Psychology Today article on Valentine's Day

[rooshy]

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/beautiful-grief/201202/what-do-about-valentines-day

 

I hope you enjoy the article.  I have been a widda for six years and found the fifth year was the hardest.  I expected myself to be remarried, or at least dating.  Neither of those things have happened. I know that my Chapter 2 is out there...somewhere...it's just frustrating to me. 

 

So in the meantime, I'll take care of myself and my two sons. 

[Lisa]

I think she should have kept the dog. You've been at this way past Chapter 2. I never beieved chapter 2 is another person. It's us moving tbrough this life as best we can.

[Milojka]

Thanks for posting the article.

I am probably in a different phase than her, only 2 years out. But when I think about later, the future...

 

I have never been afraid that having another man would ever feel like betraying him, or cheating. Surely he would want me to be happy, how could he possibly see it as something negative? He was always supportive of what I did...

 

But I am afraid of what the author describes as the messyness of relationships with actual people, the hurt and sadness. There haven't been any messyness, hurt or sadness between dh and me. People who knew us used to say that they had never seen a better matching couple as us. Peope who did not know us, often thought that we just got together recently, not decennia ago. We were always talking, laughing, connecting. The only things I didn't like about him was that he hated DIY and snored.

 

Since he died two years ago, I stepped into the wide scary world and traveled. I have never met as many people before as I did then. Many couples, many stories. I now have sort of established myself in a small community here, where everyone knows everyones history until generations ago.

 

I was - and I still am- shocked when I found out how messy most relationships are, or were. I honestly had no idea, I hardly knew people in my old life. People seem to come together, then fight, then break up, to start all over again. Life long relationships - where people do not fight against each other, but work as a team together with eachother - are extremely rare. This is still hard to believe for me - was I really that unworldly? - but it seems to be confirmed with what I see and heard every day.

 

I think I am the kind of person that finds connection with another person really important. The most important. But I will not look for it. I will not go online for it, and I will not move for it to another place with more suitable and available men - there are none of them where I am. My goal will be to try to be reasonably happy on my own.

 

Not sure why I am writing this. I have just come out of a very dark and difficult winter where I could feel myself sinking deeper and deeper. It surely was the darkest period of all since he  had died. I was just coming out of that.

And today it is February 14, the day I met my husband for the first time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Needytoo]

In a few weeks, it will be four years without my husband, just like rooshy I thought I would have met my chapter 2 by now.  Thank you for posting the article. I found there was so much in I can relate to. 

 

I imagined myself with a lot more friends that I do now and just like the author in the article I find some of these new relationships "messy".  I find I am a new level of loneliness that I can't even put into words and then that leads into SunshineFL article hope for widows.  That one hit home big time.