Mizpah

When I was at your timeframe, I had the same problem (I'm 5 years out now). We lived in a bubble of us, and with him gone, I felt I'd lost my own life and identity too. At first, I used my time and energies in honoring him and trying to feel closer to him. His native language was Hebrew, so I learned Hebrew. I planted a memorial garden. I spent time going to the cemetery. As time went on, very very gradually, I started doing things I felt like doing (but I barely even recognized it as that at the time). I'd feel slightly guilty letting the "him" things go, but it's good and healthy that it got replaced with "me" stuff. It takes TIME, lots of time. Healing is a very gradual process, so gradual you often can't see your own "progress." Feeling lost right now is exactly where it's natural for you to be. Processing this loss is your focus now. You will start to notice what makes you feel good/better and what makes you feel bad/worse. Go with your gut. Slowly. Be patient with yourself.

I'm so sorry. Breakups hurt so much. I think this is a positive move for you, but that doesn't make the hurting any better. As for getting through it, I agree about therapy. Seeing friends. For me, having something to look forward to is key. So maybe plan something, or give yourself something to work toward? It will give you a focus, other than looking back. What makes you feel good? Do that. We're creatures, and I find that being active and being outdoors in sunshine makes things feel better. On weekends when I was down and lonely, and be tempted to isolate, I'd force myself to go sit in a park - among people, outside. Hey, better than sitting inside alone? And write - we're all here to cheer you on. My heart's with you. Edited to add: For me, not being in contact with an ex is the biggest part of moving on. When I've been in contact, I've stayed in a hopeful state. When there's communication, there's still an "us" to hold onto. As soon as I've cut off contact (whether temporarily or permanently), I've made huge strides in moving forward and healing.

My philosophy in relationships is always that if there is a third party involved, I will no longer involve myself. You deserve to be the one he wants to be with, the one he's thinking about. The things he's said, while "just being honest," and that's good, have got to be incredibly hurtful and heartbreaking to hear. He's had a long time to get over his ex. For me, being with someone after such a long period of time who says they fear their feelings aren't "real enough," that's a dealbreaker. Feelings for someone else (who is alive), that's a dealbreaker. We all draw our own lines, but those are some of mine....

Yes, to the point where I can't even imagine what a meaningful, interesting conversation could possibly be about, or what we were ever talking about that was so engrossing and felt so significant.... That's how lacking!

It makes perfect sense, and I think it's lovely. He sounds like a perfect man for this part of your life, place and time.

Oh gosh, I don't recall it at all, and have no bad associations/feelings toward you whatsoever. Apparently my memory has freed me of that, so I hope you're freed from it as well! I think from books and movies, and from my relationship with DH (that took place under very easy circumstances), I have an idea in my head of what happiness is, that prevents me from finding peace and sweetness or contentment, in my new life. I think letting go of these notions we get from films and "culture" (commercials? FB?) will help me find something better. Maybe I just need to redefine the word for myself - less that crazy yellow smiley face and more gritty real life moments of love. I think for me, seeking the happiness I knew is self-sabotage. I think finding a new happiness is going to be my quest, and, like the positivity cult language, I think I need to find it from within myself (to change my outlook, which gives me standards no one can achieve), whereas before, it was all around me, it was so easy. I'm just babbling at this point!

We throw this word around a lot. We seek it. We miss it. We attain it, we lose it. We see glimpses of it. We see it in others and feel jealous. Etc., etc. Some have talked recently about the pressure to be positive being harmful. This quote (below) seems a better goal. I'm not saying we shouldn't strive for good feelings and a state of being that has contentment and fulfillment. We should. But I think we often don't even know what we mean by "happiness," that it's become a word without meaning, without attainability, that we feel that if we aren't always smiling and blissful, we are failing. (I'm referring to recent threads about positivity. I've in the past hated what I consider "the positivity cult," but I'm also seeing in my life that I need more simplicity and less pressure on myself, meaning to let go of standards that tell me I'm only successful when I'm in some kind of crazy unsustainable always-laughing, everything-is-wonderful state of perfection. To find "happiness" in more realistic, normal, simple ways. So I suppose, after all this railing I've done, I'm "giving in" to positivity! Hahahaha. But that's just my personal part. I'm posting this as a more universal thing.) I love this quote, even though I hate cliche memes. I don't know what happiness means - to me, when others say it, what we mean culturally.... But I understand this quote.

^ I agree with Portside.

Of course. I'd be happy to share. But I believe that my situation has much less to do with widowhood, or with me and what I was looking for than the very very different personalities of the men I happened to end up with, and I say happened to, because I think in each relationship, I was very passive and just seeing where life took me.... It's different in EVERY way. DH was young, idealistic, insanely beautiful, full of life, super positive, really easygoing, had the hugest heart, was naturally generous of spirit, revered women, had a super close relationship with his mom and family. He moved to LA from Israel when he was a kid, and grew up in NYC from the time he was 11. Obsessed with learning and bettering himself, very protective and caring - huge emphasis on education, as he was the first in his family to ever go to college. He had an international perspective - a big worldview. We read constantly - would read different books with opposing perspectives on the same issue (when we disagreed), would read the same novel at the same time together, would go to lectures together, talked constantly. DH saw everyone for exactly who they were, but also always chose to see the best in them and treated them that way - he was realistic, but still loved through rosy glasses. My current boyfriend and the father of my daughter is a widower, first of all. When his (pregnant) fiancee died, he lost her two boys he'd been raising as his own to their father who'd been uninvolved until then. He also comes from a childhood full of violent physical and verbal/emotional abuse. He has extreme emotional scars - and I say scars rather than wounds, because he doesn't let anything touch him. He has no vulnerabilities. He's insensitive. He can be unkind, and is likely even more so to himself. He is a carpenter and contractor - works with his hands and his body. He's strong, was a fighter - karate and jiu jitsu and MMA - and is an outdoorsman (this is the man you want to be with if we ever need to survive in the wild). He tends to see people's weaknesses easily, or just focuses on that, he can be negative. He's a "man's man," is very much a loner, lacks manners, has a very rural mindset (lives within 20 miles of where he grew up, and from the farm his great grandparents worked when they came to the US generations ago), hates books and cities and city people, comes across as having no feelings whatsoever, doesn't want to rely on anyone or want anyone relying on him - obsessed with independence and his idea of strength. (Also, we have the stress of raising a child together in a household in which we both work.) These two men could not be more different - I think the only things they have in common is that they're both male, both physically strong, and both my partner. So the differences in my relationships have FAR LESS to do with me, widowhood, new phases in life, and a lot to do with the extreme difference in the kind of men I'm with. I've actually been surprised by how unchanged I am in my approach to relationships and what I value. I'm nearly completely unchanged in what I want (passion, intensity, closeness, depth). The problem is that what I want was almost exactly what DH and I had. I love my boyfriend (so much, way too much), but it is hard being with someone who is so self-contained and not into connection/emotional intimacy. I'm glad we're together and don't regret it, but can certainly acknowledge that my life would be easier and happier had I made slower decisions about coupling and partners. I was really excited because I didn't think I'd ever have feelings for anyone again, and then suddenly I had very intense feelings for my boyfriend. Then, though my doctor said I couldn't, I got pregnant. Do I think it's possible to be as connected with someone in the future? I do. But if that's not what you're seeking or if that's not how you approach relationships, then you won't be as connected as you could be. But it depends on so many things, so many little micro-decisions about how you relate to a new person, and the nuances of that person themself. You may share a different phase, and not have that heady obsessive young love obsession, but I think it's possible to feel very deeply loved and loving and connected. I think Wheelerswife is exactly right that you need to be open to the idea of a very different kind of person/relationship. I hadn't prepared myself for that, and I'm still not doing it gracefully. My entire background/default/philosophy has to do with the great relationship DH and I had, and I need to move from accepting his death (which I have done) to accepting that our relationship was unique and extraordinary and won't be replicated, and that that is ok, that it's not the only way to be happy. I thought if I could get well-adjusted to his death, I was ready for another big relationship. But it's more than that. I need to stop seeing everything through the context of my relationship with DH. That's my challenge. You talk about something, Milojka, that I can relate to - moving from this deep connectedness on so many levels that we shared with our lost loves, to a more simplistic view of relationships - sharing life and times and being good to one another. I think there is something to that. I am trying to love what my boyfriend and I share, without wishing for some inexplicable mystical romantic obsessive thing that, quite frankly, is no longer appropriate for my life anyway! Ok, this is ridiculously long so I'll stop. I'm not sure I answered your question or ever got to the point I was intending to make, or even what that point was....

Totally different circumstances, so I hope you don't mind my chiming in, but DH was hit by a car while standing on a sidewalk. Not a month had passed when an organization that advocates for biker- and pedestrian-protective laws called me, wanting to come to some event and help hold a banner on the steps of city hall. My response was exactly the same - are you f'ing kidding me?! Of course I don't want bikers and pedestrians to be killed, of course you don't want veterans to commit suicide, but, yeah, I get it. There was also a part of me that was angry - this is about HIM, not death, about who he WAS, not how he died. I didn't want him turned into a cause, or into his death instead of his life.

Have you met this person? If not, I think this is madness. Even feeling attraction in the absence of meeting - what does it mean? I'm not saying you can't be attracted to someone's mind, but.... I say meet this person ASAP, and be cautious. "Talk is cheap," especially when facing a menu of potential mates, from the safety of behind a computer/phone.

Awww!! And oh no! And oh yay! Sounds like perhaps you might be able to get her contact info from someone.....? F the subconscious?? Sounds lovely, no matter what happens. Glad your friend did that!

I'm so sorry Grace! So frustrating. I had a stomach bug once and was worried it might be something more serious because it lingered. I went to my doctor. He told me I was giving myself ailments as a way to cope with grief and that I'd be better off relaxing, and should have a glass of wine before eating to calm down, that I was probably just giving myself anxiety. Uhhhhhhhh.... There was a stomach bug going around my office, I learned when I returned to work. Some of these people have major god complexes. I hope this doesn't affect your new position.

Yayyyyy!!!!!!!! Good luck, not that you need it!

This is the best thing. Congratulations, auntie! I'm so happy for you, for him and maybe even more, for what you said ^^^^ Awesome.

This was the part of grief that I found to be the longest-lasting, and see as the longest-lasting for many of my widow friends. Once the searing pain wears off, once you become accustomed to the unbearable absence of the person who is the most important part of your world, you still are left to rebuild a life. You have to re-envision your future. You have to re-discover who you are, apart from the culture of two that may have defined you and your life. I wasn't able, as early out as you are, to arrive at that problem yet. I was too busy barely surviving still. So I think you're doing great, whatever that means. Ugh. At almost two years out (I'm a bit more than 5 now), I remember thinking - ok, I'm doing ok - I'm working and I'm working out and I'm seeing friends and from the outside, I look totally functional. But what now? Now what? Rediscovering your "dreams" and wishes and preferences (new and old) is a very gradual process. (For me, I felt lost and hated DH's absence, so in a fruitless effort, I tried to incorporate his identity into my new life. I did things that were inspired by him - I learned Hebrew (his native language), I went to lectures I thought he'd love, eventually I traveled to Israel where he was born - and that trip brought me back to life. So for me, the way to new life was through trying to find him in a world in which he was no more. It's different for everyone.) I used to liken what you call hitting a brick wall to that feeling you get when you're sick, and you feel a bit better, and you overestimate how much better you feel, and you overexert yourself, and then you feel HORRIBLE. But I found that the lows were never quite as low again as they were in the first days/weeks/months. We *are* shells of our former selves for a time. But I think of us like starfish. You will regrow different parts where the old parts were. They'll never be the same, but they will function. (I didn't want to hear this in the beginning, so if you don't, ignore it, but: you may even be happy again.) It is a very slow and gradual process, in my opinion.

I used to call it being tasked with bearing the unbearable. You can't and yet you have and are and will. It doesn't feel survivable. But it is. Somehow. You will gain strength and peace slowly over time. And we are all here to tell you we've been there and KNOW. Know it in our bones and our souls. Back then, I didn't WANT to feel better because feeling better meant further from him, in time and in heart/soul. There will be greater peace. There will be relief from the searing pain. For now, just survive. Lean on us. I'm sending you love.

Wow!!!! How I guessed: I'm reading a six-volume autobiographical piece by a Norwegian, Karl Ove Knausgaard, and have become obsessed with Norway because of it. And now I'm dreaming of taking my daughter to come visit! Ready for a visit? Hahahaha I think your decision and life are amazing.

You forget that you are us and we are you. It's not pity. It's empathy/compassion, it's knowing, it's fellow-feeling. Not just for you, but for ourselves - our past selves, for those of us further out. And your writing likely gives great comfort to others. Not just "another one." In the beginning (5 years ago now), I used to get so angry about everything anyone said about grief, threw many mourning/loss/grief books against the walls of my apartment. It's not about grieving, it's not about loss, it's about HIM!!!!! The specific, unique man who no longer exists. It's about him - not me, not the process. It's about the things that can't be expressed or held here once they're gone, like the way they look when they move or change facial expressions, those in between moments, or the particular scent of their skin. It's about those irreplaceable details. I would sit on a bench on the river watching people walk, and look at each one: that's not him, that's not him, not one person on this earth is him. This world no longer contains him. I filled more than ten little journal books, trying desperately to write down every single thing about him.

Do any of us ever? Did he? No. And I mean that as a good thing - you lived a REAL LIFE with him. Not a movie in which you have five perfect minute to encapsulate everything you've ever felt and thought and give it to him like a perfect gift, written by professional writers. You shared a life. What more is there? There is no more than that. It is everything. I went through a lot of this worry in the beginning. DH was a very life-loving man and had a really positive healthy outlook. I tended to overthink things. So I naturally thought a lot about how I should've been easier-going, I shouldn't have let certain things in life upset me. But then I realized - what I was wishing for was to have been less myself, and he adored me for who I was, as I loved him, with his imperfections that were perfect for me. If I'd known that he'd die that day, of course I'd do things differently. I'd have made my whole life about him, every moment from the time we met until he left for work that day. But that's not real life.

I've read this whole thread very quickly, in a rush to get the gist, and what is clear just from a quick read (to me) is that everyone truly means well, and everyone speaks from their own experience, circumstances, philosophies. Portside said something about therapy, but I think we should *ALL* be careful not to think of this place as therapy - it's not. It's not even group therapy, where a counselor/therapist would be present moderating. Sure, it's "therapeutic" to be among those who have been through partner loss. But it is NOT THERAPY. This is a place for support, in whatever form that takes (and I include Portside's "tough love"/straight talk approach in that, because I *do* believe he says it not to judge or make people feel worse, but in the hope that people can find healthiness and happiness). Like many of the others on this thread have said, some people encounter difficulties in their grief journey that compound the emotional toll, such as illness, pre-existing psychological/psychiatric complications, dependent relatives, children with especially demanding problems/conditions, issues with in-laws, subsequent relationship issues, etc. Even if someone is "just" dealing with grief (partner loss being one of the worst things a person can experience), each person's timeline is different. Some people take a few months to "bounce back," and others take many, many years. (My own "grief mentor" said it took him 6 years to even START to feel alive again - six years! - and he's one of the deeply happiest people I know.) I've always thought it's a bit dangerous to think that anyone else can learn your lessons. We all have to come to our own perspectives ourselves. Not to say we shouldn't share, or give a pep talk or tough love sometimes, because sometimes someone says something and it's like a key in a lock - it just clicks and opens something. And talking it all out is what we're here doing. BUT, it's often very easy to understand something logically or see how someone else has adopted their outlook and approach to their life/circumstances, and a whole other thing to feel it and adopt it oneself. EVERYONE BELONGS HERE, anyone who has been widowed young. This is not a place for just those who feel cheated or in despair, or just for those who put on rosy glasses and march on, or just for those in between. It's for all of us. I know it's not easy when such emotional, essential, deep topics are the focus, but I think everyone should try as hard as they can to take other people's opinions with a grain of salt and see that, through all of our imperfect ways of communicating, we all want better for ourselves and each other.

Many here have probably heard this part of my story many times as I try to make sense of my new life. It is *BY FAR* not as extreme or adventurous as yours, but.... I lived in NYC. DH and I, like you two, were inseparable - the in love feeling never faded, we were obsessed with each other, we were the couple everyone envied. I grieved really really hard. At about two years out, I traveled to Israel where he was from as a kind of pilgrimage, and had a really emotional time - but not how I expected. I came alive again, I was full of joy. At about the same time, I met a widower who lived in the area near where I grew up, but further out, way more rural. I intended just to reach out to him to pay forward the support I got when I lost DH, but we ended up in a fling, then it all got really serious really fast, then I was pregnant and moved to the country to have his daughter and live a life with him. I went from the Upper East Side of Manhattan doing in-the-newspapers, exciting, controversial legal work, to living around roosters and goats, with several huskies, and suddenly pregnant and then a mom with a man who does manual labor for work. It has been extreme. I joke that I went from Sex and the City to Little House on the Prairie (which I've actually never seen, so I don't know if it's accurate! Also, it's not prairies, it's more like woods and river and mountains). I envy your bravery and solitude, though I understand what you say about loneliness and fear. Wherever you are, it sounds so beautiful and amazing. I've been fantasizing about Norway lately, and I picture that as where you are.

Thinking of you. It's such a hard thing. I remember the day I had to move out of our apartment - it was only 5 months out and I was a mess. I kissed the doorway into our bedroom. I wrote love notes in the closets to him. It does feel like leaving them behind in a way, like the winds blowing sand over their footprints at the beach. Your kids are awesome. I hope you find a peaceful and/or exciting new start for you in your new urban life! Good luck with the move. Edited to add: Though it was painful, the move was very, very good for me, as Trying says. I hope it will be the same for you.

Yuck. That's awful. A week after DH died, his mother and sister came over and ransacked our apartment. I was in a weakened state of course from grief and wasn't thinking straight and wasn't up to being assertive, so just let it happen. I sat on a couch sobbing while they searched through drawers (even MY underwear drawer), looked under our mattress, in our oven, everywhere. It was so insane. It was so traumatizing. They thought he had large amounts of cash in our apartment. They slashed up his shoes using our scissors and knives, because rabbis told them to. It seemed so violent and thieving. I don't regret doing nothing - they were clearly out of their minds themselves - and I was absolutely incapable of standing up to anyone at that point, I was just destroyed inside. But I wish so much it hadn't happened (of course!!!). Your in-laws don't have the excuse of being mad with grief, as it's been months rather than days. This was clearly orchestrated. I feel bad for them, and feel bad for my in-laws: how horrible do you have to feel in order to treat people this way????! It's sick. It sucks having to be the bigger person, but hey, you're a better person, and that's a good thing. I'm so sorry, for your mom too. Such ugly behavior. Making something already unthinkably terrible even worse somehow.

Yes yes yes yes yes. We barrage ourselves and each other with ideas of how life should be - some of my friends and I refer to ourselves as being "ruined by literature," i.e., the perfect love story or ideas of happily ever after. It's movies, too. It's even paper towel and laundry detergent commercials, for Gd's sake!!! We've been forced to live lives less ordinary, and accepting that and all that comes with it, oh man, it's a process if ever there was one. I'm five years out, and thought I was really well-adjusted, but relationship issues have recently shown me that I have major lingering problems, including RAGE, about my life derailing from the road more often taken.... I am really glad you wrote this today. I really need to let go of the ideas I've adopted since a very young age about how my life will look, what success is, and come to find more joy in this off-script scenario. [A bit of a tangent, but I've always wondered why our culture has an allergy to the word "victim." I mean, I know to live as though you're a captive to circumstance is not good, stuck and self-pitying forever, but honestly in objective truth, we were victims of our loved one's deaths. That's an accurate statement.]