Young widower looking to start dating again

[Theodsmg]

Hello,

 

I suppose I should begin by sharing a little about myself. I'm a 29 year old guy from the Northeast and I just finished a medical residency two months ago. I was engaged at 25 while in medical school, and married at 26 to a girl I had met and fallen in love with during college. She became pregnant in early 2012 and everything was fantastic until god and the universe conspired to break my heart. When she was approx 30 weeks pregnant with our baby boy, she was coming back from a friend's house around 11pm when a drunk driver ran a red light while speeding and t-boned her car, knocking her off the road and into a shallow ditch. She must have died almost immediately after impact because she was dead by the time the paramedics arrived, approximately 10 minutes after the crash. The baby was alive when they arrived at the hospital but succumbed to injuries soon afterward.

 

I was a wreck afterward, obviously, and basically shut down. I missed three weeks of work after drinking myself into a near coma and voluntarily entering to a psychiatric facility for evaluation. I have been seeing a therapist once a week after checking out of the hospital. It's been roughly a year since it happened and I believe the counseling has helped me come to terms with it as best I can.

 

I have set up a Match.com account because I've never been the type to go to bars or clubs to meet women, yet I'm unsure how I should even broach this subject with my dates. I have my first date since the accident scheduled for next weekend with an attractive woman with a fun personality nd I don't know what I can say to dates to avoid scaring them off. My date is 26 and never married with no children, and she also has a professional career. I'm worried but I'm sure these women will probably be at a loss for words as well. I don't want to intimidate them by talking about the incredible person that my late wife was yet I want to be honest. I'm willing to let someone in although I would probably want to take things slow on the physical front. I should say that my wife was my first serious girlfriend when we started dating at age 20, although both she had been with a half a dozen or so partners before meeting me and I had been with 7 women before her.

The point I'm making is that she was my first and, so far, only love.

It would obviously be easier for me were I simply a young divorcee rather than a widower, but that isn't what life has dealt me. The only redeeming fact from the accident was the fact that the drunk behind the wheel was not wearing a seatbelt and also lost his life. It seems like they always survive but not in this case, so I didn't have to go through the agony of a criminal trial. But how can I begin to explain this? It isn't as if I'm looking for something different because I regret my marriage. I was incredibly happy until the accident. I want someone who can make me feel as happy as she did, but I know that I might never have that type of connection with anyone ever again, and I'm okay with that. I'm not looking for perfection.

 

I've found it difficult to believe in god since the accident and I don't see it changing anytime soon. What I do know is that my wife would want me to move on and try to find love again, just as I would want the same for her if the situation had been reversed. I'm meandering off the path at this point in my post so Ill just hang it up and see what advice people on here may have for me. I used to lurk this forum occasionally and I figured it's a better bet for quality advice than Yahoo Answers.

Edited September 20, 2013 by Theodsmg

[heartshaped]

I'm so incredibly sorry for your loss.

 

Seeing as how it's your first date with this woman, I wouldn't necessarily broach the subject in great detail. I always feel like things of this nature are incredibly personal. If she asks or it comes up, I'd just keep it to "Unfortunately, I lost my dear wife in an accident a year ago."

[Phantom888]

This is a heartbreaking story. I'm sorry for your loss. All I can say is ask yourself if you are ready to date. The woman will likely want to be your center of attention, so if you are still missing your wife every moment, then you shouldn't date yet. Is it out of the question to have a few flings or casual partners before you start a new relationship? I think you need to be upfront about what you are seeking. IMHO.

[pteromom]

I'm so incredibly sorry for your loss.

 

Seeing as how it's your first date with this woman, I wouldn't necessarily broach the subject in great detail. I always feel like things of this nature are incredibly personal. If she asks or it comes up, I'd just keep it to "Unfortunately, I lost my dear wife in an accident a year ago."

 

This.

 

Don't go into detail on the first date. Just enjoy her company and get to know each other. There is plenty of time to get into the whole story a little later.

 

I am so very sorry for your loss. That is a heartbreaking thing to have happen.

[Standard-Fare]

Your story is a heartbreaker and yes it is going to take a special type of girl to be ready to dive into that. But plenty of them are out there, I assure you. Let me speak highly of my own gender -- most of us are sensitive, compassionate, and fully capable of handling emotional complexity. I also think many women on here would agree that they would be open-minded to a situation of this nature with the right guy.

 

With online dating, I think you should be upfront in your profile that you're a fairly recent widower. Don't disclose any details of your story, but just put that basic fact out there. Let's face it, it's a defining part of who you are and whoever you may start to date needs to know about it.

 

On first dates, don't talk about the subject at all. You can't have a conversation about it until you're sure you'll see the person again, you're sure you're both interested, etc. A second date, maybe it's worth starting that conversation. But you'll want to avoid situations that end with you getting way too personal and/or emotional.

 

As I said, this is a defining part of your life story so there's no shying away from it. If you're ready to date – whether's that now or later – whatever woman you're with is certainly going to have to know and be accommodating to this aspect of your past.

[soccerrprp]

Theodsmg,

 

I lost my wife a couple of years ago after a 12+ year marriage. I am very sorry to hear of your loss, but you have a beautiful baby! An incredible reminder of your beautiful wife!

 

You need to make certain you are ready for a relationship. I don't subscribe to the view that you should have a few flings. That's simply immoral and unfair for the women who may be looking for a LT relationship. If, and the topic will likely come up early on, a women asks about your past relationship, do not hesitate to tell her what happened. Be up front about it. Some women will immediately intimidated by your loss and fear that you are not emotionally ready, she may be compared to your late wife, etc. YOU know if you are ready and from the sounds of it, it doesn't sound like to me.

 

Have you grieved enough? Have you given yourself to let it all out? Have you begun to separate yourself from your late wife (not entirely, of course) to allow room for someone new? Do you have your life and that of your child's life in order, organized, supported when and where needed?

 

You need to get yourself together and ready for a relationship and your therapist can help with that. And friends and family.

 

Good luck. It won't be easy, but if you are going to date now, please be ready to allow someone else in your life, otherwise, don't date.

[pyramid]

I'm so sorry you have gone through such a huge tragedy. I'm glad you are working through it in a healthy way.

 

I briefly dated a widower earlier this year. (Well, he wasn't technically - they were engaged, and had been together 10 years. She was diagnosed with cancer & they were waiting to get married until she was in remission... which unfortunately never happened.)

 

Anyway, it was an interesting experience. He told me about it when we first met (at a speed dating event). He spoke about her a lot. He'd mention an experience or a vacation or pretty much anything, and it would tie back to her. (Me: when did you start shaving your head? Him: When J lost her hair in chemo. Me: What are you going to do on your trip to X? Him: Visit J's grave. Me: How long have you had your dog? Him: He was J's and I promised her I'd take care of him. That kind of thing.)

 

I told him I was ok with him talking about her. She was a huge part of his life and it's not like a divorce where you are apart because you can't live with each other anymore. Unfortunately he came on very strong, very fast, and then disappeared just as fast. He got scared. He had been in a few short, casual relationships before me (1-2 months) and I was looking for something with long-term potential.

 

Please be honest with yourself and the women you meet about what you are ready for and what you are looking for. You can't replace her. Maybe start with casual dating, meeting new people - don't convince yourself that you are ready for something serious unless you 100% truly are.

[Theodsmg]

Thanks you all so much for your responses and the general outpouring of support. It means the world to me. It sounds like there's some substantial disagreement on whether this should be disclosed in my profile and the correct time period in the dating process with a woman to reveal this part of my past.

 

Regarding whether or not I am ready to date again, I do feel ready. I still miss my wife and I don't think I'll ever stop missing her, but it doesn't mean that I'm not capable of loving someone again. The people that consider entering a relationship with me, however, will have to respect that there are a couple of important things in my life that I'm unwilling to change. The first is that as long as I live in this geographic area, I plan on visiting my deceased wife's gravesite once a year on her birthday. Not the anniversary of her death, because that's too depressing. I also plan on maintaining a strong relationship with her parents (my former in-laws) because I grew very close to them when we first started dating. I don't have a relationship with my biological father for reasons that are too complex to dwell on in this post, but suffice it to say that I consider her father to have basically fulfilled a father/mentor role in my life since I first met him, and I don't ever see that changing.

 

My wife's dad has actually been pushing me to start dating again in the last couple of months because he is convinced that this is what she would have wanted and he and my former mother-in-law want me to move on with my life. They know that I love their daughter and always will but that doesnt mean that I'm incapable of loving someone new. So any woman that I enter into a relationship with or marry will have to be comfortable with both the annual visits to her grave and also in me maintaining a close relationship with her father. My wife was his only child. I obviously wouldn't expect a significant other to accompany me to the gravesite visits or to visits a half dozen times a year with her father (he is local) but she would obviously be welcome to if she so desired. I should clarify that if one of my best friends died then I imagine I would also wish to visit their grave on their birthday so I'm that sense it is no different.

 

The best person to judge whether you are ready to date again would be your psychologists at this point (as s/he'd know how you think) but from your post alone I have a feeling you are not emotionally ready. If you want to be clear about your feelings, ask yourself this: "Are you dating this new girl because you are excited about her and she is a great long-term partner potential" or "Are you dating this new girl because you want to move on from the tragedy of your wife/son and you want to date others to move on." I'd give it a bit more time, as you are still young and there is no rush. [Why delay? Because what happens if you get rejected by a few girls, which is inevitable on OLD, and that prolongs your feelings of "My wife cannot be replaced." That can't be good for your emotional recovery.

 

I don't know about this girl's true potential because we haven't yet met in person, but I am hoping that there is chemistry between us. I won't try to make something from nothing, however, and if there isn't a second date then I'll keep dating. I do want to move on from her death because I feel it is time. It doesn't mean forgetting about what she meant to me, but it does mean transitioning away from the role as her husband into a new role as a potential significant other to someone else. I realize that my wife can't be replaced and I'm not trying to do so. There's no real analogy that fits but the best one I can come up with, weak though it may be, is losing a childhood pet. I lost my golden retriever to cancer at age 12 and after a few months of grieving, my family got another golden who I bonded with. I wasn't trying to replace my original pet. I was appreciating the 10 years of joy that he gave me and I wanted to move on and bond with another pet in a similar way. The second golden did not replace the first, but I love and loved them in different ways. So I realize that I'll never be able to replace my wife and I'm not interested in trying to find a replacement. I'm looking to find a new woman with which I can share my life, and although she will likely end up being different than my first wife in myriad ways, I don't anticipate any problems.

 

Theodsmg,

 

I lost my wife a couple of years ago after a 12+ year marriage. I am very sorry to hear of your loss, but you have a beautiful baby! An incredible reminder of your beautiful wife!

 

You need to make certain you are ready for a relationship. I don't subscribe to the view that you should have a few flings. That's simply immoral and unfair for the women who may be looking for a LT relationship. If, and the topic will likely come up early on, a women asks about your past relationship, do not hesitate to tell her what happened. Be up front about it. Some women will immediately intimidated by your loss and fear that you are not emotionally ready, she may be compared to your late wife, etc. YOU know if you are ready and from the sounds of it, it doesn't sound like to me.

 

Have you grieved enough? Have you given yourself to let it all out? Have you begun to separate yourself from your late wife (not entirely, of course) to allow room for someone new? Do you have your life and that of your child's life in order, organized, supported when and where needed?

 

You need to get yourself together and ready for a relationship and your therapist can help with that. And friends and family.

 

Good luck. It won't be easy, but if you are going to date now, please be ready to allow someone else in your life, otherwise, don't date.

 

This post is confusing because I stated that our baby did not survive, so no, I don't have a beautiful baby as a reminder of my wife. I do have lots of photographs, videos and other mementos with which to remember her by , and of course I can recall many other special times we enjoyed together.

 

So I'm not really sure what else to say in response to this post because it seems a lot of your concerns stem from your mistaken belief that our child survived when in fact he did not. I wish he had, but I do believe things happen for a reason. I do wish that he had, not so much to remember her by, but simply because he was my child and was certainly viable at 30 weeks gestation. I have to imagine, however, that whatever difficulties I may have in finding a compatible woman willing to accept thus reality would be compounded if my boy had survived. I would then be a recently widowed father of a young child rather than a widower with no children, and I imagine that far fewer women would be willing to accept that reality, considering that lots of people are not interested in dating single parents, let alone a recently widowed single parent.

Edited September 21, 2013 by Theodsmg

[crederer]

hey man, sorry to hear about your situation. I think you're a strong man to be able to deal with that as well as you seem to be.

 

Don't make it a big issue at first (i.e, don't have it in your profile AT ALL, don't get into too much detail other than you're a widower early in the relationship).

 

Good luck man, I genuinely feel for you. I think I'd crumble into a pile of dust if that happened to me. You're an inspiration for men everywhere.

[Standard-Fare]

I'm curious why people think he shouldn't address this at all in his profile. I think this is a big part of his identity, esp. right now. There's no need to put it in the first line, tell any details about it, but I think "fairly recent widower" is appropriate and important info to share.

 

I consider it similar to someone who is divorced. No, you don't need to give the details about that in your profile; and no, the topic shouldn't come up early in the dating process.

 

But the fact that you were married and divorced in the past is a fixed-in-stone chapter of your biography and anyone you're dating has the right to know about it from the very start. For some, it's going to be a dealbreaker or turnoff, but you want to weed those ones out immediately anyway -- why would you be wasting your time with them?

 

My instinct for the OP is that he should be seeking women around his age and older, versus mid to early 20s... just because a woman with some more experience under her belt and more dimensions to her own past is going to be more likely to handle this particular scenario.

 

For example, I'm 32, and I would be open-minded toward dating someone in this position -- just as I'm open-minded toward dating someone who is divorced, has kids, etc. etc. I have my own past, and I understand the chaos and craziness of life. But the 26-year-old me would have been scared off by it.

 

However, I guess it's less about age and more about finding women with the appropriate maturity/emotional complexity. They are out there.

[soccerrprp]

This post is confusing because I stated that our baby did not survive, so no, I don't have a beautiful baby as a reminder of my wife. I do have lots of photographs, videos and other mementos with which to remember her by , and of course I can recall many other special times we enjoyed together.

 

So I'm not really sure what else to say in response to this post because it seems a lot of your concerns stem from your mistaken belief that our child survived when in fact he did not. I wish he had, but I do believe things happen for a reason. I do wish that he had, not so much to remember her by, but simply because he was my child and was certainly viable at 30 weeks gestation. I have to imagine, however, that whatever difficulties I may have in finding a compatible woman willing to accept thus reality would be compounded if my boy had survived. I would then be a recently widowed father of a young child rather than a widower with no children, and I imagine that far fewer women would be willing to accept that reality, considering that lots of people are not interested in dating single parents, let alone a recently widowed single parent.

 

OMG, my deepest apologies! I misread your post. I am sooo sorry.

[RedRobin]

Divorce or death of a spouse are certainly the most profound losses that anyone can have...

 

the loss of a child on top of that... I can't even imagine.

 

One of the hardest things you may have to accept is that there are very few people that have had these experiences first hand... especially at your age.

 

Even worse... is that alot of people closest to you may not even understand your grieving process. They will have moved on... yet there you are, still stuck.

 

Please know that it does get better.

 

If you haven't already, I'd seek out a counselor who specialized in grief therapy or grief trauma.

 

Regarding dating again. Please just keep expectations low. The idea is just to meet people. Get to know them.