You are absolutely right. I cannot understand exactly how you feel since I have not been there, but you haven't walked ten miles in my shoes either. Since every person's grief journey is unique, you cannot understand EXACTLY what ANYONE else is going through. But I can tell you this, it's that kind of arrogant, self-righteous, "my giref is worse than your grief" attitude that only hurts and further demeans the women (and men) who do become involved with people who have lost their spouse from death.
Regarding compassion, as a human being, I am very compassionate, but as a woman who is interested in developing a relationship with a member of the opposite sex, not so much. My job is not to date a man so that I can help him "heal" from loving someone else. As a woman looking to develop a loving relationship with a man, I am ONLY interested in someone who is free of the chains of the past and who is able to commit wholly to our relationship. As a potential romantic partner, my expectation is that someone be ready to hit the ground running with me, not expect me to spend years of my own short, precious life serving as a stand-in, replacement, emotional healer, runner-up, to the woman who came before me. If a man wants that, then he needs to rely on his friends and his own paid grief therapist, but don't show up on my door and expect me to help him cope by putting my life on hold because another woman lost hers.
Perhaps rather than attacking women like me who are honest and forthright about their own relationship needs, you should be passing the message foreward that widowers (and widows) do the hard work of grief recovery BEFORE they put themselves out on the market as being emotionally and spiritually available when they clearly are not. If someone isn't capable of being emotionally and spiritually faithful to their mate, then perhaps they need to hold off on the physical involvement until they can be.
I
The Other Love of His Life
My fiancé's first marriage ended in tragedy. Before we could be happy, he had to make peace with it. So did I.
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When I woke up to my boyfriend's kisses on a warm morning in July, I felt guilty. It was her birthday and I was in her house. With her husband. In her bed. Her bookshelves were filled with the same books I had on mine: "The Cider House Rules," "Beloved," "The Pilot's Wife." She was a literature professor. She loved writing. She loved reading.
She loved Scrabble. And now she was gone.
Brandon had been married for less than six months when his wife was killed in a car accident. When I met him two years later, he was still wearing his wedding ring, but on his right hand. The ring is a symbol of his continued commitment to her, I assumed. Not a sign that he was ready to build a life with someone new.
Beyond the ring, there were a million reasons why I should have passed Brandon by. I love books. He never reads. I live near the beach. He's 74 miles inland. I'm a health nut. He subsists on Buffalo wings and beer. But there were bigger reasons for me to stay: we both loved racing toy penny cars in the mall; pretending we were Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers; and singing Barry Manilow's "Copacabana" at the top of our lungs. He was loving, charming, sweet—and he knew how to make me laugh from deep within my belly.
Plus, I was like her. And they were happy.
I pored over her pictures trying to learn everything I could about the woman who came before me. She would always hold a place in Brandon's heart, so I needed to know who she was.
A chill came over me when I visited her memorial page and read through the online guest book: "No one could ever fill her shoes," someone wrote. That launched me into my next search: "dating a widower." Every site I visited warned of men who disappear after a few months out of guilt, those who constantly draw comparisons to their late spouse and those who live in the tragic state of "what if?" Brandon hadn't done any of those things.
But then I read this: "If he has pictures of her on the walls, clothes of hers in the closet and trinkets of their life together on display, he is not ready."
Brandon insisted he wanted to move on, that she was dead and he was not. He even avoided the red flags I had read about. About a month into the relationship, the ring came off. Pictures were tucked away and replaced. Slowly, her clothes began to disappear from the closet.
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