Dad dating soon after mum died is upsetting and affecting our relationship

[beckstar2021]

hi all, So parents were married 40+ years, mum passed away last year after a short illness. A few months later dad is looking for a new partner he found one they dated it didn’t work out. So he’s back looking again, he’s posting his photo on socials, joining all the online dating sites locally. Every single time you speak to him he is on about women. I find this very disrespectful & it’s screaming desperate and it is starting to make me resent him & not want to see him. I feel as if mum didn’t matter, & them 40years were nothing, i just feel like he is being very selfish.
I understand he may get lonely but he is still of good health and can be very active , we have suggested many things taken him to find social clubs etc , & he wants female company not male!
I really don’t like the way i am starting to feel towards him, i never hear from him unless i call or chase up, i never get a how are you it’s just all so very self absorbed.
Has anyone else experienced this with a parent when their other parent has been bereaved? i feel like i could scream sometimes!!!!

It's not just about men struggling with the everyday aspects, it's about loneliness and having no one else to turn to emotionally. Most men don't have many men friends, or ones they can talk with, anyway, so they often lose both the household organiser and their social support all in one when their wives die.

It's a bit tragic sometimes, I used to meet men like this when I was dating in mid-life and they'd tell me about how it wasn't worth cooking for one person so they just ate ready meals or whatever. Two of my friends/relatives dads have moved on within a month or two, let alone a year, although it hasn't always worked out.

I get why the men go for it, I'm mystified why the women they get with go for it.

I’d hate to think of my husband dating after I’d gone. Maybe selfish, but that's how I feel.My children would hate it too.

What, ever? What if he's relatively young? Or lonely? Should he just sit for 20 or 30 years, thinking about you?

Well, my dad was devastated for 18 months after a 60 yr marriage to my mum who was his soul mate. Then has developed a friend ship as they call it (81 and 78) and we couldn’t be more happy . It’s given him a new lease of life and he’s really decided that he’s going to enjoy the time he has left . I know that my mum would have been furious with him if he’d spent the time he had left feeling sorry for himself. Both he and his new partner/friend had long marriages that they’d dearly prefer to be in, but as far as second best goes, this seems to be a much better option than spending your final years alone. But as is often said on here, everyone mourns differently and there are no right or wrong ways of doing it .

That 18 months makes a big difference though. There are some fathers on this thread who barely waited 18 days. And three months has come up again and again in posts on this thread.

I think by 18 months, our own grief for a lost parent is starting to settle, so we manage the transition reasonably. But having ones father dating when the funeral is barely over, has to be hard to take.

I’m sure I read thst statistically men who’ve been happily married and bereaved tend to get back in the dating game faster than anyone else. If they were unhappy or relationship ended ( divorce etc.) they tended to have a longer period of singledom.

I do understand why you find it upsetting but it’s not unusual behaviour.

Sorry to be cynical OP but did your dad rely on your mum for household chores?

Her dad was dating just a few months after her mum passed away. Literally could count it in weeks. That’s hard to bear. She’s perfectly entitled to feel upset by that. I think most emotionally evolved people would struggle with that timeline.

Unfortunately I think this will be my father as well. if my mum goes first he will want someone to cook/iron his shirts and sadly I think he won’t be short of takers/gold diggers as he is incredibly naive, so I think it will be similar situation to a previous poster here.
The only upside to my mum going first is that she will finally be free of him and I no longer need to have anything to do with him.

I’m sorry for your loss.
I’d be ok with that. I don’t think it’s selfish or ‘disrespectful’. I think it’s a little controlling to be wanting to make someone not seek out company after they have been bereaved. He might really feel like he needs female company. It doesn’t mean he thinks your Mum was irrelevant or that he didn’t love her.
I’m not religious and don’t believe in any sort of afterlife, maybe that makes me more pragmatic.
My brother dated a women less than a year after his wife died and I encouraged him. I know he was madly in love with his wife and her with him and him starting a new relationship after her death didn’t change those facts.

He is allowed to date and grieve however he wants. You can ask him not to share details.

I’m interested in your perspective on dating someone soon after bereavement. Obviously it’s worked out in the long term for you and your DH but did you feel any reticence? I just can’t imagine feeling comfortable in that situation, no matter how much I liked someone.

I'm not sure why 'retinence' - in my specific circumstances I didn't know my now dh or his wife before she died. Our shared view was that we just gave it time (as I've said neither of us was actually looking) and it was very much just sharing friendship after something awful. No amount of retinence brings the other person back and death isn't a death sentence for everyone else? DH equally is very capable of looking after himself, but the financial practicalities of running 2 households eventually came into the equation too. There are obviously ways that people meet other people after the death of a spouse without shoving it down their children's throats. Had DH sons still been children rather than adults with their own lives then its not something we would have done as I personally wouldn't want to try and replace a parent in that way. But, that's my personal circumstances and I understand everyone feels differently depending on so many factors. I certainly wasn't 'hovering' over a widow.

My dad was on dating websites a month after my mum died. We had huge rows about it and it was really upsetting. When my mum died I lost him too because he changed and no longer had any interest in me. It was deeply hurtful.

The silly thing about it was, I had no issue with him finding someone else but I just wanted him to be a bit respectful about it, and not do it literally the second her funeral was over.

Anyway, he went on to date various women and our relationship drifted apart with no effort from his side. He then moved miles away despite me warning him it wasnt a good idea as it was too far for me to visit regularly or help him. He did it anyway end ended up lonely and frail. He died a few years ago. Sadly, our relationship never recovered because of his behaviour and I ended up having some therapy to make sense of it all.

I am so sorry OP- its really hurtful.

This sums it up. Men especially from certain generations cant cope without a female to look after them or dont want to.
But he sounds like he could be more discreet and make an effort to ask how you are sometimes

THIS. Most of us arent saying our parents cant or shouldn't date anyone else.
I wanted my father to be happy again- I dont enjoy seeing him miserable and sad.

However, I dont think it's asking too much to wait until the funeral flowers have died before doing it. geez.

When my mum died I lost him too because he changed and no longer had any interest in me. It was deeply hurtful.
Ouch this hit home. When my mother died, I realised how much she had done to nurture the relationship between me and my father. I also realised how self absorbed he was.
He took up with this awful woman who was always causing drama. She even threatened to beat me up if she saw me in the street- and my dad somehow accepted this. Of course because he hated conflict so much, he was telling her it was because of me she couldn't move in etc.
She threw a final shit fit at his funeral and told everyone I had destroyed the will - which left her money. All completely untrue

Ouch this hit home. When my mother died, I realised how much she had done to nurture the relationship between me and my father. I also realised how self absorbed he was

Yes. I had never expected this and it came as a huge shock. To this day I cant work out if he was always like this and I just never noticed because my mum made all the effort for him or if it was grief that changed him.

I also have no respect for people who do this. It would change totally how I felt about them. To me it would make me wonder what their original motive was. Just looking for a housewife and someone to bear your children? Any one will do. Many men seem to want ti have a wife and kids but don’t want ti be a husband or father. Now just a housewife because they can’t do it alone? Pathetic.

This is my father-in-law, and I find it so hard to listen to, I think it's also this sense of entitlement for female company and the expectation it will drop into his lap despite him seemingly doing absolutely no "work" on himself following his wife's passing to reflect on who he is as a person, what he'd bring to a relationship etc. So I can only imagine how hard this is with a father. I think you just have to say you don't want the blow by blow account of his dating life, and just keep conversation short and casual. I do often find that these sorts of situations reveal that without the effort and nurturing input of the mother, who was clearly doing a lot of the emotional heavy-lifting, the bonds between family start to fray. Wishing you well.

@Lightuptheroom Thanks for replying. I don’t think I implied that you were ‘hovering’ - you said you met him after his wife died. The reason I asked if you were reticent is that I could imagine I would feel exactly that about someone recently bereaved and unlikely to have processed that. I’m unsure I’d trust that a grieving man would really give me what I’d want. I’d be equally unlikely to enter a relationship with someone who’d recently come out of a long relationship (or enter one when I had) for exactly the same reason. Of course everyone is different and is comfortable with different things, it’s fascinating to me how people are so different about relationships.

His sons’ views are unlikely to be that different just because they’re not kids. You describe the oldest as having been vile but do you not have any sympathy with his feelings? They’d lost their mum, no matter how old they are. It’s a shame things haven’t settled with the older one, but not uncommon when things happen very quickly, as is evident from the thread. Do you have your own children? Do they feel the same?

My father-in-law was like this - jumped into my DH's car after MIL's funeral and started talking about dating on the drive home.

Exactly utterly horrible and insensitive post. There’s a middle ground between being alone forever and jumping back into dating before even 6 months has passed and telling your daughter all about the ups and downs of it all while she is still grieving and neglecting to keep in touch with your daughter because you’re too busy looking for a new woman .

How about waiting a decent amount of time to start dating again, not letting it consume you while you’re doing it and not giving constant updates to your children until maybe you meet someone and it’s serious and you want them to meet?

A few years ago I spoke to a guy on a dating site who said he was widowed, I asked how long ago his wife died and said I was sorry to hear that and he said - oh don’t worry, it was ages ago.

I pressed and said exactly when? He eventually said : “last year” !!

I blocked him immediately, I have no idea of when exactly it was the previous year but if his wife died at any point “last year” that is not “ ages ago”!

Personally I would run from a man who is desperate to date shortly after a breakup or death because I’d think he was co-dependent and unable to live and do life without relying on a woman which is not attractive to me.

Is it safe to assume those who have said @beckstar2021 is overreacting are comfortable with the idea of their own parent - or own spouse - hooking up with someone soon after they’re widowed?