I also wasn't sure how to be a middle-aged widower with a middle-aged girlfriend. Were we supposed to go to early-bird dinners? Just how lustily was I permitted to speak without crossing the line into the dirty-old-man zone? And if I playfully lifted Candy into my arms, would she tell me to mind my sciatica?
Candy had her own jealousy issues, but they weren't about my late wife. They were about my having had the sort of life she'd always wanted: a long, loving marriage, a child and the sometimes stifling but mostly comforting sense of being a we instead of an I.
Then there were what one friend dubbed "overlapping realities." Candy and I got married one year and 16 days after Jane's death. We live in the same house I lived in with Jane, and sleep in the same bed. While I never forget who and where I am, I occasionally lie awake at night, secure in my new wife's arms, and wonder: what just happened?
So we're unpacking. We're hanging the art Candy collected during her 53 years next to the art Jane and I collected and painted during our 29 years together. We've begun to make the house our own.
Recently, Candy and I were at a bank. The teller, who was in her early 20s, admired Candy's wedding ring. We said we were newly married. "Oh, I've been married for three years," she said. "You're gonna love marriage." Candy and I looked at each other and smiled. Between us, we've been married six times—yet this young woman was encouraging us as though we were two kids just getting started. The thing is, we are.
Goldman lives in Sacramento, Calif.
© 2008
I loved your candid article. I started reading it at the doctors and looked it up online to finish it. I have been married 21 years and every day is a struggle. Your examples of "jealousy" are right on. Jealousy doesn't have to involve other relationships. It can, as you pointed out, involve what one may have missed out on - and sees in his or her partner; or, may be currently missing out on. Enjoy your life together.
While I appreciate Dr. Alan Singer's comments, I'd like to point out that my second marriage lasted almost 29 years, until the death of my wife. I believe that says something about my belief in "the enduring and vital institution we know as marriage." --Ed Goldman
Ed Goldman's "My Turn" described the world he plunged into, one in which people "fall in and out of love sequentially". Social scientists also refer to the trend as, serial monogamy. His description of he and his wife's first, second, and third marriages is very thorough. But in my 30 years as a family therapist, I get bad dreams from reading scary quotes like, "Our first marriages were relatively brief misjudgments".... yikes!
Thankfully, most couples that I have assisted over the years, care deeply about the enduring and vital institution we know as marriage.
Dr. Alan Singer
www.FamilyThinking.com
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