Seeing both sides.-BF family/widowed husband

[Sugarbell]

I lost my childhood/adult best friend last March to Melanoma. It was a gut wrenching experience to say the least. We grew up together and I look at her parents as second parents and her older sister and I still communicate. Very close to her family. In each other's weddings...was with her the night she met her husband years ago-long history with the family.

 

Her late husband is a great Dad and guy. He lives in the same town now as her folks. Well a few months after my friend died....a "friend" of hers from her years living in Columbus started contacting her husband: She had been the kids babysitter when they were little.

 

Here is the sticky part....the family is not happy with this woman making the 5 hour trip south to see him. According to her sister...he never travels to see her...she's sought at him. The sister and parents don't understand how his home is still a shrine of his late wife...but he's sleeping with her. The kids (now 14 and 8) aren't crazy about it either. She's not welcome around my bf family according to her sister.

 

i have told her sister that it's not at all unusual for him to want to date and they should respect it (it's been 16 months)... They just don't like it that it's HER...I do see their point (she's an opportunist and came to his doorstep immediately after my friend died and has thrown herself at him) yet I also totally get that he's lonely and the family needs to back off judging. (They are still good to him-).

 

It's a weird place looking at this from the outside...I feel like a DGI...and yet I also know have preached the "your grief your rules" for years. I see it as he's very vulnerable...and she's available....but now I am looking at this as an outsider not a fellow widow.

 

But I also know he needs someone and the family needs to be more tolerant.

 

Weird place to be in.😣

[Mizpah]

I can see this from both sides, as you seem to.  But it also struck a person chord with me (cord?  whatever). 

 

About a year and a half after DH died, my mom was moving into a new apartment (new to her).  It was being renovated.  She'd mentioned the contractor a couple times - what a nice guy!  Etc.  Then one day she called me to tell me OMG this man just lost his fiancee in a horrible car accident and it really impacted her, obviously because of what I had gone through.  I immediately went into YWBB mode and thought, "What can I do for this person?"  (Person!!!  I wasn't thinking "he man, me woman!")  The next time I was visiting my family, I left some pastries and Gatorade there with a note offering an ear of someone who "gets it."  Over the next few months we were in touch by text, and we met months later (I lived about 3 - 3 1/2 hours away).  He, within minutes of our meeting one another, reached out and touched my hair, and made it very clear he was interested in a "me man you woman" kinda thing.  After a couple hours of talking, we were going to go to another bar/place, but instead drove me to his house.  I avoided the inside and wandered outside by the river, looking at stars (alcohol!).  It took me aback - what I saw as his advances.  I felt really torn - I was attracted and it felt inevitable, and he was a consenting (and forward) adult, and a few weeks later we began a thing.  Over that summer, I did things like always reach out to him.  (I felt guilty at the prospect of lessening contact "just because" we'd slept together, as I had been a support person prior to that.  Right before we began our fling thing, I told him I didn't think it was a good idea because I was the only person "like us" he knew and we should not complicate it.  But.)  When I was in town, I'd bring him "the best cookies in NYC," etc.  I'd always visit him (my family lived there and I visited the area anyway, and he hates the City, had an extremely relentless work schedule, and a son on his days off), and he only came to see me once (everyone who knew him was shocked - "wow he must REALLY like this girl," they later told me they thought).  But still: he only came down once, and I visited him many times.  In many ways, I took on the caretaking role or the pursuer role (depends on the eye of the beholder - see below).  Fast forward.  We now are raising our daughter and in a committed relationship. 

 

And this is what I'm trying to get to (sorry, long-winded).  His fiancee's family was (understandably) not happy that he'd "moved on" "so fast."  Her mother told me that what she knew about me was just that "some girl" was "bringing him cookies" (I don't know if that's his words or hers, the impression he gave or what she wanted to believe).  What she knew was that I was contacting him.  That I was going to see him.  That I was pursuing him.  Hearing this was so upsetting to me, as I'd contacted him altruistically (ok, probably tainted with a bit of "I'm such a nice person!" (hahaha) but nothing sexual/romantic, initially).  I had no "designs" on him.  I wasn't targeting him in his vulnerability to "be my boyfriend."  I certainly was not pursuing him (he touched my hair!!!!!! he brought me to his house!).  I felt defensive (I was seen how you describe the babysitter - an opportunist throwing myself at him).  I felt misrepresented.  I felt hurt. 

 

I'm not saying the babysitter is the same.  Maybe she's taking advantage of a vulnerable man for her own needs/wants.  But no one *really* knows what goes on between two people but those two people, or what he's encouraging and seeking privately.  A situation could give the impression from the outside that one is the pursuer, but the other very well could be, even if she initiated contact.  I was tempted to refuse to engage with my boyfriend because I felt he was vulnerable and not capable of making good decisions, but who am I to decide that for him?  How paternalistic and controlling that would have been.  He's a grown man, who can and should make his own mistakes - but maybe it's not a mistake. 

 

(As for feeling guilty for being a DGI, I'll admit right now that I felt a tad judgy even about my own situation/boyfriend - I was distraught for years, and he "fell in love" in less than a year....  But that's a whole other tangent.)

 

*I'm so sorry about your friend. 

[Bunny]

Maybe they're saying 'we just don't like her' is just a convenient excuse for not liking him being in a relationship, period. Pretending to themselves they'd be fine and dandy with it, if it was just some stranger. And how do you explain skin hunger to people: 'yes, I'm a completely heartbroken MESS, but I really seriously want sex So Bad Right Now. I crave to be touched so desperately even though I am still deeply grieving a dead person'. I told a very open-minded married friend about my intense unbearable skin hunger those first couple years and she was shocked.

 

Maybe the babysitter initially contacted him out of compassion, like any decent human being who knew the family so intimately would, and the sparks just unexpectedly flew? For me, it makes perfect sense he'd choose to be with someone he was familiar with, felt safe with. (Says the girl now dating a man she'd had an extended fling with in college. I had other men try to pursue me before that and it was scary to me, repulsive even, despite my desires. I personally needed that familiarity because I truly had no desire to date. He knew me already. We had ended amicably in the past, and we cared about each other as friends. That made it feel okay).

 

I can think of two friends who lost a parent early: a daughter who was pissed because her dad started dating 'too soon' (it had been about a year) and a son who was really sad that his dad never dated after his mom died. Unfortunately, it's super easy for others to be judgmental when people don't act the way you think they should. They don't understand the extra level of loneliness when it's your spouse that dies. Yes, they miss their daughter, yes she misses her sister- but when it's the person you slept next to, who was a part of the very fabric of every day life, it's different. It just is. Hell, that's why I don't get upset when people compare losing a pet to my losing my husband- because they were with them day in and day out, had an extra intimacy and secret language- they do get it on a certain level really. (Disclosure: I mourned my 'soul dog' for 5 years). And I get that as her best friend, your loyalties are conflicted- harder for you to walk the talk...

 

You know- it's entirely possible he is using her, and she is going to be the injured party when she finds out he's just not ready after all. But I'm gonna be the hopeless romantic and wish them a happily ever after.

 

 

[Trying]

Sounds like a tricky situation and probably hard for you to just be neutral.  Hopefully it won't tear the family apart.  Maybe she is an opportunist, maybe she is a kind and understanding soul, maybe he sees her as a safe person to seek physical comfort from, maybe she does all of the traveling because he is a single Dad.  It is his journey and while I understand it can be hard on the family to support what they feel is a mistake, I think he deserves a little slack.

[Taurus]

Maybe everyone should just mind their own business. They're adults - they're entitled to find happiness and/or make mistakes.

[arneal]

My cousins have gone through that behind their dad (my oldest uncle). When my auntie was sick with cancer, this friend of the family was her caregiver. Needless to say, she and my uncle spent time together. No one lived in their house so the way I see it, no one knows what conversations my uncle and auntie had about his future without her. In the end, he and the caregiver got married and there are still some icy issues.

 

I agree with Taurus. Folks are adults. I think of my own situation. I started looking to date within a couple of months after my husband died. However, this was the second time I'd been widowed, he had been very sick for about a year (my mourning had begun way back then when they told me he had a 50/50 chance), and he often said he didn't want me to be alone for the rest of my life. He even told our pastor that he was very afraid I would stay alone! I am grateful that the majority of my friends have been supportive. Praying the same for your friend ...

[Guest nonesuch]

The point about know one knowing about someone else's relationship as a couple:

 

I had a colleague who didn't like her SIL. There were many reasons, and with the least provocation, she's list them: she didn't take the family name when they married, she didn't have as many children as her brother wanted, she kept her job instead of being a stay-at-home mom.  Fast forward 25 years, and I run into former colleague again. It turned out her brother had ADHD, had trouble holding down a job, and his wife had been the breadwinner and stood by him faithfully.  SIL had turned into a saint.

 

You just never know.  In my experience, butting in just gives the potential victim a chance to defend his/her partner and justify the relationship. I had a girlfriend tell me that every time someone bad-mouthed her first husband, she grew more determined to prove everyone wrong.  She had to find out for herself that her now-ex was the rat everyone told her he was.