Will being friends with a widower hurt or increase your chances of a romantic relationship down the road? I answer that very question in today's Widower Wednesday video.
I'm Moving On, My Family is Still Grieving. What do I do?
What do you do when you're ready to start a new chapter with someone else and your family is still grieving your late spouse? My latest Widower Wednesday has the answer.
Who's More Important: The Living or the Dead?
What do you do when your birthday and the late wife's date of death are the same? Should the widower visit the cemetery? Should you postpone your birthday celebration for another day? Are the dead more important than the living? My latest Widower Wednesday video has the answer.
My Widowed Mom is Moving on Too Soon and Other Questions
In today's Widower Wednesday video, I answer the following questions:
How do I tell my widowed mother that she's moving on too soon?
How long do widowers feel guilty about moving on?
When do we get to hear from Julianna?
Prolonged Grief, Mental Illness, and How Long Does Grief Last?
Psychiatry's most powerful body just added a new "disorder" it's diagnostic manual: prolonged grief. This diagnosis started a controversy among mental health professionals and those who have suffered loss. In this Widower Wednesday video I tackle whether prolonged grief should be a mental illness and answer the question: how long does it take someone to grieve? Here’s the New York Times article discussed in the video.
Widowers and the Late Wife's Family
What kind of relationship, if any, should widowers have with the late wife's family after he's in a serious relationship? What should he do if her family doesn't accept the new relationship? My latest Widower Wednesday video has the answers.
The Secret of Our Success
Yesterday I celebrated 19 years as husband and wife with my wonderful wife and love of my life, Julianna. Dating as a recent widower all those years ago was rough but we worked through those issues and tied the knot 15 months after my late wife’s death. During the last 19 years, we’ve had the same ups and downs that come with any marriage but widower issues haven’t played a major role. With the hope that this can help widows and widowers who are thinking about or looking to marry again, here are three (four) important things we’ve learned from our 19 years as husband and wife.
Make each other number one. It’s easy to miss the late husband/wife so much that we don’t make our new spouse the top priority. If you made your late spouse #1, then your living spouse shouldn’t have to feel like they’re competing with a ghost. 99.7% of your thoughts, heart, and actions should be focused on the living, not the dead.
Pay the price of a new life. Often we want someone who fits into our current life or even try to cram them into the old life we shared with our late spouse. When you marry someone, you agree to start a new life together. This requires both parties to make the sacrifices that come with starting a new life. In my case that meant selling my home, moving to a new city, and redefining relationships with friends and the late wife’s family. Though some of those decisions were hard, I have no regrets about doing any of them.
Before saying/doing/posting something related to your late husband/wife ask yourself this question: Will this saying/doing/posting this strengthen or hurt my current relationship? If there’s even a small worry that saying/doing/posting something will hurt your living spouse or cause contention in your marriage then don’t do it.
Oh, and for those wondering we celebrated our nineteenth anniversary by enjoying a four-day trip to Moab, Utah. Here’s to another happy 19 years!
How to Set Healthy Boundaries with Friends, Family, and Loved Ones
How do you set healthy boundaries with friends, family, and loved ones who constantly talk about the late wife or post about her on social media and, as a result, cause unnecessary stress in your new relationship? I read from an old journal entry on how I set boundaries with a family member soon after Julianna and I were married.
Should You Meet the Late Wife's Friends and Family?
At some point the widower you're dating will want to introduce you to the late wife's friends and family. Should you do it and, if you do, are their boundaries you should set in regards to meeting them? Relationship coach and widower expert Abel Keogh has the answer.
When to Have Serious Relationship Talks with a Widower
At some point you and the widower need to have serious conversations about boundaries, expectations, and the future. When is the best time to have these conversations? Relationship coach and widower expert Abel Keogh has the answers.
Hi, it's Wednesday and that means it's time for another video edition of Widower Wednesday. I'm Abel Keogh, author of the book Dating a Widower, and today we’re going to discuss when is the best time to have a serious conversation with your widower about boundaries, expectations, and the future.
This is a question that comes up quite a bit and the question is usually prefaced by saying they’ve dating a widower a certain number of months or years and is it too soon to bring up questions and concerns or to talk about the future. The short answer, and I’ll get into specifics in a minute, but the short answer is, yes, you should be having these conversations as soon as possible. There’s a time and a place for them and you shouldn't just have an info dump on the first date but there are there are things that you should be talking about once you become exclusive. It's actually a good way to find out if the person you're dating is actually ready to open their heart.
For example, let’s discuss boundaries. If you have certain expectations about behavior from the men that you date and that person you’re with is violating those boundaries, you should talk about that as soon as possible. Let's say you go on a first date and the widower shows up with a wedding ring on his finger. This is one of those situations you probably haven't thought a lot about or encountered before but assuming there’s a second date, you can bring up the issue of the ring or you can let it go. If you let it go, what's the message that you're sending to the widower? If you don't say anything about the wedding ring and he shows up on the second and the third and fourth date and so on and you've kept your mouth shut, you're telling him that the ring isn’t a big deal.
You need to set firm and healthy boundaries soon because that's not only good for your mental health, it's good for the relationship and will weed out widowers who aren't serious about opening their heart again.
The next thing is when do you talk about expectations and a future together. I’m of the opinion that once you're in an exclusive relationship you should be able to talk about the future and what it looks like. You should be able to also discuss things such as finances and, if there str kids involved, how big of a role do they play in your relationship. If you're in an exclusive relationship and you can't talk about these issues, why are you in an exclusive relationship? An exclusive relationship says that you're serious about each other, that you see a future some kind of future together. Ig you're not dating other people, you should be able to bring up a lot of difficult subjects. That doesn't mean like as soon as you're exclusive that you know you do a data dump uh but you should be start getting comfortable discussing these topics.
For example, when Julie and I were dating, after we made it through some of the big widower issues (which basically meant that she felt that I was ready to open my heart to move on again) we reached that point where we were able have conversations about what the future looked like. We both wanted to get married so we discussed if we’d live in Ogden are move somewhere else? Are we going to stay in my house or are we going to rent an apartment? What do our finances look like? How much do we earn? How much debt do we have? Again, this wasn't a big data dump buy a series of conversations we had when Julie felt I was ready to open my heart.
It was nice to have these conversations because, first, it made us both feel like we were serious about this relationship. It also taught us how to better communicate with each other. It also set the expectation of what you know what it is that we were looking for and gave us a chance to again of evaluate the relationship. If there was a lot of incompatibility issues with or you know we didn't see eye-to-eye on some big picture things that weren't widower related, the relationship would not have eventually ended. It was nice to talk with her about things and say this is what's important to me in a spouse or and this is what I'm looking for. We didn't always agree but we agreed nine times out of ten. There were some things we didn't agree on sometimes we kind of disagreed a little bit but we had these conversations and I think when we got married um and we went into our marriage I think we had a fairly realistic expectation of what we were going to expect once we tied the know. Like with finances we knew if we were going to have separate or combine checking accounts and what were we going to do with our debt. Things like that Once we tied the knot we we already knew what we were going to do and we just kind of executed that plan.
I think once you're in an exclusive relationship you need to be able to, little by little, start having these bigger conversations because there's more to a relationship than widower issues. Yes he needs to be ready to open his heart and get through some of these widower issues but if you're disagreeing on issues such as finances, sex, recreational activities, family issues, then it doesn't matter if he's over the widower issues because you're not going to get along anyway.
I know some of you are watching this and thinking “Well, I'm worried if I have this conversation with the widower he's going to be turned off by it and maybe he'll end the relationship or he'll say it's too soon. That's a valid concern and there may be some widowers out there who are turned off by these conversations or maybe they don't want to discuss it, but I'll be honest with you: Someone who's ready to open their heart and someone who's ready for a serious relationship they will want to discuss these issues. I know Julie was worried about having these conversations but Julie also wasn't afraid to lose me. Julie wanted a future with the right person and that was more important to her than having a relationship with the wrong person. She wasn't willing to settle and by that point neither was I.
These are conversations you're going to have at some point so you can decide for yourself is this something that I want am answer to a year or two into a relationship or would I rather find out earlier? Everybody has deal breakers and there's nothing wrong with deal breakers but that's something you need to find out in my opinion sooner rather than later so both of you aren't wasting your time in a relationship that's not going anywhere. And for those who thing it’s too soon to have these conversations, then why are you sleeping with each other? If you can't have these conversations, which are adult conversations, you shouldn't be engaged in certain adult behavior unless that's all the relationship is based on.
You don't want to be left holding the bag years down the road and saying well I wish I would have known about this sooner. Start having these conversations make sure you're on the same page and then be honest with yourself if there's a deal breaker out there and decide whether or not you can live with it. For example say the has tons of debt you can see if he's serious about chipping away at it so it's smaller by the time you guys get married or moved in together. Just don't be afraid to have these conversations.
If you have more questions you can type them into the comments below you can also send me an email. Also, subscribe to my YouTube channel so you get notified when more videos are released. Also, if you want to schedule a coaching session you can do that on my website. I'm Abel Keogh, author of the book Dating a Widower, and I’ll see you next Wednesday.