps to block the pain of reality for a short time.
2 — Pain and Guilt
In this stage, the person grieving suffers from unbearable, unimaginable pain. The emotional pain is so acute it actually becomes a throbbing physical pain. In this stage the one in mourning is often bogged with guilt over things said and done in the past (whether recent or distant past)
3 — Anger and Bargaining
This is a stage where the one left behind tries to find someone to blame for the death of their loved one. It always has to be someone else’s fault…doctors, friends, another driver. They will even blame themselves. This is a time when alcoholism and drug abuse is often used to drown out the pain. The spouse will often lash out at others in an attempt to lay blame elsewhere to justify their anger for the loss of their loved one.
4 — Depression, Reflection, Loneliness
This is the stage when the grieving widow(er) realizes quietly within themselves the one they are grieving for is gone, and they’ll never return. They will often isolate themselves from others and reflect over happy times. This is also a time when the outsiders looking in are thinking the spouse/parent/friend/child should be done grieving and be getting on with their lives. This typically occurs withing 8 months to a year after the death of the loved one, but remember, this is not a simple progression of steps. Many times emptiness and despair continue to bog down the loved one.
5 — The Upward Turn
The physical symptoms of depression (not clinical depression) begin to lessen. The pain is becoming more bearable. Sadness is still there, but the excruciating pain experienced on a day to day, minute to minute basis is gone.
6 — Reconstruction and Working Through
The grieving person learns to do things they did before without the loved one by their side. They are learning who they are again, but separate from their spouse or loved one. The begin creating a new life, new identity separate of the person they lost.
7 — Acceptance and Hope
A quiet acceptance of the reality of the situation takes place. They begin looking toward the future rather than living entirely in the past. Thoughts of their loved one still causes sadness, but the gut wrenching pain is no longer evident.
You can read more about the 7 stages of grief here:
My husband had dated one other person before me. There relationship lasted about a month, and using deer season and being gone hunting all the time as an excuse to end it, he did just that. His wife had been dead for 18 months. I met my husband a little over 2 years after she died. I have read and learned from other widowers via YouTtube, the 2 year mark is like a magic number. By 2 years after passing of a spouse a majority of widowers are ready to begin a new life with someone else, though there are some who will start before or after that mark. My husband believed he was ready, and by all accounts he was. He’d gone through the stages. He was ready to have someone else in his life…until he had someone in his life.
I gave him affection like he’d never had in his entire life, and it was something he thrived on. He’d never had a woman pay attention to him like I did. He had never been the number one priority in his life by anyone other than his mother until I came along, and he was absolutely floored. He didn’t realize how much he craved what I had to give because he’d never had it, and he’d never been happier. He tried to distance himself with me just as he had with the previous girlfriend. He would say things like, “We’ll see if you can make it through hunting season.” He even became more withdrawn an entire month before hunting season. He never gave explanations for any of this. Hunting season came and went, and I was still there. I had what he wanted. He knew he wasn’t ready, he knew he didn’t want to give me up either. He was the happiest he’d ever been, and so he was the guiltiest he’d ever been. The guilt over his happiness through him backward and he had to go back through the stages. He didn’t have to go through all 7 stages again, but for at least 5 years he was battling against the guilt of being happy and his wife being dead. This lasted into our marriage. I can honestly say we had been married around 4 years before the guilt was gone.
If you are dating a widower, or you are thinking about dating one, and he’s shown interest in you, understand just because he’s gone through the stages doesn’t mean he’s safe. If they talk incessantly about their deceased loved one, he’s definitely not ready. This doesn’t mean they won’t talk about them some of the time. You have to understand they lived and built a life together. They may have had children together which can complicate the relationship, and make it ore difficult. The person who passed away was their past, and their past they should remain. If your love interest goes on and on about them or compares you to them they are still living in the past and not ready to move on. My husband didn’t talk about her. We both talked about our past and our future plans on our first date, so she was mentioned, but she was not his sole topic of conversation. Based on this, he was ready to live life in the present and think about the future.
We began dating at the beginning of August. The beginning of November I knew there was a problem. The whole of October I was on pins and needles because he wasn’t as affectionate as he had been. He seemed distant, and I didn’t know why. He wasn’t telling me. We had been having a hard time getting our oldest children to get along, and I assumed it had to do with that. If your widower has children and you do too, be very, very careful. You will be in for more heartache than if he doesn’t. The beginning of November was their wedding anniversary. I didn’t know this of course. He hadn’t talked to me about all their important dates together. Like I’d said, he rarely mentioned her. He would talk to the kids about her like when he’d lotion them up after a bath he’d tell them she used to do that to them. I didn’t think this was a problem because they deserved to know who their mother was and how much she loved them. I felt this was normal. Then the anniversary hit, and his distance became an ocean. He might as well have been on another plant. he wouldn’t return calls or texts. I went to his house to visit his him and his boys, but he was gone. i stayed with the boys and played with them until he got home. He was cold, and distant. There was no sign of the love he said he had. It felt like I was just a door to door salesman or something like that as much attention as he gave me. There were no hugs or kisses goodbye, there was no, “I love you,” before I left. Just some comment about the weather being awful for hunting. It was his mother who told me what was going on when I left. She and her husband had moved in with my husband when his wife died to give the kids some consistency. My husband had tried to find babysitters but they were in and out and the boys needed someone who would stay. She had been helping him raise his boys since his wife had died. I remember her telling me it was their anniversary, and I will never forget when she told me he’d always cry and want to sleep with his boys close to him on their anniversary. She said he’d probably do it the rest of his life, and that there would be certain days throughout the year when he would continue to mourn for her and want to be left alone. She then told me I had to make a choice. I had to either accept that (always be number 2 in the shadow of his late wife), or leave him.
Before you throw up your hands and say there’s no use in being in a relationship with a widower because of that part of my story, I will tell you she was wrong. He realized sometime down the road he was wrong in doing that. He didn’t know how to be a widower and love someone else. This was new territory for him and for me. This scarred me in such a way that I looked for confirmation for the rest of our relationship that what his mother said was the truth. It sent me into the deepest depression I’d ever been in, and to be honest with you I’d never been depressed, not even after being married to an alcoholic for 5 years.
Is loving a widower worth it? Yes, if he realizes what he has in you. Unfortunately, the only way you’ll ever find out is if you take that journey with him, stick your neck and your heart out there, and give him everything. The fact remains, if I hadn’t given him everything, if I hadn’t loved him so completely that it hurt, he wouldn’t have seen in me what he couldn’t live without. It would have saved me a great deal of pain, but it would have also caused me to miss out on the greatest love of my life! I can’t tell you what to do with your widower, but I can tell you there’s a chance he could be the greatest love of your life, but you’ll have to be willing to hurt like you have never hurt before in order to find out.
I will bare my heart. I will cry as I do it. I will tell you all the memories I have, most of it painful because those tend to be the easiest memories to dig up. I still cry over some of those memories, and because of that I don’t think about them except when one might accidentally surface. My husband has some idea the pain he caused, and I know he feels great remorse, but I don’t think he’ll ever truly understand how much he hurt me, and how the past, even though it’s gone and he is all mine, the memories still dig deep, and still hurt, and to be honest I am still trying to heal from them. I know now I will heal, but it’s a long process. A process I know will one day be completed, and will have been completely worth it because of the happiness he gives me.
To read all the stories in this series about my journey of being the wife of a widower, follow the links below:
From Happiness to Despair, and Back Again — Series Introduction
Stages of Grief — You are HERE!