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!

This is all happening too soon.

There's no shortage of single available men...

Pick from one of those..

But firstly perhaps therapy would be beneficial for you..you aren't ready for a relationship if you're unwilling to put your selfish needs to the side.

Why are you so adamant about securing a position in his family??

You're trying to take advantage of a vulnerable grieving man who lost someone recently and perhaps may not be making clear decisions right now, and may not know how to process his grief, nor the extent of it.

It's been only months. Perhaps he is rebounding and trying to fill empty spaces with you.

Is that why you're in a rush?? Attempting to seal the deal before his grief takes over and he realizes he's been making some poor choices.

Your selfishness and selfish attitude has to go, if you are hoping for any long term relationship of substance.

This is a big concern of mine. Itisnt that long until her one year anniversary and I often think about that and worry if everything will be okay.
I'm sorry that happened to your friend :( I hope she's okay ? What excuse did he give her? And did they maintain contact? I worry a lot about that happening !

Thankyou for the kind words. I will try my best to protect my heard although that is easier said than done unfortunately xx

I think you're possibly the first person on this thread who has been significantly and openly critical of him.
My friend has said exactly the same that she thinks he still wants the sympathy and support from the school mums hence why he won't tell them. And she thinks he still wants his family and his late girlfriends family to look up to him positively etc. My friend says he won't do anything that will risk tarnishing that appearance.

Just reading througgh your message - are you saying you think he is using the fact he is bereaved to his advantage ? What do you mean? X

I'm sorry to hear this. Dating someone bereaved is incredibly difficult, I know exactly how you feel. Nobody considers how hard it is for the person dating them.
Would You mind sharing your experience? Why do you feel you need to back off from him? X

@Advice444 I won't be sharing more of my experience for the reasons already outlined.

However, I was wrong to say above it is the hardest thing I have ever done, without qualifying it with.....'to do with dating'.

The hardest thing I have ever done was to hear my 33 year old husband crying because he didn't want to die. To telephone his parents to say their son had died. To arrange his funeral. To pick up his ashes from the funeral director. To choose words for his memorial headstone. To rebuild my life when EVERYTHING had been taken away from me. To lose friends because they didn't want to be around me because I was sad. To lose our future children. I could go on and on.

The death of a life partner changes everything.

Please don't ever say "No one considers how hard it is for the person dating them" again. It is challenging, yes, but compared to what your boyfriend has been through, is going through now, and they are yet to face, you've got it easy.

This is not about you and how hard it is for you, and if that is what you take from my previous post, then it was poorly worded and / or you are only seeing what you want to see (as others have already pointed out to you) and nothing anyone will say will change your mind.

@nnaammeecchhaannggee99 

@Advice444 listen to what the above poster has written and give yourself a shake. Your posts make for uncomfortable reading.

@nnaammeecchhaannggee99 I am so sorry for your loss. I had to tell our children 18 & 14 their dad was gone and nothing prepares you for that.

Thats why I almost feel revulsion for @Advice444

She skims through all the advice, then latches on people's grief and pain and asks questions about how she can tweak it to manipulate the situation she is in.

It's all about her. I mean you've got to be an extremely selfish person to state-
Nobody considers how hard it is for the person dating them.

People have shared very real and sometimes raw grief on here and it's all about a timeline to her. Actually very sickening.

ffs OP. I have been patient and sympathetic thus far on this thread but your self-absorption is becoming anger-inducing. I was one of the first to criticise your partner because he has clearly dated before he’s ready and made promises to you he’s in no position to keep. But what you’ve said here is unfair. Wanting to wait a while before telling his in-laws is nothing to do with not wanting to “tarnish his appearance”. It’s an incredibly hard thing to do. I didn’t want to tell my in-laws I was dating until I was very certain I was in something long term. That took almost a year. Even now I don’t mention DP much and keep him pretty separate from them because I know it hurts them, and they’ve been through enough. His grieving process is not about you. It will go on for years – for ever, in fact – and either you can live with that or you can’t.

To be blunt, from the information you’ve given on this thread, he is not emotionally ready to be in a relationship and you are not emotionally capable of dating a widower.

And yes, I agree with @nnaammeecchhaannggee99. Dating me, as a widow, is complex and occasionally challenging for my partner. But it is in no way as hard as being widowed – finding my husband dead, feeling his ribs break beneath my hands while attempting CPR, telling his sister that he was dead, holding my little girl as she sobbed for her Daddy… my DP would be the first to say that nothing in his life has ever been that hard, and I sincerely hope it never is.

I wonder what your boyfriend would think and feel if he read this thread @Advice444? Horrified, I imagine. I hope he has friends and/or family looking out for him while he grieves.

So @Advice444 you've gotten a lot of opinions and information. Some to your taste and some 'not so much'. What have you learnt so far?

If you're not willing to tell him you feel he's not ready and to end the relationship yourself, then let him take the lead as far as the time you spend together and you take the lead wrt the things he tells you that are most likely misleading/ fantasizing. If he says he needs time to himself, just agree and leave him alone. Don't suggest getting together, give him breathing room. Don't contact him, don't 'check up on him'. If he mentions 'the future' and babies say "Oh, it's much too soon to talk about that sort of thing" and change the subject. Don't listen and definitely don't encourage him. And don't believe him either. He's building castles in the air to stop his own pain.

Personally, I think you're headed for a big heartbreak. You're 'Ms Right Now', but that doesn't mean you'll be 'Ms Right' when he's actually got his equilibrium back. You say you love him, but whether you end it yourself or he ends it somewhere down the road, your heart will be broken just the same. Maybe better to end yourself, in 'strength', than to have him hurt you.

Thank you. I was about to explode with apoplexy at @Advice444 's 'it's so hard for me'. I'm so sorry for your loss. I was later in life and had children of around 20 to try to give through caring for and losing their father to cancer, yet still I think that losing sometime after a short period like you and OP's boyfriend did must be worse. The loss of future must be awful. At least I got more than 30 years with my DH.

She skims through all the advice, then latches on people's grief and pain and asks questions about how she can tweak it to manipulate the situation she is in.

Exactly that.

@Advice444

I can't believe you actually typed this...

Dating someone bereaved is incredibly difficult, I know exactly how you feel. Nobody considers how hard it is for the person dating them

What an utterly self absorbed, self centered person you are. It's all "me me me". You haven't given a single thought to how things are for both families and definitely not the bereaved children. You are not right for this man or his children and I hope he's starting to see that. What a shit thing to suggest, that he's enjoying the attention. Jesus Christ. I had some sympathy for you but you've shown yourself now.

There's something really ghoulish about the op

Prying into peoples very darkest hours of grief. Just so she can satisfy her own selfish needs

Little flurry of activity last night which must mean she wasn't getting the attention she wanted, maybe one of those pesky kids' feelings got in the way.

Genuinely struggle to believe this is a grown adult or even parent.

Hopefully he's seen some sense and is trying to extricate himself from her.

Advice444 · Yesterday 19:59
"are you saying you think he is using the fact he is bereaved to his advantage ?"

I don't know the man you are dating. I would not use the terminology "to his advantage" but it is impossible for anyone anywhere on this thread to know what is going on deep down in the head of the man you are dating. It would be a very very strange person who, in a cold unemotional detatched-from-reality way hit the dating scene as soon as 3 months after the death of the other parent of their child/children (who presumably they now have sole responsibility for) with the express and thought out attitude that their bereaved status can be and they will use it as a posititive dating strategy. If he (unlikely but I dont know him) is like this, why would you want to be with someone like that? (I doubt he is like this,but you asked the question).

"Dating someone bereaved is incredibly difficult, I know exactly how you feel. Nobody considers how hard it is for the person dating them."

OP with reference to your above quoted comment, I really don't have anything further to say on this thread apart from:

• you do know that it is not compulsory to date anyone right? You do know that you have 100% freedom to leave this relationship without giving any particular explanation beyond that you don't think it is the right thing for either of you "at this time"? You do know that you are not obliged in any way to do this (as you put it) "incredibly difficult thing".
• At the early stage of dating (I think from your previous posts you are quite new to this relationship) of course no one is going to "consider how hard it is for you dating this man" because you don't have to date him!. But let me tell you, if you persist in ignoring all the advice and wise comment on this thread and carry on dating this man, if he does not dump you first, you might well end up with way more than you bargained for. You could end up with being a step parent to his kids in ways you do not like or had not contemplated at this time (doing all the heavy lifting of parenting his existing kids), you could end up counselling him for the rest of his days about his loss (something from your posts I would say you are woefully unprepared/unsuitable for) you could find yourself in a relationship with someone (and if you have a baby with him, bound to him for life) who in the (not too distant) future has a change of heart about you/feels ambivalent about you because his attraction for you now (if it is real) is all about his own inner turmoil and not because he sees you as a separate person.

You have been warned, if you continue, do not say you have not been warned because you have.

Oh and one final thing, your posts sound like the kind of posts which imply that just because you feel so deeply like you are in loooovvve with this man that you are literally powerless and have to be in a relationship with him. To put it bluntly that is not how relationships work, you need to mature/grown up and realise that feelings you have for someone are not enough to make a realationship work let alone make that relationship right.

Got to say, I'm getting really pissed off OP. I rarely respond to threads because I don't have confidence in my answers sometimes. I'm not owed an acknowledgment, of course. But I have replied to you twice, coming at your situation from quite different angles (your mental wellbeing and the realities of stepfamily life), yet it is so painfully clear you are only latching onto certain replies and, as a previous poster has observed, pressing for more. Widow mugging. It is ghoulish.

You'll get what you deserve, whether that's being dumped and ostracized when all the school mums find out, or ending up as a long-suffering stepmum if you force his hand. Just think about the kids (his and yours) you're dragging along for the ride.

I agree @Steppered and @sodthesodoff. People on this thread have been incredibly generous and open in sharing such painful experiences of early grief - and it feels hugely disrespectful of the OP to ignore and dismiss them, simply because they don't tally with what she wants to hear. It's almost vampiric, the feeding-off and spitting-out of such personal experiences. The OP's lack of empathy for bereaved people, which is on display in this thread, does not bode well for her relationship.

I don't have to defend myself to anyone. None of you know all the facts, I have only shared a TINY part of the situation with you for privacy reasons.
But for those who have criticised me as a person without going into detail you could not be more wrong about me. I am one if the most sympathetic and caring people you could meet. I am known for giving way too many chances to people and being far too forgiving. I am here for any of my family or friends and go above and beyond. Whilst I appreciate not everyone on this thread has been critical of my character for those who have you need to reign it in as I've said I'm not what you're making me out to be AT ALl and you only know a small part of the situation.

I didn't say he didn't want to tarnish his reputation, MY FRIEND said that.. if you go back to that post you will clearly see I stipulated that MY FRIEND had said he was worried about tarnishing his reputation...NOT ME. I did not say that was my view so please take the time to get your facts right and read the message properly before tearing into me for things I didn't say....

Equally another poster IMPLIED he may have been using his grief to his advantage and she has since clarified whar she meant. I MEVER SAID HE WAS USING HIS GRIEF TO HIS ADVANTAGE. I don't think he is . I've never said he has. I simply was responding to the poster who has implied he was and asking her if that's what SHE thought he was doing and asking HER to CLARIFY what SHE meant.

I hope these two points are now clarified. I doubt any of the above will apologise even though I have clarified for the former it was my friend that said it and for the later I was merely asking a poster for clarification on their opinion. I won't get an apology, it will somehow just still end up being my fault somehow despite me clarifying to you 🙄🙄

I'm a widow and the first point I would like to make is that no one has a right to judge the behaviour of a newly widowed person. Grief affects each person differently, some people's partner may have been ill for months or years before passing and therefore the grieving process may have been going on a lot longer that anyone realises. Some bereaved people crave having another person in their lives within months, others cannot contemplate any new relationship for several years and some never at all. In your own case OP It's not for me to judge whether your relationship is going to work, going forward, although I would agree with other posters that there is nothing more attractive than a young widowed man in a playground full of sympathetic women, which he will be aware of. You should also know about Widows Fire, a well known phenomenon whereby newly widowed people are irresistibly sexually drawn to other people in spite of being wracked with grief. It may be that this has happened in your case and now 6 months down the line he is beginning to realise this and is withdrawing a bit. If you want the relationship to keep going you will have to accept it moving at a pace that works for him and his children and accept that his previous partner will always remain a part of his life going forward.

It's pretty hurtful that without even knowing me or knowing what me and him are like together you think I deserve "to be dumped and ostracused by the school mums." How nasty.

I can't believe how many people are just spiteful and mean in this thread.

I love a man I've been dating for a number of months. All I came on to this thread too ask initially was whether anyone had any thoughts/advice as to if I should be worried he won't tell his child and stepchild about me... THAT IS LITERALLY ALL I HAVE DONE.
But I've just been attacked on this thread by certain people as if I've been asking and saying the most horrific and evil things. For goodness sake , all I asked for was advice re the kids. Nothing sister!

Sinister *

The reason you are getting the remarks you are getting is because you are being tone deaf.

He lost his partner, who you tried to downgrade as just his girlfriend, the fact that you even think it might be a good idea for him to tell his step child (WHO LOST HER MUM LESS THAN A YEAR AGO) about you, shows you have no clue.

Your response to people's heartfelt posts has been all about getting time frames for your own relationship.

That's why.

I didn't try to downgrade her as a girlfriend ar all. She was a girlfriend, she wasn't his wife. That is just stating a fact, NOT downgrading

Any response to the fact that you have not been sure if the child who lost her Mum should be told about you?

You have not considered her position at all, its all about how your relationship is going/should be going. I understand that feelings can make us do silly things/ conveniently forget things - but you really do need to step back from your feelings and consider the situation this family is in. Introducing you, no matter how nice you are, would be a complete head fuck and one that this family aren't ready for.