Is it reasonable to ask a woman to change her profile picture?

An acquaintance of mine still has her profile pic as her and her deceased husband on Facebook. He’s been gone 8 years and she now has 2 children with his best friend, l find it a little odd. But you can’t tell her what to do. It might not even occur to her what her pic is on there. Asides from everything he was her husband and she probs loved him very much. Don’t overstep.

OP I feel for you. I think the fact she still has a picture of herself with her late husband on FB is symbolic. It seems she's not ready to move on just yet. I'm not saying she should erase her late husband or anything but if she was ready for a serious committed relationship with another man my hunch is she'd use a picture of herself on her own at least. A few months is still a short time to be seeing someone. I think it would be good to give her more time as you clearly like her. Dating is one thing but making a commitment is another. I don't know what an appropriate length of time would be before talking about commitment or even marriage. A year? 18 months? I don't think it would be a good idea to ask her to change the photo. This would come across as weird and, as others have said, controlling. The relationship is still new so fragile and needs to be nurtured carefully. Wishing you all the best.

Other way around for me. My partner’s wife died 4 years ago. He lives with me and we have photos of her up and them together. He wears their wedding bands around his neck (they are joined together) he goes to where her ashes are on her birthday, Christmas, Easter, wedding anniversary, and the day she died. Her picture is on his phone every time he opens it as the Home Screen. I love him for it. His profile on Facebook is the two of them together happy with their dog on a hill side. I absolutely love 🥰 that it hasn’t changed and she isn’t being erased. In another world they loved each other and would still be together. I never met her but she sounds like she was a force of nature, she helped to make him the man he is and he’s a better person for it.

I absolutely don’t want it to change. He talks about her and that part of our life. She is part of our family.

Has she been allowed to bring some of her family photos to your house? Eg one of her, her husband and the children. If not maybe consider it or ask her to.

I’m not in competition with my partner’s wife, she is part of him, not a ghost in the attic. You can’t erase the past. I think from recollection we were talking one weekend and he was spending a lot of time with my children and I just said have you got a photo of her you can bring over for the children and then he did. It was great for them to understand what she looked like etc and when his son visits family photos are up.

I have never been jealous or doubted he loves me. His grief isn’t linear and it’s not an injury where you get better and better and forget. His wife, his life partner that he totally adored - she has tragically died- he can still get bad days torn by grief and I hold him. I was honoured enough to be taken to where her ashes where on her birthday and I asked my partner if I could leave her a letter that I had written and he was so lovely and let me have a few minutes. In that note I promised her she would always be part of my family now and loved and I mean it.

Try changing your perspective I know my partner loves me, I know how her treats his wife 4 years on, I know the man loves and loves forever - and that’s part of why I love him.

These things take time. My first husband and I were serperated (amicably) for a couple of years before I met my current husband. I continued to wear my wedding ring, not so much because I wanted to stay married to my first, but because I just didn’t feel ‘available’. After a year or so, when we knew the new relationship was going somewhere, he asked me, gently, why I still wore my ring; tbh I had pretty much forgotten it, but it made me think about things and I felt quite ready to take it off. I don’t think there was anything sinister, I wasn’t clinging on to the past, it was just something I had worn for so many years, and the. It was easy to let go.

Frankly, neither her social media pages, nor her grieving, are yours to control.

What do you mean by “I have talked to her about it”? I wonder because it seems you still have no idea what she wants from your relationship. You shouldn’t ask her to change her FB profile picture, but it’s absolutely reasonable for you to have in in-depth discussion about the relationship, your feeling about her and the relationship and what she feels/wants. When you are both on the same page and if that page is a serious relationship, with strong feelings for her, then and only then, should you tell her how you feel about the picture. The decision whether or not to change it, is then hers alone.

I have to agree with this. I'm not the only MNer who has picked up on the conflict in your tone and approach.

And what is with defining this woman as The Widow?

…worth my effort and time to try to date a widow …
…I’m just trying to get some advice here and see if this is not wasting my time on a widow…
…that is the dilemma of dating a widow…
…perhaps assigned that she’s not ready to move on as a widow…
…I just have never met someone who was a widow...
…I have never been around a widow before that was like this…

You appear to relish using the word. It might be what she's been through but I can guarantee it is not who she is. But then again, I hope she has got you tagged as Creepy Old Divorcee.

Before you learn how to date anyone, you should probably learn how to develop self-awareness, humility, and open mindedness. Hope this helps!

This in spades.

Sounds like you have a lot of growing up to do @NewmanintownRob You have had a lot of good advice on here, but are throwing your dummy out of your pram and sulking, because it's not what you want to hear. And so WHAT if this woman has never left the town she grew up in?!

I HATE this snobby, arrogant attitude that some people have when they've travelled quite a bit, or left the town they grew up in some years ago, like they're soooooo superior to people who never moved away and haven't travelled much - or at all... 🙄 You're no better than her you know!

@NewmanintownRob

I’m just trying to get some advice here and see if this is wasting my time on a widow.

FGS just do her a favour, and end it with her. She deserves better!

As I said before I fear we will read about the op in the papers.
Imagine being this blinkered
Seek professional help @NewmanintownRob

This is one seriously creepy situation.

You are in fact stalking this woman.

You are obsessing jealously about her, you're possessive about her, and have turned her in your mind into a slut/ whore.

If you think a widowed mother has time to entertain men in her bed, you need to give your head a wobble.

Get out of this woman's life before she calls the police and reports your creepy and stalkerish behaviour.

You have interpreted the kindness of a random woman (we women are conditioned to be kind when faced with persisten men) as something completely different.

SUCH a passive aggressive response. Full of sarc and snark at the "meanies" and derogatory to the woman you profess to adore - does the fact she has "never left town" make you better than her?

Edited to add: the more I read back on this and listen to your tone, the more I am convinced that despite some of the things you've said, you think you are the catch and how dare she waste your time.

Do you have any friends in real life?

I'm sorry, but you come across as someone who reads far too much into casual encounters and doesn't actually know this woman personally. You call her a widow so often.

Your obsession with permanence and fear of wasting time is a problem that isn't hers to fix.

Fixating and obsessing are problems you should address.

She is not serious about you.

Move on.

I just saw it as two people on different relationship trajectories.

I am learning how to date a widow who has never left town - while I have friends and family all over the US.

You really, actually, don't like this woman, do you? All your posts are about what you want, and how much her behaviour and communication is annoying you.

If only she were on MN we could all point her to the huge bunting of red flags in your posts.

If any of this is genuine, of course

@NewmanintownRob "woe is me" still not taking advice.
(Thanks autocorrect!)

I feel/fear the op is someone we will all read about in the papers with this sort of behaviour

You really need to pull yourself together before someone gets hurt.

She has already been through one of the worst things that can happen to someone, and you're already here talking about ultimatums and not wanting to "waste your time." You know the situation. It's not going to change. She's not going to suddenly wake up one day and have forgotten her husband, or say, "You know what, I'm so glad I was widowed because now I've found you. Let's throw away everything that reminds me of him."

If she's "the one" then it's time to put her first and let her dictate the pace, and stop trying to control things.

If you can't handle it, then she might be the one for you, but you aren't the one for her.

She's keeping you at arms length because she knows that she can't trust you because you've still not got your head around the situation she's in.

EvilsElsasPetSnowman · Yesterday 13:04

You can’t ask her to change her profile picture because that controlling
She probably doesn’t have pictures of you around her house out of respect for her kids.

Can I suggest if you are gonna be in a relationship with a widow, that it’s better to not try and erase her dead husband but accept and embrace it

As often happens on here, the first post nails it. You can't just erase the man out of her life @NewmanintownRob If I started dating someone 4 years after my DH died, and he told me to erase all traces of my deceased husband, he would given a very short shrift. I'd tell him to do one. Anything between us would be finished right there.

This woman you're dating must have been married quite a long time (25 years +) if she has adult children in their 20s.

Sounds like you need to not date widows mate.

I really just don't understand why you are so obsessed with facebook as a man in your 50s. And surely, if it's going well, you can ask her about it anyway? I can also assure you that if I was dating a man from another country and he wanted to police my facebook so that his family and friends in the other country coulld stalk my facebook, I'd tell him to jog on. I'd also be completely uninterested in developing facebook-relationships with your extended family and friends. If I post a picture o fmy DH and tag him, I get loads of likes and comments from people who are on HIS facebook. That's fine. I certainly won't be accepting a bunch of friend requests from those people just because they are facebook friends with him. Nor will I be interacting with them, exchanging banter etc.

Its fuck all to do with a man its massively inappropriate either way.

If a 19 year old boy came on here and said his girlfriend of a couple of months is pressuring him to remove a photo memorial of his ex from Facebook who died in a car crash at 16 because it 'embarrass' her in front of her friends and family. Also moaning to people that she thinks his facebook is set to private and accusing him of hiding things (just because theres not enough posts) everyone would tell him she is a walking red flag and to run for the hills.

If she was your DD facing a boyfriend like OP you certainly wouldn't encourage her to be with someone this wildly insecure, jealous, obsessive and controlling and its straight out of the gate.

They have been dating for just a few months and hes spiraling in emotional dis-regulation and trying to dictate her life and grief timescale from losses from before she met him fgs.

Yes. This is a man who is refusing to take anyone's advice on board. Most posters are saying the same thing to him.

There is no anti-male bias here.