It’s 6 months since my beloved husband died suddenly and unexpectedly aged 66. I feel as if I’m missing him even more if that’s possible. On Wednesday a ‘friend’ said ‘maybe you’ll meet someone soon’. She’s a recent widow too but a lot older than me and said her husband was wonderful and she’d never be with anyone else. Made it sound as if I didn’t love my husband as much. It broke my heart and I can’t stop sobbing. Please help me deal with a hurtful comment. Probably me being hypersensitive but I’m so sad 
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Hi @Toffeegirl
One of my work colleagues I used to work with before I retired. Lost her husband 6 months before I did both suddenly due to heart attacks. When I saw her after my husband died . She told me about a dating app she had used . She met someone else through it 6 months after her husband died . I told her I wasn’t ready for that . No you’re not being over sensitive.
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Dear Toffeegirl
I’m so sorry for your loss. I lost my husband suddenly 10 months ago. It was a thoughtless thing to say to you but we all say things we don’t really mean at times. It amazes me sometimes what people say but I think sometimes they just say the first thing that comes into their heads. Yesterday at the bank I told someone my husband had died and they said well you look nice anyway. People are strange x
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Hello Toffegirl, so sorry you’re feeling sad, losing one’s spouse is one of the worst things we will go through in our lives , dealing with that day after day is bad enough, and having people say the most insensitive things is appalling, .. you are not being over sensitive, ..at 6 months , your loss is still raw..i lost my husband 11 weeks ago, and i can’t even begin to imagine dating anyone, my husband was my true love always and forever 
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I would have walked away at best. At worst, it would depend on the day. She made a totally insensitive and thoughtless remark. No excuse for not thinking and filtering before you say something…to anyone let alone someone who recently lost their spouse.
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That’s awful coming from someone who is a widow, maybe she didn’t love her husband. I would have told her at the time how hurtful the comment was. 6 months is still early in grief and your emotions are normal. I’m eight months in and I m worse now than earlier. You grieve in the way you want to . I don’t really know what was going on in her head but don’t let her upset you. Take care.
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I would say she meant well, the deeper meaning behind her comment being she was concerned you would end up feeling lonely and living the rest of your life alone.
She probably thought, being a widow herself, she is managing fine being single and that’s her preference, but guessing that others may be different. How did the conversations start?
She’s probably trying to reassure you, but it came out in a flippant, clumsy and thoughtless way.
It would be better for her as your friend to be honest and say something along the lines of, “I’m worried about you ending up alone and struggling with loneliness”. That would have given you the opportunity to tell her you’re not ready or looking.
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One of my 93 year old neighbours came over for a chat, she said she found her first husband dead in the kitchen, but she got over it pretty quick, her words. She went on to marry twice more, now a widow. Some couples are not deeply in love, happy enough for the companionship but not soulmates.
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Same thing with me.
I will never ever stop loving my wonderful wife Fanny .
She’s my eternal love 
, my soulmate, my everything
I’m wearing my wedding ring permanently and I will be buried wearing it.
Kind regards - Joe
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I have been widowed twice, both through sudden cardiac arrests. I was 16 when I met my first husband and he was my first boyfriend. I was 20 when I married him and we had two children, the youngest of whom is sadly disabled. We were deeply in love with each other.
He died 32 years later. I was on my own, caring for our daughter for almost six years, then I met a widower, we loved each other and were married for 16 years. He died two years ago.
And, do you know what? I have met someone else, and what is more, I love him very much, and he loves me, and he loves my daughter, and she loves him. He is also a widower.
I can assure you that I loved both my husbands and I love my partner. All equally, none were just “companions”.
The heart has the capacity to love more than once, or at least, mine has. Just as you don’t stop loving your first child if a second comes along.
We are all different. I don’t judge or condemn, or make assumptions about whether anyone else loved their partner enough.
Wishing everyone here all the best for the future.
Jane
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I do think it is more insensitive to make broad sweeping and hurtful statements about people you don’t know,to assume people who find the courage and love to move on with life after losing a partner as not deeply loving them and just for companionship is at best disrespectful.
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I don’t think anyone was being disrespectful and I don’t know why you would assume that.
We are all at different stages of this awful grief path and I’m happy to read when people have met a new partner. But after 8 months on from the loss of my beautiful husband, I can’t even go there now.
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I don’t begrudge people finding someone new after a bereavement of a partner. Love always finds you when you least expect it (I alter that saying to, love always finds you when the timing is horrendously inconvenient lol)
I moved on quite quickly when my first partner died, but then again I was only 23 years old, its the age when people start looking for life partners to settle down with. Didn’t mean I didn’t love the one that passed. That next relationship ended a decade later (still friends to this day)
Second time around with a loss of my partner and not far from my 50s, I’m not going to rush into anything. Only because I need to process and unpack it all, and I lost my parents too.
Looking back in hindsight, to my 20s, the decade long relationship was loving too, but now I see it was also a comfortable buffer, which put the grief firmly on hold. So when that ended, all the grief and trauma (it was a suicide) for my first partner hit me like a freight train and I was not okay for years.
Even with the second partner who passed, again a lot of love, but he was also a buffer for the grieving of my parents, it really softened the double blow of losing them both, and I felt strong enough to cope. Until HE became terminally ill himself.
So now I have no choice but to face the triple losses head on, and actually process the first partner who died, I don’t think I did that well as I suppressed that one.
With two partners gone, lightning really did strike twice for me. So this time around, I want to make sure I’ve recovered first, and not use the next relationship only to bypass the grief and trauma.
That said, when you plan, God laughs ….. 
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It is hurtful when people assume that I couldn’t have loved my husband(s) as much as they loved their spouse because I now love somebody else.
I would also feel hurt if I thought he is using me as a plaster for his own grief.
The simple truth is that we love each other. We miss and honour those we have lost.
That’s about it.
Personally I believe that a great deal of pain is caused by dwelling on the past or worrying about the future, neither of which is in my control. All I have is today, and I try to make today count.
Jane xx
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You are very lucky, I just meant my neighbour didn`t seem to care for her husbands very much, called the last 2 pains in the arse.
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Then why on earth did she marry them in the first place 
?
Wishing you a good night with a restful sleep 
!
Take care and stay safe!
Kind regards - Joe
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I think this is the thing, life is never as linear and simplistic as that.
If a person embarks on a new relationship with someone else after a bereavement, it doesn’t cancel out the love you have (remaining as present tense) for the partner lost.
And the other way around, because of the person lost, it doesn’t cancel out the love for the current partner.
People may initially have that mindset that they can only love the partner lost, when the grief is still fresh and raw, but once that subsides and it’s softened, things can change.
You are fortunate that you both have had identical experiences and can relate and support each other, which allows you to enjoy the current relationship 
Personally for me, I only recently came to the realisation for my own history, that embarking on a new relationship so soon after a death (first partner) interrupted the grieving process and put it on hold, so when that relationship ended, it triggered a double grief, for the break up, and the pre-existing bereavement, simultaneously.
Again, still young, in my early 30s, it was too painful to process, so I shut down and embarked on more relationships. Most were short lived, until a long term relationship which ended abruptly, too soon after that break up, the current partner in my mid 40s.
Now he’s passed too, fresh grief and trauma, and there’s a bottle neck of past unresolved grief as well. I just want to make sure if/when a new relationship arrives in the distant future, that it’s for the right reasons and not because I’m avoiding the pain or have shut down the grief.
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I agree wholeheartedly.
In some ways my life has been very linear. I had my first child at 22 and my little girl was born severely disabled when my first child was under two. My husband died when I was 48, within two years I lost him, both parents and my sister and brother in law. Six years later I met my second husband and I lost him after 16 years.
I am, therefore, very familiar with grief.
However, despite all of that, I would not swap my life for anyone’s.
I know how I lucky I am.
I had the best parents, the family, the very best kids and have the privilege of the love of three good, kind and loving partners. I include my new partner. This partnership is real. It isn’t an exclusive bereavement support relationship. Of course we mention our past partners, just as we talk about our kids, childhoods and parents. Being mutually widowed was the reason we met, but it isn’t the reason we fell in love.
Wishing everyone peace and strength.
Jane xx
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Oh dear. I’m so susceptible to what others say. This morning I switched on radio and it was Good News Wednesday. Caller said her husband’s away for a week and she has the bed to herself. Absolute bliss apparently.
I need to grow a thicker skin 
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Hi @Toffeegirl
Oh omg that’s terrible
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