Is life (after the death of your long term partner) as you expected?

[larkstar]

This isn't meant to be a morbid or heavy thread - I have (and have had) this conversation with my partner - there is always banter but it's a serious topic and I think things like this should be talked about - I've certainly put in place some things that will help my wife after I'm gone - all our passwords and logins are stored together in software that she can just about use and our kids also know about this. Generally wives outlive their husbands - as she often reminds me and she seems pretty sure that this is how things will play out - she's probably right as usual although I'm the one who has worn out all my joints exercising so who knows. Anyway - I do wonder if I'm being naive or underestimating the impact of losing a life long partner basically, perhaps, because I've never known loneliness - maybe I'll be crushed by it - I can't see 10 or 20 years ahead - I can't picture it - I sort of assume I will sail on feeling how I feel now - "content" and "secure" are probably the best words.

We've worked on building this relationship for a long time and, quite frankly, I don't think for a minute I'd be interested in doing it again - is that just me or is that they way other people feel? I have a lot of absorbing hobbies and can easily use up hours, days, weeks entirely on my own but... I'm not really on my own am I because I have someone in my life. I'm away for 5 days on my own right now - doing some walking and writing - we won't miss each other that much - were not lost or stuck without each other - but we'll look forward to being together again.

It's crossed my mind the reality of losing a long term partner may be very different even when I think I've factored in what sort of person I am and what sort of relationship we have. The difficulty in asking this is that we are all so different. I wanted to hear from people who think that my story resonates with theirs who can tell me if life is working out how they thought it would. That's it really - this is an internal conversation we have from time to time that I've never tried discussing with anyone else - obviously got too much time on my hands right now.

Is this where we discover you are still in your 30s?

Do you actually love your wife?
Because it reads as if you've made do but are ambivalent about the relationship.

I'l have a dark mind and the thought of my husband dying has popped into my head a few times, and honestly, I think I'd be devastated.
The person I've known for ten years, love so much, had children with, we laugh all the time and have our "in jokes". Yes I'd definitely miss it and fell pretty lost.

I do think I need to build up some hobbies and nurture my friendships, so does DH but since we have young kids it's tricky right now. Definitely something to focus on soon.

I guess none of us will know how we feel

Strangely when DH was killed on his way home knowing the passwords and logins wasn’t the first thing I thought of, or the second, or the hundredth.
Yes, put sensible things in place like mortgage protection, life insurance, write Wills but once that’s done enjoy your lives.Go everywhere you can, do everything you can. you never know when it’ll end.
And trust me, it’s shit however it happens.

Yes it’s awful - my DH was 54. He was fairly organised which did help at a point about a month after he died- passwords and logins etc. But that’s just admin. Don’t take each other for granted, the silence and the unfinished conversations are pretty grim.

I'm current saving up to apply for legal divorce. I just wanted to say, death is shocking and no you can't decide beforehand how you will feel in the future. Having practical stuff sorted is great.

I only experience other deaths in my family and they have all been different. I have had a close friend rush to get re married for practical reasons as well as religious. She says she still loves her dead husband, but this one is more useful/ giving and what she needs now.

The marriage vowes are till death do us apart. So death is the thing we all want to separate us at the beginning (as very old couples I presume).

@determinedtomakethiswork 61, been together since we were 12.

@Hungrycaterpillarsmummy love her!? Yes - without a doubt - she's the main reason I feel content in myself and with my life - I feel lucky to be the one that was in her life. Not ambivalent at all - I've been "all in" from the very beginning. Probably the love has got deeper - my marriage is a big part of what makes me feel resilient and confident about life - it's far from perfect but neither of us ever think in terms of perfection about anything - we're realists.

I kinda knew there was a good chance that what I wrioe would get mis-interpreted.

The word you’re looking for is devastated.
I never imagined this would happen to me so young. I’ll never get over it.

DH died suddenly and unexpectedly at 39 when the dc were 5 and 3. I was 36. Initially, I assumed it would take a couple of years to regroup and rebuild and I'd be okay. Financially, things were in place. I'm pretty independent and capable. Ten years later, every time he's not there to share a proud moment with or the boys are struggling, I still wish he was here. You never return to normal or think life is fine without them. People reckon I'm amazing, but I'm totally exhausted doing the job of two parents without a break 24/7 365 days a year (with no family help..). I'm not actively grieving and I've achieved loads (as have the dc) and had 2 two year relationships since, but it's never right.

You lose your hopes and dreams for the future, the person to chat inane shit too and usually your social circle as well (because you become the odd one out at social events and you might steal their partner, or their partner has no one to talk to without your partner there). Some good friends disappeared because it was all a bit depressing. Family members thought I made a meal of it (and my DM told me she finally understood when her dog died..!). I've learnt to just bugger on regardless. I've moved us to a different part of the UK, started a business and a sports team. I'm happy. The dc are settled. I've maintained our previous level of life financially, but none of it takes away that DH us no longer here to enjoy it with us.

Make the most of every day and don't judge your friends who go through bereavement before you because you really won't know how you will deal with it until it happens to you.

@Candleabra I hope you are wrong - that would be the saddest thing wouldn't it? I heard someone say, about her bf who died of a drugs overdose at 42, something like - "while you never get over it, you can get round it" and she seems to be but it's not been easy. She talks about him and it and it's not about forgetting or not feeling BUT they hadn't been together that many years and she'd come out of an unhappy marriage - it was unexpected. Her situation was not like mine at all. You only have one life - it's a pretty precious thing.

How young is young anyway? Of my wife had died in her 30's or early 40's - that would have been tragic. In fact her father died when he was 39 just before we got together. My mother died "young" at 67 - COPD - hey health had been declining since I was a teenager - I had plenty of time to get used to the idea - I didn't find her death devastating at all - her life was the saddest part - so much ill health. Neither of us are melodramatically Victorian about death - it's going to happen and we have talked about it.

As @AbbeyGailsParty said - focus on actually living.

@Moopyhereagain - we have always talked a lot - you have to learn to talk about the hard stuff, the difficult things - probably three hardest thing had been dealing with a seriously ill daughter - we had to have end of life conversations with each other (about her) and with her - you never really expect to have those with a daughter aged 21.

Got a long day tomorrow, got to be up early. I have a sense this conversation is going to go off in too many directions. I'll catch up tomorrow night. The subject is not so much death of a partner but death after a long and happy marriage, not a young death, I'm thinking 65, 75... of course my FIL dying at 39 is traffic and sad, even my mother at 67 is dad because she missed do much of my children's lives. My MIL at 90, suffering from dementia is not going to be viewed in the same way - we look after her - life is not easy for her, she's now also blind, but it's not without its happy moments.

I'm sorry for those of you have lost partners. It's an awful thing to have to think about, but it's sensible to do so.

DH and I have passcode protected phones, a throwback from when we had to do that for work and have never changed it. It has just struck me reading this thread that I wouldn't. have access to some of his friends' phone numbers. nor he mine to contact them if the worst happened. Need to fix that.

If one partner doesn't work and you have young children, consider taking out life insurance on the non- working partner. A friend and her husband decided he would stay home and do the childcare as she loved her job and he didn't. Whilst she had life insurance through work, it suddenly struck her that if anything happened to him, she'd have a massive outlay for childcare/ cleaners etc to enable her to continue working. Thankfully it hasn't been needed but there will be many couples in the same situation, worth thinking about.

We have adult children and if anything happened to both of us at the same time, it wouldn't be that easy for them to work out what investments we have. We have a financial advisor who is aware of most of them. so we ought to make sure they have his contact details and info about how to get hold of our wills. I guess same is true if you have younger children too - maybe a trusted friend or relative needs to know how to find out that information.

I have a purple folder in the front of my filing cabinet with all the important info in it. My DC and DM know where it is. You need pension info, employer info, birth certificate, investments, and put both of you on the accounts for utilities if possible. (I had many arguments with suppliers about why late DH couldn't confirm that he was happy for me to talk to them.) Our joint bank accounts were also frozen.

Sorry @BaffledOnceAgain that must have been so difficult at an already difficult time. Thank you for the sound advice. If you don't mind my asking, why was the bank account frozen? When my Dad died, we took the death certificate into the bank and there was immediate change to Mum's name. If things have now changed, it's worth knowing the at is likely to happen or how it can be avoided.

Married 47 years. 'Devastated' doesn't come close.

Focus on the present and enjoy the time you have, because you never know which day will be your last together.

We were 'lucky' in a way that we knew DH was terminally ill, he was 56 when he died and I spent the last months of his life nursing him at home, mostly alone thanks to covid. I spend a great deal of time even now wondering if I let him down, he had no voice for the last few months so couldn't tell me.

He left me his phone, unlocked, he left me his passwords and left me a list in a book (so in his handwriting) of all the accounts and so forth he knew he had. The one thing he didn't deliberately leave (although I have since found) was a recording of his voice and, in the darkest days after his death, I was desperate to just hear him speak.

I knew life would be hard after his death but I don't think anything prepares you for quite how hard it is. I am 18 months down the line and it feels harder now than it did in the immediate weeks after his death. As a PP said, the number of friends who bugger off into the sunset is astounding but equally, I found a number of acquaintances became really good friends.

It is something we should talk about more with our loved one. (Oh, and we discovered we should have put Power of Attorney for health at the top of our list, I was overridden on a couple of occasions during his last hospital stay until the palliative team got involved. We hadn't got round to it because although we knew his cancer was terminal he was doing well and no-one was banking on a stroke robbing him of speech, cognition etc)

I think this is an interesting conversation OP and I always say we don’t talk about death enough in the UK. My long term partner died, aged 37, I was 39, we lived and ran a business together 24/7. Nothing was in place, we weren’t married, clusterfuck involving not being next of kin etc etc. And I survived, skinnier, with stomach ulcers but life went on, yes I miss him, yes it will never be fair (it was a grim death too) but you do carry on. To be honest you don’t actually get a choice 😊. I always say a lot of grief is guilt and in many cases moving forward from a healthy content relationship avoids a lot of that.

It may well have changed since. They had to know about DH's assets and I had to get probate sorted.

I didn't need probate. The only thing he had in his own name was sky (they just changed it) and a current account which the bank closed and transferred the money to me, joint accounts were just moved to single, I only needed the will and birth /death / marriage certificates for everything including pensions and life insurance.

I knew my DH was terminally ill for 3 years. I came to terms with 90% of it well before he died and once he died I felt overwhelming relief it was all over. Times were never ever as hard as his illness. What you're left with is a life you didn't expect or want, we had a good marriage, but one which can still be happy and fulfilling. At times it's lonely and you feel a terrible sense of guilt and sadness for the children but I have moved forward, I have a wonderful, but different life and I have to accept that it was what was meant to be. Can't say I'm thrilled about it but you have a choice, you have to accept it and make the best of the hand you've been dealt or you can dwell on it forever. I decided I had to carry on for the kids and for me. I could have another 40 years and I sure as hell wasn't going to be miserable for 40 years