Can we talk about widowed fathers, like if you mum died first? What's normal behaviour?

[PeaceLillyWhiteFlower]

My mum died two years ago, from cancer. Their marriage had often been fraught, but calmer in the last 20 odd years. At the very end there was bad blood between them.

Since she died my father has been pretty proactive about looking for another woman. A fair few dates. He seems to have settled on one.

He was always down on my mother, though utterly charming to the outside world. I have barely spoken to him for about a month. I've been raging to think of my mum six feet under while he sails of into the sunset with some woman a few years older than me.

The only person I can really talk to is my brother. He lives abroad with his family and is fairly detatched from it all.

What's normal here? It just looks like a huge pile of male effing entitlement to me.

Yes, they are adults. I have adult DC too.

@PeaceLillyWhiteFlower I’ve read all your posts and just wanted to tell my story
Mum died of cancer at age 61 , she and Dad were devoted to each other and he was devastated by her illness and death
Mum had shared her jewellery between me and my siblings before her death. Everything else was willed to Dad and on his death to the 3 grown up children

However , only a year later he had a lady friend ( 20 years younger than him , only 5 years older than me ) within a week or so she’d moved in , she has 2 daughters in their 20 s , the same age as my nephew

They married without telling us , he left everything in his will to her , she chucked out lots of bits and pieces without asking I’d we wanted them , luckily I found a painting Mum had bought after I had my first child ( of a Gran , Mum and baby ) and tearfully asked if I could have it , and got the response of I didn’t know it meant anything to you

To be fair to her , she did look after him , he had dementia and spent the last year or so of his life in a nursing home , she was there everyday making sure he was comfortable , chatting to him , feeding him , taking his clothes home to wash etc

Men just don’t like being on their own , they want someone to look after them

I think most men remarry, and for women it is more 50/50. Men in their 60s generally have had a housewife and are not used to running a house - not all men, but a high proportion of that age group.

DFIL was widowed in his early 60s, and basically couldn’t cope on his own, SIL took over as housekeeper initially, then he got a new girlfriend and moved her in immediately to take over housekeeping duties.

DSMIL is a perfectly nice lady, and we get on fine with her, but I do get the distinct impression that DFIL would have shacked up with anyone who could iron.

Thank you for sharing your experiences @Greatnieceremembering @Soffit @H1Drangea @Changechangychange @Essexgirlupnorth In a testing new family arrangement I hope that you can/could sometimes laugh and not get torn up by things.

Interesting to hear the range of options. A father content to be single would definitely be my preference, but we don't all get that. Most people want to feel that their parents loved each other.

Have been crying some more and looking at photos from the last few years of mum's life. There's no going back is there?

I have felt so angry and wanted to avenge my mother. But me ranting and raging or carping and sniping doesn't help. Hopefully have turned a corner.

@SpaceshiptoMars and @morescrummythanyummy It did always feel that my introverted mother was the loser and my extroverted father was the winner. And now winner takes all. I haven't been trying to cut him off, but if you can't say something nice, best not say anything at all. If he's being unbearably smug and pompous, I reserve the right to take another break. Like Soffit says, sometimes you have to protect your own mental health.

A few months ago my father metioned being buried with my mother. I liked that idea, but didn't realise that it would soon be under threat and I needed to noisily enthuse. People here will probably say stop trying to control things. But if I knew that order would eventually be restored, the next however-long would be easier to bear.

My mum died years ago at the age of 48. My dad, same age, was out chatting up women within 6 months. Within a year he had moved a woman and her son into our family home kicking my brother out. He then married another woman who was an evil cow and spent her whole time trying to erase my mum. I’ve not spoken to her since his death. Some men are 100% selfish and forget they have family. It’s all about them. My life would have been much improved if my dad had died first.

Did pre-War men do this too? Oh my life yes, they absolutely did. Often marrying their dead wife’s younger sister or the governess or something. Happened loads - to “give their children a mother” (yeah right).

Honestly, this isn’t some new thing.

I find it hard to accept that most men are like this. Surely there are noble widowers out there who remain loyal to their bereaved spouse until they also die? I mean, surely it is hard work for an old guy to put up with a whole new set of shenanigans, shag a younger gold digger for England and put up with a set of older stepchildren who have mainly material needs and are feigning affection towards them not very convincingly?
How can that be preferable to becoming a dignified widower and taking up a few new hobbies and maintaining a relationship with your own children and grandchildren?

I am going to be brutally honest about the fact that if there had been a choice (which there rarely is), then we would have readily chosen for the other parent to die. I feel like we lost the wrong parent: the kind, selfless, dignified, level headed one.
My father did test the water. He was trying to elicit sympathy for his mild arthritis and he asked us why everybody was focusing on my mum rather than sympathising with him ( this was after ICU had had ‘the chat’ about ‘end of life’ procedures so he was not under any illusion that she was undoubtedly in her final days.

Perhaps narcissists genuinely feel aggrieved about a relative lack of attention in such a situation. Life can be so unfair.

Surely there are noble widowers out there who remain loyal to their bereaved spouse until they also die?

Would you say this to a widower without any children or grandchildren? Or is the loyalty not to the dead (and no longer taking any notice) spouse but to the adult children?

I find it hard to accept that most men are like this. Surely there are noble widowers out there who remain loyal to their bereaved spouse until they also die?

It's not noble or loyal to remain alone after the death of a spouse. I've chosen to remain single following the loss of my DH but it's a choice made for other reasons. I wouldn't be here if my dad had 'remained loyal' to the wife he lost in his late twenties.

Surely there are noble widowers out there who remain loyal to their bereaved spouse until they also die?

why on earth should they? Their wife is dead, they’re not married anymore. Why should they stay single for the rest of their lives because of someone who neither knows or cares anymore if they don’t want to. It’s ridiculous to expect that. And anyone who thinks they should needs to give their head a wobble, life if for living not for making yourself miserable and lamenting the past of you don’t want to.

@Soffit the situation you describe is very sad. I hope you and your siblings are good support for each other.

It is bizarre that once the wife and mother has gone a man can bin her memory and offspring like that. This seems to be common in many of the stories. I can understand a widowed person wanting company, but at the expense of a relationship with their children and grandchildren seems weak.

@saraclara I doubt many of us would be here if young widows and widowers had never remarried in the past.

But Soffit used the term loyal, not single.

To be fair, these days it is quite often the other way round. The adult children tell the dad that if he remarries he doesn't see either them or the grandchildren. Permanently.

Is that your situation @SpaceshiptoMars ?

Pretty much so with DH's eldest. It will be interesting to see how it plays out with the economy as it is. The shutters are now down at the bank of 'mum' and Dad....

So you are married to a widower and his eldest child has cut contact? Does your husband even care? Lots of the widowers mentioned in this thread don't seem to.

@PeaceLillyWhiteFlower Thanks, I did mean “loyal” rather than anything else. I’m probably not the best person to judge this type of situation with much objectivity any more. Tbh, sibling relationships have become more distant because of my father’s behaviour which turned all of our inherited values on their head within a short space of time. It actually becomes scarily easy to cut people out/ distance oneself once it has effectively been dished our to you by your own parent. We are all stuck within the grief cycle at different stages. The person whom we wanted to support turned into a stranger or even an enemy in some respects.
In the end, he was only asking after us to ‘get the gossip’ on the difficult challenges which life was throwing at us. However, there was no fatherly concern whatsoever. He was doing it so that he could relay it to the new woman and they could mutually agree that it further proved that we were the wretched victims of bad mothering!

I was just watching SouthEast news and the widower of Julia James ( not my home region but I am staying there at the moment). The authenticity of his grief response was so different to anything I witnessed.

How were things with your father while your mum was alive @Soffit ?

Sorry, that Q for @SpaceshiptoMars for her perspective

We were definitely closer to our mother but he was the slightly younger parent of the two and more ‘fun’ and ‘funny’. He would come home with stories about his indiscretions and crushes and tell them to the kids in a funny way. There was one particularly awkward situation where he was meant to be eloping with a client ( who wanted to leave her husband and kids for him) but he stood her up and we happened to run into her on our way to Sainsbury’s a few hours after he was a no show! It seemed funny at the time but now that I look back on it I do not know why eight year old me was privy to those conversations. There was also a very graphic holiday romance with a German lady and he described all the times she turned him down but then succumbed aboard a Nile cruise!

He was always present and the parent who wanted the children whereas my mum was very regal and regulated, less emotional and always blamed him for why they had more kids than she would have liked. There were dark insinuations like that literally up until the day she collapsed and never regained consciousness after an argument.

She always hinted that his clowning and charming the ladies was all a big act and that he had a dark side which we never saw. We would have forgiven it if he had carried on being a lovable rogue but everything changed with the new woman including his tone of voice, mannerisms, political views. He is a stranger through and through now which was all the more reason to make a clean break.

@PeaceLillyWhiteFlower Sorry- that was a bit too long. How was your relationship with your father and who is supporting you irl?

@PeaceLillyWhiteFlower Oh, he cares. Difficult though, when a child turns out to be ruthless and utterly self-centred and happy to use access to the grandchildren to reorientate the entire family around themselves.

@Soffit some of that sounds pretty dark really. Do you and sibs talk about your childhood memories? Is there anyone else to talk to, eg mum's sibs?

I have mostly had good relationship with my father. Not always. Just seeing how mum saw things has been upsetting. I don't want to carry her angst for the rest of my life though. I really needed some time out from my dad to steady myself.