anniegirl

I guess it would depend on your financial situation. There might be reasons to do it and talking to a lawyer would be the easiest way to determine whether or not it's reasonable and practical. My husband and I didn't do one. Mostly because we viewed our "assets" such as they are as ours and not in terms of future inheritances for children. We are of the opinion that if there's anything left after we are both dead, the kids will get their cut. In meantime, they can grow up, get an education and make their way in the world just like we did. Obviously, we took a few financial precautions (life insurance and trusts) in the event that we would die while the kids were young or young adultish and still needed a bit of assistance but mostly, a pre-nup seemed like a bet hedging thing and not in a positive way. It seemed pessimistic and distrustful. That's just us. We also rewrote our wills within the first six months of remarriage to make sure that everything was in order - just in case - because my daughter was just five and my step-daughters were still young adults and floundering a bit financially. We have since revisited because situations are changing as the kids age. I know that some people feel that the late spouse's assets shouldn't be accessed by anyone but his kids but as I said earlier, when our spouses die (unless there is a will that set things up otherwise), we felt that our spouses assets were now ours. We were not elderly people with short life spans (knock wood) but middle-aged adults with a long time to go. It would be foolish to limit ourselves to maintain an inheritance for our kids. You should do what you are most comfortable with and what fits with your ideas and needs. And get some advice - lawyer or financial planners - that can help you understand the financial risks and the impact on you personally.

My step-daughter was in a long term relationship with a nice enough guy but someone who was a "bean-counter" in terms of the financial aspects of living together and in some ways, in terms of the emotional give/take. About two years into this, she came to Husband and I to discuss this, get perspective and decide if she wanted to stay in a relationship that was a lot of work and not as emotionally gratifying as she'd hoped it could be. I told her, "You should be able to love a person for who they are right now and not their potential or who you hope they might be one day if only you are faithful and loving enough to give them a reason to change." She lasted another two, mostly not happy or fulfilling, years with him before deciding to put away the hope that one day he and the relationship would change into what she needed and wanted and dreamed of. I know people well enough to know that when they spill the beans about their relationship, what they really want is to be heard. No advice. Just "I get it" or "You deserve better". You do deserve better. Your son deserves better. When you are ready, you will do what you need to and make that happy. In meantime, know that relationships are work, maybe challenging even, but they shouldn't be soul-crushing, lonely or abusive. You've had a hard time going back a long ways. Difficult is your norm. Having to work hard to hold things together or overcome difficulties is what you've trained yourself to do. Perhaps that's not serving you well anymore. Don't be so hard on yourself. Take a step back. Think about what you really need and apply the skills you've learned over the years to make that happen.

There is no way to vanquish the fear but you don't have to let it rule/paralyze you either. My husband's LW had melanoma and I am a fair-skinned redhead. Going to the skin doc is just a way of life and I nearly need to have this or that bit of skin scraped or burned off. It really bugs him and in the beginning, he was more obsessive about my skin DR appts than I was, but over the years (8 now) he has settled down and gotten himself to a point where he just acknowledges that "it" could happen again. And I had my moments too. The worst was when he had a minor heart attack just after our 3rd wedding anniversary. Very minor. Legacy of the stress of caregiving and he made a complete recovery with no lingering issues, but it's always there somewhere in my mind and I could do quite the number on myself if I let myself go there and dwell on it. The reality is that one of us is going to die first. Statistically it's more likely to be him and we both decided long ago that living through widowhood again someday (hopefully a day years and years from now) was simply the price of admission to a second opportunity at love and remarriage. When health scares come up (and I had a pretty big one myself a while back), you deal. The diagnostic part is, imo, the worst because when you have no info at all, your imagination just naturally runs wild and fills in the gaps. I try to live by the motto "don't panic until there is a concrete reason to". It's easier said than done. But it's normal to be afraid of losing someone again. It takes time to feel safe and illnesses and accidents have a way of starkly reminding you that safety is mostly an illusion. It's a good thing that your guy is getting things checked out. It's better to know than not. But don't spend time worry before you need to. People have "things" checked out all the time and usually, everything is fine.

That's just who you are and it's not a bad thing, but it's good to be aware of because clearly, it's not working for you in a good way. It's okay for you to be happy and for kids to be (because they are choosing to do so) be unhappy. You can acknowledge their issues without catering to them at your own expense. Just takes practice and patient. I think your pool plan is a great one and one thing I have noticed is that younger kids make easy connections with older ones and can be the bridge to smoother blending. It's easy for teens to snub an adult but not so easy to do the same to a wee child. My daughter was easily accepted by my stepdaughters and they refer to each other as sisters as though it has always been now.

I was a middle school teacher and parents were always expressing surprise that young teens especially were nearly as time intensive as toddlers. It's a fine line though because they also need to being to test themselves as independent beings.

We didn't actually give our kids a choice. We told them that we were dating and then that we were going to be getting married. It was an LDR and he had the more flexible job (and his kids were grown though the younger still lived at home) so he did the traveling and we usually didn't go more than a month without some sort of visit. My daughter was four. She had zero memories of me with her dad, so her being upset on LH's behalf was never an issue. I was co-sleeping with her though and transitioning her to her own bed involved tears (there would have been anyway) but it didn't take too long. She never questioned us sleeping in the same bed. Why would she? She was four and she had zero experience to base any opinions on. The older girls were more problematic. They were 22 and 24. They were fine with just dating but alarmed by our deciding to marry. I figured they would be but husband was caught flat-footed. He heard them out. Offered to bring them along on his visits to get to know me and my daughter but his bottom line was always "I am an adult. You don't have a vote in my life." We love our kids. However, neither of us believed that our lives had to be put on hold for them. Kids grow up and leave and live their own lives (which we will have no say in) and while society deems it the more noble thing to do, letting them be priority one, we just never saw it that way. In fact, I still don't see it that way. This is just my opinion, but if the two of you want to have more of a joint life, you simply have to do it. Kids will come aboard when they are ready and in the meantime, you just listen, be respectful, don't push but expect the same from them. Bad behavior (and there were moments) was never tolerated by husband or me. We were the adults. They were the kids. The end. Most of those I know who moved in together with kids and remarried - just did it. Dealt with issues as they arose but expected best behavior. It didn't always work and in cases where it didn't, there was often outside agitators like ILs or exes fueling things but mostly, it does as long as you and your guy are on the same page about expectations and don't allow the kids to divide and conquer.

In the beginning and at the most basic level, which is about all that one can manage in the beginning when you start thinking ahead, yes - probably. But I doubt that anyone here, in any forum, has that kind of fairy tale innocence or ability to suspend belief after being widowed. I mean, you can't unknow, unfeel what's happened. When I - as a newbie - I would go searching the stories of those years and more out - I wanted to know that they knew happiness again. In didn't matter to me what form it took. I needed to know that it wasn't impossible. What scared me was not that there were bad days or that loss still hurt sometimes. What alarmed me were those who never talked about anything else. Who lived in their grief as though it was new or nearly so. Seemingly all the time. Because they never shared anything else. I think that's why threads like this are important. It shows that there is no single journey. No right or wrong way. That life is still life with ups and downs and plateaus - just like before. But that people move forward. Maybe not in straight lines and maybe not they way they'd hoped but they go on and there are good things, times and opportunities.

My husband is widowed to. He gets it and will listen to me talk, hold me if I need to cry and Is incredibly patient with my loathing of the LH's mother (he doesn't get that though b/c his ILs were wonderful people), but I really don't like talking to him about LH. There is no fine line or anything. It just feels too private. Too separate. Too "just my business". The anniversary of what would have been our 15th was last summer. I haven't paid much attention to the date in forever really but it was a biggie and I have a friend who married just months before we did and her sharing about her anniversary on FB made me aware of the "significance" of the anniversary. I've been married twice now and still haven't spent 15 years married between them. Maybe that's what caught my attention? How some people just get to have that and some of us don't. You never know what's going to pull you up and remind you in a way that bothers you when it hasn't before.

This is wonderful! Thank you.

I was never big on commemorating anniversaries of death. I always preferred to let them come and go. As you point out, there are other (imo better) dates like birthdays to designate for remembering. I never really spent any of the anniversaries of LH's death alone. Even though we weren't technically dating, my second husband was a part of my life and his presence and the future always loomed much larger than my past. If what is holding you back is the feeling that you SHOULD be doing something, I would say - let that go. There are no rules. There is what other people do because it works for them and what you do for you because that works for you. If you want to stick to your routine, do it. It might not be as jovial an outing as usual but it's your now, your routine and it makes you happy. My husband did the commemorating death anniversaries for his LW for the first two years. He did it out of a sense of obligation and because my step-daughters wanted him too. On the third anniversary, I pointed out that he was doing no one any favors by "sucking it up" every year and doing something he didn't see a point to simply out of obligation to custom. He didn't have to grieve the way his daughters did. The relationship they had was different than the one he had with LW. There was no reason for his expression to be anything other than his. And that was the end of his observance and my step-daughters now (nearly nine years on) have their own private daughter/mom rituals and really, everyone is good. Do what you feel is going to best suit you. Grieving is for the survivors not the deceased, who even if they had an opinion shouldn't get a vote. Whatever you decide, you should be the primary consideration. jmo

Rob, it's good that you had some good discussions. But don't forget that teens - whether they been this way or not in the past - do a lot of there reasoning on their own. That's part of what being a teen is. Separating. And they are - because of age and hormones and brain development (her brain is just as actively wiring and rewiring as it was when she was a toddler) - not "themselves" anymore and they are a ways off from being who they are going to become. Yep, she inconvenienced you and her sister. Definitely needs to be addressed. But her closure and yours don't have to be the same thing. One of the hardest things to come to grips with as our kids become teens and young adults is that they are really their own people and they have a right to decide who they are for themselves. Yes, we still have a job to do but thinking for them isn't one of them, imo. It's normal for teens and young adults to wander away from religion. A large percentage of them wander back when they are ready.

I decided that I didn't want to be confirmed when I was 13. I still believed in God at that point but I didn't think I had the commitment required to say "yes this is my faith" - which is what confirmation is and what I was taught that I would be doing. My father made me go through with my confirmation. I balked. I argued. I stopped short of complete insurrection because - honestly - I was afraid of his temper, and he'd elevated the art of the silent treatment to what might be considered Gitmo levels today. In short, I allowed him to bully me into it. My mother has told me more than once that she regrets not taking my side back then. I sulked through the entire thing. I felt that I was being forced to make a commitment that I was not entirely sure I should be making given my doubts and nearly forty years later, I still resent the hell out of my dad for making me do something of that magnitude knowing that I had reservations. I get that you are frustrated with your daughter and that it would certainly have been easier if your wife had been there to fly wingmate. You thought you had gotten through to her and she agreed to your conditions and then (like teenage girls do) pulled the rug out from under you. But you are talking about a religious commitment that your daughter is making - not you - and it's got to be her choice or it's meaningless. Yeah, it's three years of prep but that's why the prep is three years, so that people have time to think and decide. It's important and means something and clearly, your daughter - right now - isn't ready to make that commitment. I believe that kids/teens are perfectly capable of sorting through their religious training and feelings and making decisions for themselves. And she has and maybe it would be okay to simply accept it and leave the door open for her to come back to it later - when it's her choice and means something to her. I'm sorry you are dealing with this alone but you only have to be the "heavy" if you want to be. Maybe this isn't an issue that requires "heavy".

Yes, it gets better. There isn't a timeline and when there are added difficulties, it can take longer, but there comes a day when things stop being unrelentingly awful and later, a day when it's not so bad and eventually it's okay again. Often there is calm, content and even happy. And I am not lying. If it never got better, I would say so, but the truth is that it does. Hang in there.

D is "dear" and I first encountered it on Babycenter (a site for moms and moms to be) in late 90's. So dd or ds is dear daughter/son. DH is generally dear husband. DW = dear wife. L is for "late", so LH is late husband. But there is overlap IL is in-laws. MIL is mother in law then. BIL is brother in law. etc. S is used to indicate step, which translates dss being dear step son. And should venture into Social there is BF or GF - boy/girlfriend. SO is significant other. FWB is friend with benefits. Probably not covering everything but just basics that once you have them makes it easy to decipher most things via context. Hope this helps.

Not the greatest Okie accents but the lyrics that are written in "dialect" are bad to begin with.

A tough week. Don't be hard on yourself. You mention the FB page and it reminds me that I am still so grateful that there wasn't social media a decade ago like there is now. I don't know how ppl deal with FB pages and such that remain behind and "alive". I could never have survived that extra stress. I found (and it could just be me), making it to the first anniversary let some of the pressure off and it's not a magic finish line but there was a lightening of load. There is nothing to understand as much as there is just something to be incorporated into who you are and will be going forward. I am sorry and do, do be extra wonderful to yourself these next days. Sometimes we forget to make ourselves priorities during these times when we really need to. ((hugs))

I was that kind of a kid. My mom depended on me for a lot. I never thought much about it. Don't know how much chicken/egg there was too it. Was I dependable because I was depended on or vice versa. But, I was "old" and spent much of my young life waiting impatiently to catch up with myself.

Attraction is such an intangible and it changes with age, experience and circumstances. My LH grew on me. I fell in love with my second husband via email. I didn't have any idea what he looked like or sounded like. Or he me. We exchanged photos when we decided to "date" and when we first met, I think we were still a bit surprised by each other, but we were in love and beyond the "looks" thing by then. But, I don't have a "type". Never have. Perhaps that helps? Attraction happens. It's probably good to have an idea when you are venturing back in via online dating - to help narrow the field - but you can't know until you know. And once you know, it's often very definite.

I agree but there are no 100% in life. No guarantees. Every relationship comes with risk. It is a good idea to assess risk and we often know when another person is not as committed to the success of a relationship as we are and it would be foolish to go into any relationship where both people are not on the same page with same plan and same goals. The hardest part is the uprooting because not everyone has the tolerance for leaving behind a life and starting a new one. Most of us know who were are as people. What's important. What isn't. All factors to be weighed.

He's a caretaker. Some guys are. Weird, huh? My LH was not good at taking care of me like that. I was the caretaker, but it wasn't odd because I had always been in every type of relationship. It was what I was used to and I didn't often think about it. When I met my second husband, it was clear from the beginning that he was a fixer and a caretaker too. And it was weird at first but it was nice and I don't think I could go back to anything but a 50/50 now. You bf sounds like a great guy.

Stumbled across the 1999 Hugh Jackman version of Oklahoma last night. Full length. I love this.

I have been trying to find the soundtrack for this - no luck - but I did find some clips on YouTube. 1967 ABC television version of Carousel with Robert Goulet. My mother had it one vinyl. One of the first records I can remember listening to. This is If I loved You, the whole scene complete with the banter in between Julie and Billy's not-declaration for each other.

I dealt with my share of bad in-laws and it's an awful thing. I understand why you are torn because they are a link to your LH and right now, it probably seems good to re-establish ties because if it had happened when your LH was alive, it's likely he would have been open to this. However, they've proved in the past to be untrustworthy and people who have no regard for others' feelings. They fell out with your LH over an inheritance that they clearly wanted access to and you would be wise to make sure they are not after your money now because estranged relatives have a habit of turning up - remorseful and professing regrets - after someone has died only because they smell financial opportunity. If you do decide to reconnect further, make sure you have your family or friends around when they do visit so you have objective witnesses to what you hear and see and to make sure that neither you or your children are taken advantage of. Though my personal opinion is that you owe these people nothing and they are back only because they want something from you, you must do what you feel is best for you and your children. Please be careful and err on the side of caution until you are sure their intentions are good ones. I am so very sorry you have this to deal with on top of everything else. Take care of yourself.

It got easier once I could identify the physical things as being triggered by emotional things and began to recognize patterns because that made it easy to take steps to circumvent. It's time consuming and it's hard to reteach your body once it's established a habit. I moved away at 15 months out and found that it helped a lot.

I was just talking with someone about this on Twitter - the anxiety part of grief that manifests regularly for what seems like forever and it's something that no one really acknowledges, it can show up so regularly that you can mark the hour and day almost. And you know what it is. Just leftovers that your body is still dealing with even though intellectually you've moved a bit or a lot beyond . Loss and the accompanying physical side-effects imprint on us and once our bodies learn a reaction, they become go-to's in times of stress and they can become patterns over time too. And I know "they" say we are supposed to "ride out the waves" and in the beginning that's about all you can do but eventually, you have to simply start swimming the other way and then avoiding the water altogether when necessary. We are not powerless. There ca,e a day when I just said "fuck it, not gonna do this" when the annual parade of dates came knocking because it served no purpose other than to make me feel physically and emotionally crappy. So I stopped. I ignored. I distracted. I imposed new patterns. Time helps but we need to help ourselves a bit too. It's frustrating as you leave the first year and head into the second and a bit beyond to realize that while you aren't a mess anymore, there is still shit at issue. If there is "grief work" at all (a BIG if, imo) it's learning to let go of things you didn't do, things you can't control, things that will always suck no matter how you spin them. Acknowledging that a bad thing happened and it didn't kill you like you thought (maybe wished) it would is a lesson in the life that not is not easily reconciled and the emotional hangover hangs on. But it does end. It does. One day, you are going to look around and know you are there. It won't be free of memories or the occasional sad thought or tear but you will be there.