FGS how long am I supposed to wear widows" weeds for?

[Weighnow]

DH died 3 years ago. As is apparently common, all our couple friends have disappeared, but they seem to think because they were "close" with DH they're somehow entitled to an opinion on how I live my life.

As I lost all my friends, all the people DH thought would be there for me, I've had to pretty much build a new life from scratch and I've done well with it, making a nice group of mixed friends through various hobbies.

One is a divorced man similar age to me. We get on, both single with grown up children, so have more time than some of the others and we've spent some time out and about together. I don't known if it might develop in the future, but ATM were just friends, he's a nice man and he's been good to me, when I needed a friend.

Either way it's no one else's business and even if it was "something", it's been 3 years! However, apparently my behaviour is appalling and it upsets them because of how fond they were of DH.

I didn't even meet this man until DH had been dead 2 years, and I am absolutely certain he'd have been furious to see the way they've behaved towards me.

I'm not really asking for answers, just venting.

My mother certainly thinks this. She thinks watching a man, particularly an older man, grocery shopping for one in supermarkets some kind of tragedy. I say ‘And why aren’t you sparing a tear for that 60something woman over there clearly also shopping for a one-person household?’ she says ‘Ah, that’s different!’

Yet all these incapable men somehow run the world..

Indeed, but my mother’s heart still breaks for a man with a single-person ready meal in his basket.

(Or stains on his clothes, whereas a woman of unkempt appearance gets short shrift.)

Maybe a generational thing @LandArt ?

Yes. Though I do see elements of it in presumably much younger women on here, the joky ‘Bless, men don’t see dirt! Or remember birthdays! Or have the capacity to phone their parents regularly, bless them!’ thing.

I know and it is embarrassing more to the women who think this than the men who act stupid and incompetent.

My DH died 3 months ago today. He was my best friend. I have, with the support of friends, DS, DSS and DD and their families, begun to do things that might interest me and where I will meet people. Every now and then I am sad because a) I am doing something I would not be doing if DH had not died, and b) because I am doing something he could have enjoyed. But I know he would not wish me to be eternally miserable and if, in two years time, as you have, I met a friend I wanted to spend time with he would be glad and I think all my family and friends would be as well (not least because they won't have to invite me and my newly acquire dog to lunch every other Sunday - joke btw). People who criticise you for a friendship that makes you happy, whether it leads to more closeness or not, are being both unkind and mean spirited. Your LDH would not wish you to be unhappy forever in the same way as you will have been (and I am) soon after his death. Ignore the critics. Be friends. Be happy.

I was widowed in my late 20s (about 15 years ago), I met my now DH 18 months later, and friends - even those who I'd met through my late DH - were nothing but happy for me. My late husband's best friend is now one of my DH's closest friends and godfather to our children. OP, your 'friend's' reactions are not normal, I am a stranger and I wish you all the best for your potential new relationship, so not sure why your so-called friends don't have the same attitude x

OP, tell them to do one, and mind their own business! They weren't there for you when you needed them.