Dating a widower

[Advice444]

Hello,
I don't know what I'm hoping to gain out of this. Just looking possibly for some advice. I have been dating a widower for 6 months. His girlfriend died 9 months ago. (Please no judgement on this as I know everyone grieves differently and dates at different points in their journey).

I am in love with this man. I truly am in love with him. However I'm struggling. He has only told his work colleagues and sister about me. He hasn't told his parents or his late girlfriends family. Should they know by now or not ? I've asked him and he won't tell them yet, says it's too soon.
He will also not tell his reception age son that we are dating (although I have met his son on many occasions in the house and chatted/played with him and we get on well.) He will not tell his 10 year old stepdaughter (late girlfriends child from previous relationship) about us at all and I can't spend time with them if she is there. I've asked him his though on telliNG her ans again it's a no she isn't ready yet.

Any advice or thoughts or help?

I'm head over heels for this man, so I don't want to leave. I've caught major feelings so it's too late for that. I really do love him. But any advice or perspective would be good. Found myself in tears earlier about it all.
Advice from widowers would be extra appreciated!

Op I'm so sorry. You seem to be trying to pin this relationship down in a very literal way. You want answers.

You keep asking people " what it should look like ".

"how long for this? or how long for that?"

You just can't pin grief and healing and timescales down. I'm a recent widow I know that.

If you want answers this is going to be a difficult relationship for you. There are no easy answers. I'm so sorry.

Your friend isn't helping you. How can she know what's right or wrong?! This is between you and this man.

I barely heard from him at all yesterday. No response when I offered to book something for us. And he is a football coach and I know he was coaching last night and being all socailable /friendly with the parents whilst ignoring me the women he has beenn dating for 6 months . I don't know. Maybe everyone is right. Maybe he is just love bombing me.

Maybe he was tired.

This is too intense OP.

I barely heard from him at all yesterday. No response when I offered to book something for us. And he is a football coach and I know he was coaching last night and being all socailable /friendly with the parents whilst ignoring me the women he has beenn dating for 6 months . I don't know. Maybe everyone is right. Maybe he is just love bombing me.

Oh my gosh. Just stop with that. You're being way too intense. He has a life. He was busy. Of course he was being social and friendly with the parents. It's his role. Do you expect him to have his phone out and messaging you when he had a job to do? You're now sounding horribly jealous.

The man is still grieving, and he has other roles in his life, as father, as employee and as coach. You are not his priority all of the time, not should you be. I never expected mum late DH to be focused on me when at work or at an event where he had a role and I was not present.

You are expecting way too much of him, and you absolutely need to dial your intensity down.

You asked me earlier how long I'd been widowed. It's twelve years now, and I've been very content in not having or looking for another partner. And I honestly can't imagine bringing one into my daughters lives, even though they're now adults. Not that they wouldn't deal with it, and I was only mildly disconcerted when my widowed mum brought a new (non-resident) partner into our lives when I was a young adult. But that was at least a couple of years later. At a few months and as a child, it would have been absolutely awful.

Okay, i will distance myself.

I know most people on here are cutting into me but in reality I am filled with anxiety and self doubt when i have a well meaning very close friend who is inadvertently constantly putting doubts in my mind and making me feel on edge and worried. It isn't me. I wasn't like this until she put all these thoughts and worries into my head. I can't cut her off , she's a close friend but I can't deal with all of the anxiety she is giving me regarding him.

She is constantly making sly digs regarding him and myself, sarcastic comments etc. Or putting doubts in my mind re him not telling anyone about me and in her words 'keeping me a dirty little secret.' She makes me anxious and doubtful and I can't block out what she says. And then everyone tears into me on here.

You just don't get it do you? It's still all about you!

Fucks sake

Put the children first

You're supposed to be an adult.

OP

You're dating a very vulnerable person who has responsibility for two vulnerable children.

And you have a friend problem. Big time.

I'm not tearing into you. OP do you realise this man is very vulnerable and in a very difficult place?

And you have a friend problem. Big time.

You really really do. Stop listening to her, she's awful. And start listening to your boyfriend.

to start with I only used to come and see him when his son had gone to bed and was sleeping or at weekends when his son was staying with grandparents. Then after a few months he introduced me as a friend. His son still felt threatened by me as he felt I was taking his dad away. It’s hard and patience is needed even though love gets involved. My now husband cried on our first date telling me about his wife and she had been dead 6 years. He was still grieving. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go there but we fell in love and I stuck with it. Would I recommend going out with a widower? Yes and no! Be patient if you want a long term relationship with this man. He probably needs more time but deserves a new life xxx

With each of your posts @Advice444 it becomes more and more obvious that this is not the relationship for either you or him. It's painful reading. He's told you he can't see you as often. That sounds like he is stepping back but instead of accepting that you are desperately trying to cling to him and figure him out. He is grieving. His children are grieving. You have no role here, no place. The best thing to do would be to back right off. His actions and direct words are telling you he's not ready and wants to distance himself. I think his talk of moving in and dc is just him flailing in his distress of now being alone. He's clinging to a future he was going to have with his late partner and has transferred this on to you but at the same time is distancing himself. He's an understandable mess and that's ok. You need to be the sensible one here and dial things right back. Be a friend maybe, but I think this relationship is not going anywhere.

Everything you post makes me wonder how your relationship were growing up? Your sense of self is wrapped up in this relationship as though you don't have a self outside of it. Focus now on yourself and your child. Leave this man and his dc to grieve-for all of your sakes.

She is constantly making sly digs regarding him and myself, sarcastic comments etc. Or putting doubts in my mind re him not telling anyone about me and in her words 'keeping me a dirty little secret.' She makes me anxious and doubtful and I can't block out what she says. And then everyone tears into me on here.

She sounds lovely. NOT.

" dirty little secret " God.

Read your post back! Why are you listening to her?!

The thing is I don't think we can trust the ops view on a lot of things. Maybe her friends a dick. Maybe not

She seems determined to paint 'everyone' on here as against her and cutting her down. Whereas the reality is she just doesn't like what they're all telling her. Namely the guy is a red flag ticker tape parade and she's no better.

I honestly thought from her posts we were dealing with a lovesick teenager from her posts not a mother in her 30s.

She is the kind of person who'll paint everyone else as the villain to remain the victim. And that's why their views don't count.

I find it highly disturbing to be honest.

OP, you read on here all the time, even in a "normal " relationship, MNers saying that you shouldn't introduce the kids too quickly to somebody that you are seeing. A lot of people think it should be months before they meet.

and this is a situation where even more care is needed to protect the children from being hurt.

What if they are introduced to you and then you split up in a couple of months having grown close to the DC? They then go through heartbreak of losing somebody again - not in the same way I know, but still a person gone from their lives.

It is vital that this man is certain of his feelings and the relationship before he invites you into his children's lives.

You do need to step back a bit. Wait for him to contact you to arrange something.

and your friend is no friend at all. You aren't a "dirty little secret" and no decent friend would be suggesting that to you.

Next time she opens her mouth just tell her that you don't want to hear it

This. And sometimes vulnerable/recently-bereaved people don’t behave particularly well. It’s an extreme example, but my friend’s father lost his wife to cancer aged 47 (when his daughter and I were both mid-teens), went on a bereavement retreat a month after her death, and slept with two different women, also recently-widowed, over the course of the weekend.

The thing is I don't think we can trust the ops view on a lot of things. Maybe her friends a dick. Maybe not

Maybe @sodthesodoff

I'm just taking this at face value tbh.

OP Extremely intense .and wants black and white answers as to what is "right."

Him Very recently Widowed, single parent and step parent by default . Carrying a huge amount of emotional baggage.

Friend very negative and shit stirrer

I'm not here to berate OP. It's a difficult situation and tbh she also seems emotionally vulnerable.

Straight of the bat I'd be telling " friend" to zip it.

I had a friend like this who was full of opinions on what should and shouldn't happen when I first started to date my now H. Note I said HAD - she brought nothing positive to my life so I stopped communicating with her.

However to your point it is ONLY 6 months and you are expecting too much to be introduced right, left and centre. I would be embarrassed too if I were him and my partner had only died 9 months before.

@sunglassesonthetable who knows to be honest. I just find her attitude to everything quite odd

She's desperately asking for examples of happy endings with widowed men as if 'widowed men' are a homogeneous clump. Clinging on to a happy story as proof it could work with hers.

I think you're right she is emotionally very vulnerable. But ultimately she's not helping herself. She point blank refuses to listen and accuses anyone who disagrees with her of being mean.

People have been gentle. People have been blunt. She only repeatedly asks the same questions of widows/women who've dated widowers for the 'correct' answers she seeks.

It's the shocking disregard for any of the children involved I find most disturbing. The grieving child she wants to meet and foist herself upon. Her own child who has not figured at all in this scenario. And the new ones she's desperate to bring into this mess.

And the flurry of messages when she had another panic because he hadn't been in contact that day. It's not healthy. And fuck knows how it's affecting her child who's present for all of this.

I think that’s a perfectly plausible reading of it.

I also think that the OP, who emerges from the thread as anxious, very programmatic in her views of relationship timelines and types of interaction etc, not particularly sensitive to other people’s needs, and extremely self-centred, is definitely not the right person to be dating a recently widowed man with two children. Even much further down the line that can take tact and flexibility.

A friend of mine has recently started dating someone who hasn’t dated since his wife’s death ten years ago, with a YA daughter, and it’s not been bump-free in terms of the responses of his wife’s family and his daughter’s response, even though my friend actively prefers taking things very slowly, has no ‘timeline’ in mind, and would prefer not to live together.

OP, it sounds to me that your friend wants to sit back and watch the drama and explosive outcome that may result from this man introducing you to grieving families/children. She has not a fucking clue what she's talking about. She's no friend and is extremely immature. If you listen to her, you're an idiot.

Also reading back through your most recent posts, you are absolutely obsessed with getting perspectives from widows/widowers when grief and grief response is a very personal and individual thing. Some people are never ready to date again. Some people have different timelines. You can't base your relationship on how others have behaved. Because it's their story, not yours. I still maintain you need to back off and absolutely forget this happy family thing with two grieving children. It's not going to happen any time soon. I feel so sorry for all the children involved in this.

This is patently untrue. Not in the sense that its not happening but in the sense that its inevitable, or normal.

You have a very unstable and undeveloped sense of self if you think this explanation makes sense. You do not have to be so easily influenced by this “friend”—you do not have to permit her to lecture you, or correct you, or share her opinions with you. You don’t even have to stay friends with her.

You are 30+ not 15. You want to be in s relationship with a busy recent widower who does not have time or inclination to moon over your texts or parade you around town like teenage arm candy. He won’t show you off like a trophy girlfriend after a bad divorce. You either understand that as an adult person or you don’t/can’t but the chivvying advice of your agony aunt girlfriend—is she sixteen? Is not going to help.

On the strength of what you have told us your girlfriend is an idiot who gets her advice from a teen dating magazine from the ‘80s. Dump her first and grow up.

your friend is treating this like his gf didn't die and you are in a normal dating situation.

This guy is doing the right thing by the kids, and as others have said your questions about how long this, and how long that... are irrelevant. It hasn't been long. I ended up putting myself in a situation with an ex when things happened too soon. I loved him, I adored him, but he was future faking and I was a nice distraction from the hell his life was at that time. I got hurt.

You are not his priority now and nor should you be. you sound intense and your friend sounds like an emotionally immature woman who is judging this as if he hasn't just gone through a huge trauma.

I feel very sorry for you OP.

Grief like his is shocking, he's like a sinking boat in a storm.

He grabbed out at the nearest anchor to try and provide himself with a bit of familiarity, distraction and comfort after barely 12 weeks.

He is a deeply confused man.

Grief can make you very very selfish as you fight to survive the overwhelming pain of loss.

He undoubtedly love bombed you as a distraction.

He's still in year 1 of his grief.

Year 2 is invariably a far greater shit show of emotions, confusion and disbelief at the reality of his loss.

There is no going around grief, the only way is through it.

With you he was trying to go around it.

Who can blame someone until you are in their shoes.

But YOU are collateral damage in this, even though you desperately don't want to face it.

He is keeping everything separate because in his gut he knows this is avoidance on his part rather than a real connection.

That doesn't mean he doesn't like and care for you, but he is in the fog of grief and for a long long time will take one step forward and two back.

The very wisest thing you could do is take gentle kind control of this situation and remove his choice in the matter.

Stop seeing him and go completely cold turkey.

If it is meant to be, it will happen.

I think you could waste a lot of time in this situation and be no further than you are.

He may always associate you and his emotions to the immediate aftermath of his grief.

Eventually he will likely want to heal and move on naturally and your association will be a reminder of that pain.

Your best bet is to accept this is the wrong time and end things and take the high positive ground and allow him to heal.

His reducing your contact time is indicative of him realising things are probably not right.

I appreciate this is deeply painful, but wishing things were different simply changes nothing.

Grief takes time and he clearly needs it.

Don't be used any longer by him, however kindly.

Move on, time to protect and put yourself first.

Wishing you well.