Chapter 1: Why Do Widowers Date Soon After Their Late Wives Die?
A few months after my late wife, Krista, and I were married, we witnessed a widower make a pass at Krista’s grandmother, Loretta. His wife had died a few days earlier, and her funeral was later that morning.
We were in the kitchen helping Loretta prepare some food for the lunch that was to follow the funeral. The recent widower knocked at the door, and Loretta answered. From the kitchen, Krista and I could hear every word they both said. Most of their conversation had to do with the funeral and lunch arrangements, but just as the widower was about to leave, he said to Loretta, “I’ll be calling on you tomorrow.”
I glanced over at Krista to confirm that I had heard correctly. The aghast look on Krista’s face told me that I had. My mind was spinning as I tried to process his words. This man hadn’t even buried his wife, and he already had plans to ask Krista’s grandmother out on a date. In my mind, the only kind of man who would even consider dating that quickly after his wife died was a man no longer in love. I was not acquainted with the widower or his late wife, but from what Loretta had told us, they had been married for over forty years. Loretta’s husband had died twenty years earlier, and as far as I knew, she had never dated anyone after her husband passed away. Wasn’t that what widows and widowers were supposed to do? Wasn’t there a rule that they had to wait at least one year before dating again? I wasn’t sure, but as I looked out the nearby window at the widower walking toward his home, whatever sympathy and compassion I felt for him earlier vanished.
Loretta returned to the kitchen, and without a word to either Krista or myself, continued her work.
Krista and I exchanged looks, both wondering if one of us should comment on what we overheard. After a few moments of silence between us, Krista spoke.
“Grandma, did he ask you out?” she asked.
“He alluded to something like that,” Loretta chuckled.
“You’re not going out with him, are you?” Krista said in a voice that made me think she was going to lose all respect for her grandmother if she even considered dating this man.
Loretta waved her hand dismissively and said that she had no interest in dating anyone.
Krista and I looked at each other again. I shrugged and returned to my work. I found it strange how casually Loretta dismissed the entire incident. Questions swirled through my mind. Had she been asked out by this man while his wife was alive? Did it strike her as odd that he had asked her out just a few days after his wife died? Had she been asked out by enough widowers in the past that she was hardened to their advances?
I never asked any of those questions, but looking back, I wish I had. Maybe Loretta would have imparted some wisdom about her widowed neighbor that would have helped me understand his actions. Perhaps she had some insight on how widows and widowers grieve. At the very least, her words might have given me some comfort two years later, when I found myself with a strong desire to start dating only two months after Krista took her own life.
***
Losing a spouse is harder for men than it is for women.
Widowers are more likely than widows to experience declines in their physical and emotional health in the months and years following their wife’s passing. They’re more likely to suffer from depression and chronic stress. Many widowers have difficulty sleeping and problems concentrating, and often show little or no interest in activities they enjoyed when their wife was alive. As a result, widowers are one-third more likely to die after being recently widowed. Widows, on the other hand, have no increased chance of dying after their husbands pass away.
When a man’s wife dies, he loses more than just a partner. He loses his confidant, his lover, his companion, and his biggest supporter. His identity as a protector, provider, and leader vanishes. With few reasons to get out of bed in the morning, widowers view the emptiness in their lives as a problem that needs to be solved. And how do they fix their broken lives and grieving hearts? They start dating again.
It’s not a question of if widowers will date again, but how soon it will happen.
Over the years, I’ve spoken with and coached hundreds of widowers of various ages and backgrounds. Nearly every widower I’ve spoken with had a strong desire to date in the weeks or months after his wife’s death. It didn’t matter how long they were married, how their wife died, their cultural background, their beliefs, their values, or anything else. Nearly all of them described an urge to find companionship soon after their wife passed away. Some of them fought or brushed aside these feelings and waited several months or years before finally dating, but most of them were quick to act in the hope that being with another woman would alleviate their pain and loneliness.
If you’re dating a widower, it’s vital that you understand this internal need widowers have for companionship, because it’s what drives them to date long before they’re emotionally or mentally ready for a serious relationship. Most widowers—especially recent widowers—aren’t looking for a serious relationship when they start dating again. What they’re looking for is companionship.
Widowers who seek companionship want a woman to do one thing: fill the gaping hole in their hearts. They believe that by having someone—anyone—in their life, their hearts will be healed and the empty feeling that consumes them will vanish. This desire for companionship is so strong that widowers will start a serious relationship with women they wouldn’t date if they weren’t grieving.
Let me give you a personal example. In the months following Krista’s death, I started a relationship with a woman I’ll call Jennifer—a female friend who lived six hundred miles away in Phoenix, Arizona. Though Jennifer and I had been friends for many years, we had never dated or been romantically involved with each other prior to Krista’s passing. Our relationship started innocently enough when Jennifer periodically called to check up on me after Krista died. She’d ask how I was doing, and we’d spend five or ten minutes catching up. Somewhere along the way, our conversations become more serious, and our friendship evolved into a long-distance relationship.
After a few months of talking on the phone every night and monthly flights to see each other in person, Jennifer believed we would get married and live happily ever after. Though I never dissuaded Jennifer from drawing that conclusion, marrying her was something I could never personally see happening. Her dreams of the two of us spending the rest of our lives together came to an abrupt end when I dumped her after becoming serious with Julianna. (More details about this long-distance relationship are found in my memoir Room for Two).
Under normal circumstances, I never would have dated Jennifer or become involved in a serious relationship with her, because we simply weren’t compatible. However, because I craved companionship and was looking for someone—anyone—to help fill the void Krista left in my heart, I ignored obvious red flags, brushed aside my internal doubts, and let the relationship become serious. It was only when I realized that there was someone who matched up perfectly with me—someone I could see myself spending the rest of my life with—that the relationship with Jennifer came to an end.
I share this story to illustrate the fact that widowers often start dating for the wrong reasons. Relationships that begin because widowers want to heal their broken hearts or fill the void in their lives never end well. And you don’t have to take my word for it. Throughout this book, you’ll read heartbreaking stories of women who were in relationships with widowers who could never make these women feel like the most important person in their lives.
By now, some of you are wondering if the widower you’re dating is serious about your relationship or is simply using you as a placeholder until someone better comes along. In the upcoming chapters, I’ll show how you can know if the widower you’re dating is using you to soothe his broken heart or is actually ready to start a new chapter of his life with you. The purpose of this chapter is to help you understand the motivations and desires that nudge widowers back into the dating game before they’re emotionally ready to take that step. When you know that widowers are driven by an internal need to find companionship, it’s easier to evaluate their words, actions, and behavior.
At the beginning of this chapter, I told a story about a widower who announced his interest in dating Krista’s grandmother on the day of his late wife’s funeral. Today, I look back on this widower’s actions with a lot more clarity and charity. Though I still think he should have waited until after the funeral to ask Loretta out, I better understand the reason behind his actions and regret judging him as harshly as I did. I don’t know if that widower ever dated anyone or found love again. If he did remarry, I hope he could give her his whole heart and soul. Loretta, on the other hand, never went out with him or anyone else for the rest of her life. She passed away in 2005, four years after Krista died.
