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!!!!

I agree. And that's what so upsetting for children, of any age, who are mourning their mother. The realisation that their father (and it is much less common for a woman to do this) simply sees women as interchangeable, just like a hoover or an air fryer.

Many people wait longer after the death of a pet to get another one, than some men do to replace their wife.

It shows a lack of care and compassion for their bereaved children, and actually reveals a very profound misogyny that allows them to replace one woman with another.

OP, massive handhold. I am sorry I don’t have the capacity right now to read through this thread as have just had another major loss. I didn’t want to read and run. My parents were also married over forty years and my dad was very quick to move on. It took a long while for my relationship with my dad to improve again - but it did. It’s hard having other women thrown in your face so soon and there was a lot of blindsiding. Here’s a link to threads I wrote at the time if they’re any use to you.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/2633373-aibu-to-be-a-bit-shell-shocked?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=app_share

I’d tell him straight ‘Bloody hell Dad! Calm down! It’s like you’re desperate to find a woman, any woman. It’s like Mum never existed. If you meet someone else in the next few years, then fine, but you’re carrying on like a geriatric desperado. Chill for a bit.’

Ah I see some insensitive comments about "why wait- life is short" and "people should be happy, nothing wrong with that, timing doesnt matter" etc

By this rationale, why even wait until the person is dead? the moment they get a palliative diagnosis you may as well start lining up a replacement and open up an online dating account - God forbid you waste a single second being alone since life is soooo short. Then, once your spouse has died, and the funeral is over you can move straight in with their replacement. Bosh. Job done. Life is short.

🙄

I get that is hard after your mum died not that long ago. But your dad is craving female company - some people just don’t do well on their own. I’m pretty sure if I die first and he’s not ancient, my husband will be wanting to date very soon. He’d be absolutely miserable without a partner.

Trying to dissuade your dad is only going to cause a rift. This is his way of healing after bereavement and I think you need to try and be happy for him.

Trying to dissuade your dad is only going to cause a rift. This is his way of healing after bereavement and I think you need to try and be happy for him.

No. Forcing a fake emotion isnt going to help anyone here. The OP doesnt have to feel anything she doesnt want to. It's her dad that is forcing her to listen to his relationships issues when its inappropriate and she's grieving. HE is the one who needs to try and be more sensitive here

Sorry OP, forgot to link the other thread.
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/bereavement/2801308-christmas-or-not?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=app_share

Men can’t cope without a woman,simple fact.

This happened in DHs family. His aunt died and within a few months his uncle had a girlfriend he met when out drinking.
However he liked going out a lot and him and his wife went to working men’s clubs a lot so it was a massive change for him to be alone. Also everyone was avoiding him, including his own children because to be frank, he was annoying. So I’m not surprised he attached himself to someone new.
Everyone was so appalled but they were just happy to leave him sitting alone all the time. New woman was a massive drinker which was a bad influence on him and he died fairly soon.

Apparently those who had happy marriages are the one most likely to move on the soonest. My parents were (very happily) married for 50 years when my dad died and my mum started dating (at 72) six months after he died -her theory was that she'd been very happy once and even if she only met someone who made her half as happy as my dad then it was worth a look !
She met a lovely widow and spent a very contented few years with him .it never replaced what they had with their respective partners but it did make then both very happy

But, as I seem to say on Mn threads a lot, we can't control what other people 'should be doing'. All we can control is our own actions, and our responses to other people's.

entirely understandable that the OP finds this upsetting, but there is absolutely no mileage in dwelling on what her father should or shouldn't be doing in terms of how long he waits to date after the OP's mum's death.

All she can do is tell him that while she respects his right to lead his own emotional/sexual/romantic life, it's too soon for her to hear about it, and can he not talk to her on the subject.

Well yes, telling him that she doesn't want to hear about it IS controlling her reaction to it- she is putting in a boundary.

Then if he doesnt stop doing it, I would be distancing myself from him.

Absolutely!

He could go on to have another 5 wives if he fancied it. OP will only ever have one Mum, and one to grieve. It’s not the same.

Perhaps still in this generation, these men can find a new partner quickly. In my generation (Gen X), I can't see lots of women queueing up to offer cleaning and caring services for bereaved men. I saw quite a few who were single and would have preferred not to be when I was dating. I mean, who is going to sign up to look after all these slightly useless men?

My friends dad wanted to take a date to his deceased wife’s celebration of life. I’m not kidding .

I think men who were long term married can’t function on their own 🙄

I dated what seemed to me very quickly after dh’s death - the first date was a year after he died. It was extremely casual and deathly secret. Ds was a lot younger than you but I can’t imagine a situation where I would have told him about it. Then I met dp just under 3 years widowed. That still seemed pretty early imo. It was a few months before I told ds.

It’s your dad’s life, he can do what he likes. I knew Dh would have been likely to date very quickly if I had died, partly it has to be said because there are women who seem to specialise in picking up bereaved men. However, I don’t think you have to listen to a single word on the subject until you’re ready. Prepare a few phrases - ‘Happy for you dad but I don’t want to discuss it’ perhaps.

It's a tough one, because while adult children may be deep in grief, a widowed parent in their 70s may be feeling like they've got limited relatively healthy years left to meet someone new to enjoy what's left of their active years with before they transition from the active retiree phase to becoming elderly. The prospect of becoming elderly, frail and vulnerable alone can feel particularly scary for that generation of men, who probably went from their mothers to their wives and might not have had to ever manage their lives on their own. I'm not saying poor wee helpless men, of course they aren't incapable of learning new things, but the older someone gets and the longer established their habits, the harder change will be. The priority for your dad OP may be to find agreeable companionship and care to bring some comfort to those final years of his life, rather than waiting to be 100% ready only then to find his time has run out.

It's easy to judge, but remember, we middle aged folks still have the luxury of time to mourn. Someone in their 70s may feel they're in the closing chapters of their life and see those stretching out as long, lonely, joyless days. Family rally round immediately after a bereavement, but gradually drift back to their own lives and concerns. Widowed men living alone are often more vulnerable to self neglect, health conditions going untreated, and they may not readily ask for or accept help. This can present complications and responsibilities for their adult children!

It must be tough to see him moving on so fast, and it's certainly appropriate to set some boundaries about how much he discusses dating with his adult children who are still grieving. I don't say you need to like it, but having some empathy for the reasons why this may feel a more pressing need for an older widowed parent may help to lessen the hurt a little. Equally, he needs to empathise with your position too, and it wouldn't hurt him to be a bit more selective about what and how much he discloses to his grieving children. I wouldn't want to ban the topic though, as I'd want to have half an eye out that he wasn't getting catfished or taken in by dating scams, or anything like that, as he may be vulnerable to online predators and naive to those sorts of things.

Update- i met a guy who was bragging about how well his dad has done with the ladies since his mums death!

My mum died pretty young when I was 25 with a new baby. My dad was 53 and he went on a singles' holiday four months after she died, met my step-mother and married her almost a year to the day after the death of my mum.

She wasn't particularly nice and I found it very difficult as it was very clear that I was the only person still grieving my mum.

Your dad is entitled to try and find a new partner but he is being very insensitive if he is talking to you about it all the time.

My friend’s mother died suddenly in her 40s when my friend was 27, and her dad brought home his first girlfriend from a bereavement weekend he’d gone on a month after he was widowed.

However, it says a lot for the women he dated that despite being obscenely rich and reasonably good-looking, precisely none of them would marry him despite his best efforts. He was (still is, in his eighties) awful.

Ugh, tell me about it.
My friend died in August and her husband was sniffing round after me long before Christmas.

I’m convinced that’s what it is. A PP pithily described it as a ‘support human’.

My grandad did the same after his first wife died. He met my Nan, and her parents (quite rightly) said that he wanted someone to look after his 2 children.

Nan being stubborn married him anyway.
They were married for donkey’s years, and had 10 kids, so, i’m assuming it was a happy marriage.

My Nan did once tell my Mum that if she had her time again, she wouldn’t have had all ‘you kids’.

This is so hard and in your position I can see how upsetting it would be. But I had a family member who lost his wife young (late 40s). He never had another relationship again and died in his mid 70s, so nearly 30 years on his own. There must have been times when he felt very lonely. I think maybe you just need to say you can’t listen to your dad’s dating woes just yet.

When I started OLD (3 years after DH died) I started dating again and the first date I went on the guy told me his wife had died (I knew this bit) but…. 6 weeks before!! Yes there would have been some anticipatory grief but really!

The widower who is chasing round after me at the moment was online a month after his wife died, looking for a replacement.

He started meeting women a short time after that.