The End of Grief, Part 1

Grief is NOT something that you have to live with for the rest of your life. Grief can come to a happy end. In the first of a two part series, I share stories of those who have overcome grief and why expecting people to grieve forever sets them up for a lifetime of misery.

Interview: In the Company of Widowers: How They Grieve & Move On

Me and two other widowers were recently interviewed on the blog Life Lessons at 50 Plus. Excerpt below.

Is the mourning process different for men versus women? Do men do so in more private ways? Are they lonelier in their grief?

Keogh: Men will not cry in public and have less of a tendency then women to break down and cry in general. Typically, if grieving, they’ll talk about their late wife, generally leave pictures out and still wear their wedding rings. If they’re not ready to move on and they begin to date, the date might feel like she’s competing with a ghost; there’s a third person in the relationship.

Lockhart: My grieving has been alone in private for the most part.  

Selner:  I dealt with my grief by talking about it with my daughters and a few other close friends or relatives, frequently telling them how I felt. There was a lot of crying privately and allowing myself to feel the love that was much deeper than I realized before I lost her, and the guilt that I didn’t tell her how deep it was as often as I should have. I am still dealing with it.

How do widowers fill the void from spousal loss?

Keogh: I did a lot of things with my guy friends, which was therapeutic. I also started blogging anonymously at first and then wrote my first book, Room for Two. It was published in 2007—six years after my late wife died.

Lockhart: I have filled the void partially with all the tasks and busy work that follow the death of a spouse. I stay busy with boards, both non-profit and for-profit, and teach a course at Ga Tech.  

Selner: I have never filled the void. But I tried to accept it and adjust to it.  

10 MORE Uncomfortable Truths about Dating a Widower

There are 10 additional uncomfortable truths about dating a widower. Brace yourself as I discusses them. (Transcript of video below.)

Transcript of Widower Wednesday video:

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 more uncomfortable truths about dating a widower.

I posted a video a while back with 10 uncomfortable truths about dating a widower. Here's 10 more uncomfortable truths about dating widowers. I'll name them 11 through 20. So again, this is great just to kind of know. It helps you understand how widowers think, why they act the way they do. And it gives you some idea of whether or not dating a widower is right for you and if some of these issues come up, how to best deal with them. So, without further ado, here are uncomfortable truths 11 through 20.

Uncomfortable Truth 11:  Widowers are triggered by memories of the late wife more often than you think, especially if they're recent widowers.

I should probably add that especially if it's in the first year or two of loss, they're probably triggered way more often than you think. If it's 10 years out or 5 years out, probably not as often. But recent widowers are triggered more often than you think. It could be a song, something somebody says. They could just be driving down the street, and I don't know, see something that reminds them about something that happened with the late wife.

Widowers are triggered and this is in fact normal. So they could be triggered, I don't know, 10 times a day, 100 times a day. The point is that they are triggered. Now, there's nothing you can do about being triggered. We're all triggered by certain things. Maybe you hear a song or something and it reminds you of a past love, or I don't know, a special day, a special memory. Being triggered isn't the issue here. The issue here is-- excuse me, the issue here is, what do widowers do after they're triggered? Now, a widower who's ready to move on, most of the time you won't even know he's triggered and he'll, I don't know, whatever, entertain a thought for a second or two and move on. That's the healthy and good way to deal with all these triggering moments.

Bad thing is if a triggering moment happens and it's like a punch in the gut and there's tears and stuff like that. Now once in a while, that happens, that's fine. But if it's a daily thing or a quite often thing where something triggers a widower memory and there are emotions involved and you can sense that. Yeah, that's kind of a red flag. That maybe means the widower's not quite ready or to a place where he can open his heart. So just something to think about is widowers are triggered way more often than you think.

Uncomfortable Truth 12: The death of their wife didn't make the widower a lousy parents. Odds are they were a lousy parent before she died. 

One of the things I deal with in coaching sessions and through email and stuff all the time is what a bad parent a widower is. And I know that being a widower puts a lot of demands on people, and it's not easy. And I don't envy widowers who have kids at home and are single parents. I think that it's a very honorable job, but it's also a difficult one. But I always get comments and things like, "Why is he such a bad parent?" And the truth is, he probably wasn't that great of a parent or maybe he didn't do a lot of the parenting when the wife was alive. Maybe he's trying to figure it out. Or maybe it's also common for widowers just to kind of forgo parenting and spoil the kids and cause all kinds of problems.

But just so you know, this is not something that just happened once his wife died. He either wasn't involved in the parenting or he wasn't a good parent to begin with. That doesn't mean he can't change and change his parenting to make things better. But just keep in mind, don't use the excuse when my wife died, that's why I'm a bad parent. That doesn't cut it in any respect.

Uncomfortable Truth 13: Most widowers hesitate to tell others about their new love because they're afraid it'll cost them another relationship.

Widowers are very averse to loss. I mean, they've already lost probably the person that they loved more than anything. And when they get involved and start dating again, that relationship can disrupt other relationships, whether it's with their children or with in-laws-- or the former in-laws, the late wife's family or just other things. The new relationship comes along and it could disrupt that.

And that's the big reason why widowers don't want to tell others that they are dating again because especially, family and close friends, because they're afraid that it means that they'll reject the widower in that relationship. And that means he has to make a choice whether between this woman or the former in-laws, and they're very adverse to loss. I get it. I've been there. We all have to make choices. But not wanting to tell other people about a relationship, if that's kind of where you are in a relationship, maybe you shouldn't be in a relationship.

So I'm telling you some of the psychology behind it, why they may hesitate to do it, but at the same time, it's like if you're going to be big enough to date again, you've got to be big enough to go with the consequences. And remember that you can't control the thoughts or actions of other people. They reject you because you decided to fall in love again. Well, that's their problem. It's not your problem. So don't let the thoughts or actions of others dictate your happiness in your direction in life.

Uncomfortable Truth 14: It's common for widowers to seek out and date women they know or were friends with before they were widowed.

There is comfort in the familiar. I think if people-- I'd say probably somewhere between 60 and 70 percent of widow relationships that I deal with, the widower knew the person that he's dating before he was widowed. It doesn't mean they were having an affair. That's not what I'm getting at. But it could be maybe they dated in the past, they worked together, they're neighbors, things of that nature. But it's very common for widowers to seek out and date women that they know on some level. It's something I did. My first relationship before Julie was with someone that I knew, that, again, I had never dated or anything, but I had a friendship with before I was widowed.

So again, nothing necessarily wrong with that. Oftentimes these relationships do work out, but you have to understand that a lot of just the psychology behind it is that there's comfort in the familiar. And it's easy to go to a person and maybe even have-- open your heart or have a relationship with someone that you're already comfortable with. Again, that doesn't mean they're doing it for the right reasons, but that's just kind of maybe some of the unconscious thought process behind it is that you're already a friend, you're already whatever, a past love, and it's just a little bit easier. It's not like you're dating a stranger and kind of get to know each other. They already know you. So the relationship can progress a little bit faster. So just keep that in mind.

Uncomfortable Truth 15: Most widowers won't think-- won't seek therapy or counseling because it's geared to helping women, not men heal.

Now, this is the fault of the industry. It's not the fault of the widower. When you think about therapy and things of that nature, it's very you know, you sit there and you talk about your feelings, and that's not the way that men go. Men are very solution oriented. They're very action oriented. And though it does help to some degree for them to talk about their feelings, it's not necessarily-- in the long term, it's not necessarily going to solve their problems. So again, that's not the fault of the widower. That's just kind of the way the industry is kind of focused. That's why you see women seeking out therapy more than men and why men kind of have an adverse reaction to it.

The best therapy for men is honestly, it's finding male friendships, it's doing things men heal, men express their feelings through action, and finding ways to do it that way. Now, I'm not saying that therapy isn't helpful. You probably want to look for more solutions based therapy. By the way, if you ever do a coaching session with me, whether you're a male or a female, I mean, yes, you can talk, and if you feeling-- if you need some validation to your feelings, I'm there. I will honestly give validation to your feelings if it's if that's what is needed and honest. But my coaching sessions are very solution-focused. So like, if a widower gets on the phone with me, he maybe wants a [gut?] check, or he has questions about the-- a relationship, or opening his heart, yes, we talk about it to a degree, but really the session is focused on finding solutions and what you need to do and doing things and not just sitting here and talking. So just kind of a heads up.

But anyway, again, if you want-- if a widower out there is looking for therapy, or counseling, or something, it should be more solutions-focused, more than validation, feelings, and-- again, I think a lot of widowers can heal better if they actually had good male friendships and activities that they could do through healing instead of just sitting there with someone and talking. Anyway, my two cents on that. But that's why widowers don't think-- often don't think of therapy and counseling is because it's really not geared towards helping men, it's geared toward helping women.

Uncomfortable Truth 16:  The main reason widowers can't get rid of the late wife's stuff is because of all the memories attached to them.

Physical objects are emotional and it's kind of weird to think about that. But if you think of photographs, or houses, or things of that nature, there are lots of memories associated with that, and those memories and those emotions can be very powerful. And that's why you see a lot of the hesitation. It's like taking down the shrine is taking down some of these memories and some of these things like that. And that's not to say that they can't do it, but again, getting inside a widower's head and-- not just a widower's head, it's kids and other things like that. A lot of times you see all this stuff, it's hard for them to take the clothes out of the closet and do other things. They need to clean up the house because there are memories attached and it's really emotionally-- and it can be very overwhelming and emotionally draining. And so I know that I've talked to people where again, they have whole houses of stuff and it's just this overwhelming task and the widower can't do it.

There's books, by the way, I can recommend to make this process easier. But I'm just pointing out that this is kind of-- the psychology behind it is that it can be a very emotionally draining task to give the late wife's stuff away, or throw some of it away, or box it up. And I think it's an emotionally healing task and something that's very good. But just, again, to understand that there's memories attached to things. And it's not just widowers.

I know that if you've thought about your life and things like that, you have good memories associated with places and things and you might have knickknacks or something that reminds you of a vacation or whatever, again, same thing. But it's kind of like, "I'm putting this away. I'm putting these memories and my late wife away," and things like that. But that's kind of the main reason, is that there's just a lot of strong memories attached to them. Ideally, he should love you more than these memories. The memories aren't going to go away just because the trinket goes into the box or whatever, into the trash. But that's a sign. That's why I always say if he's not willing to put the stuff down, he's not willing to make you number one, because these emotions and these memories hold more value to him than your actual relationship. So it's an uncomfortable truth, I guess.

Uncomfortable Truth 17: Despite having long and happy marriages, most widowers are clueless how female communication works.

They provide solutions instead of validation. This is something that men need to learn over and over again. And men are very problem oriented and problem-solving oriented. So you give them a problem, they try to fix it. And a lot of times when you talk to a widower about something, maybe you're not looking for a solution, you're looking for validation, like, "Can you understand why I feel this way, that you haven't taken down the-- why are the shrines up?" and widowers get defensive. And they kind of go into problem-solving mode and stuff, saying, "Yeah. I can understand why that would bother you."

11:51

Anyway, just pointing out that they're clueless how most female communication works. It's a great chance to educate them. And in fact, for both people I see communication as being a big issue in widower relationships where one or both people are hesitant to bring up topics and talk about them and things like that. But it is something that you can train widowers on how to listen to you and things like that. It does take some work on both your parts, but it is possible, so keep that in mind.

Uncomfortable Truth 18: Most widower relationships would be better off if he spent less time caring what everyone else thinks of their relationship.

I can't tell you. It's like you get into a relationship and it's kind of like high school again, right? It's like, "What is so and so going to think? What are my parents going to think? What are all these people going to think?" And not that those concerns aren't valid. Yes. I think it's normal to get into a relationship and worry what people will think, especially if it's a short time since the late wife died. I know that my first relationship after Christa died, my first serious one, I mean, I hid the fact that I was dating.

I hid the fact that I was in a serious relationship for a long time because I did care what others think. And there's nothing wrong with caring what others think to a degree. But if you let the thoughts and feelings of others control your dating life and control your life in general, that is not healthy. And I will give you this tip as well that when widowers find the person they're ready to open their heart up to, they won't care. They will not care what anyone else thinks of the relationship. They don't care. So keep that in mind.

So if the widower is caring too much, let's just put it that way, what people think of the relationship or he's worried about it, maybe he needs to get over, he needs to stop caring what people think. But at the same time, maybe he needs to do a self-evaluation whether this really is a relationship that he wants to move forward. There you go. How's that for uncomfortable truth?

Uncomfortable Truth 19: Widowers don't change overnight.

This is something I see that people think that once a widower falls in love and whatever, opens his heart, that suddenly he changes and things are better. And that's not the way it works. It's not the way people work. What you want to look for in any issue with a relationship is you want to look for progress. Is today better than yesterday? Is today better than last week, last month, etc.? Basically, we're all human and we all have good days and bad days. And hopefully, if you're dating a widower and he's trying to change and make some changes, that he has more good days than bad days, but he might have a bad day once in a while. And just having a bad day or falling back on old habits or old things doesn't necessarily mean the relationship is doomed. It just means that you have to have a perspective of progress and how much progress is he making.

I have never met a widower in all the years I've been doing this coaching where the widower resolved to make a change and the next day he was a different person and never had a bad day ever again. That just doesn't happen. So again, what you want to look for is progress. Again, they're not going to just change and everything's going to be hunky-dory, but you should see progress and steady progress with that. It's not like you have one good day and ten bad days. It's more like you have five or six good days and then maybe a bad day or five or six good weeks and maybe a bad week. But you should be able to look back and say, "Yeah, it's not perfect, but he is way better now than he was last week, last month, etc." And that's what you want to look for.

Uncomfortable truth number 20: If you can’t regularly discuss the current state of the relationship, the odds of the relationship exceeding long term are right about zero.

Again, there's uncomfortable truths that I've been talking about this video and previous videos, uncomfortable truths about dating a widower. Well, you have to have uncomfortable conversations with widowers and you both have to be comfortable doing it. And I know that it's hard to have conversations that you haven't had before. How do I talk about the ring? How do I talk about his spoiled kids? How do I talk about the photos on the wall or whatever the issue is? But you have to be comfortable having uncomfortable conversations. I have yet to coach a couple where - what do you call it? - where they were regularly discussing issues and things didn't work out.

Again, I do couples coaching and honestly, the ones that work out are the ones where they're able to learn how to communicate. And, of course, solve problems, that's part of it too. But it's the couples where they're scared to communicate, they don't communicate, they don't learn how to communicate, they're not willing to take those chances that comes with communication, it's very rare that those relationships work out, if ever. The ones that work out are the couples that are willing to, again, have a solutions-focused thing. Again, if you have coaching session with me, I give you homework. I expect you to do the homework. And the homework might be, in the next two weeks or whatever it is, you're going to have these discussions. And if you haven't had the discussions-- again, they're uncomfortable discussions.

But the only way these widower issues get solved is with communications and, of course, solutions. But don't be scared on either side whether you're a widower or dating a widower if you're not ready to discuss where the relationship is at, where you see it's going, what issues need to be addressed. It's just not going to-- it's just not going to succeed. People aren't mind readers. People can't read your mind to know that something is a problem. And if you let the problem faster and it's not resolved, then the whole thing blows up. I'm giving you 15 years of coaching experience here. You've got to be able to have uncomfortable talks with a widower. And if you can't, it doesn't matter if the widower is ready to open his heart or you're ready to fall in love with him, long term success is practically zero.