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.