I had a long, glorious and satisfying marriage with John, my first husband. I knew very soon into my widowhood that I would want to re-partner. I wasn't sure how or if that could ever happen but I knew it would be beneficial to me.
I loved the deep connection I had with John. I loved knowing another with such intimacy. I loved the trust, the comfort, the companionship, the sharing. When I lost him I had no idea how much I would grow to despise loneliness. I guess I had the idea that it wouldn't be so bad and that I could adjust and adapt to the condition.
I lived in a rural area and worked from home. Due to life situations I no longer had much social interaction- I had friends but none lived close by. I would literally go weeks without having a face to face conversation with anyone but my mailman. There were moments when I felt uncomfortable with what isolation was doing to my psyche. Very uncomfortable.
I did much, really all I could, to build my life into something that worked to enrich my soul. I did this because I knew there was not a certainty that I would ever fall in love again and I didn't want to end up sad and alone if I was going to end up alone. The end result felt like stitches and band-aids. I felt better and happier but it was a far cry from feeling like I was living with even a fraction of the soul-satisfaction that I had lived with John.
After more than two years of working my way through widowhood, building on what I had and adding some lovely new people to my world I was lucky enough to meet someone with whom I believed I could fall in love. He lived 1000 miles away and was a widower. He was very recently widowed and I strongly felt the need to encourage him to work his way through those earlier stages of being widowed without me in the same town. That being said, he didn't argue with me about my staying put where I lived because he felt like I knew what I was talking about because I had been widowed for a longer period of time. However, today, as when we had our beginnings, he feels like he was ready to start a new relationship without the stretch of solitary mourning in between.
We started living together a bit past my four year mark, him after his two year mark. It was not easy at first but we committed to each other and we worked at it until we melded. We've been married for four years, together for 12.
Each of us is different with different needs.
I'm not the most social person in the world. If I go to a party I am the person who seeks out someone interesting with whom to have a deep conversation. I can hang and mix and present myself in an amiable way but light conversation just doesn't do it for me. Even when I had more proximal friends and a bigger social life with more activities, I still felt like I was missing something essential. If I had not re-married I would do the very best for myself that I could. Being with someone in a committed relationship was fundamental to feeling fulfilled.
I'm thankful that things worked out this way.
