I have noticed that there are a few ‘twice widowed’ people posting.
Some have said, as I have, that it seems worse the second time and I am wondering why?
Is it because we were younger the first time? Is grief cumulative?
Are we shocked that lightening can strike twice in the same place?
That we thought we have already had our share of bad luck?
Have we got short memories and forgot what it was like the first time?
Do we think that we should be better at this grief, having experienced it once before?
I am genuinely interested what others think because I am really shocked at how this has affected me. I feel a constant need to assure friends and family that it isn’t because I loved my second husband more than the first. I suppose this is partly because my children are from my first marriage and I want them to know that I loved their Dad just as much.
I hope this post doesn’t upset anyone.
Xx
Hello willow12, I have been widowed twice, also had a close partner. I think that in this situation we never recover fully. Sometimes I think I am being punished
I just don’t understand how is it possible to go through a new grief after it was so painful to recover the first time. There is a sense of why me? Why do some people never get married yet I get to fall in love twice and both unions end in death? Finding it harder than expected even though before saying I do the second time I knew if anything ever happened to him I would survive. But I think that being older now the loss is heavier by realizing this is it. Love is over now. This was my last marriage and everything we had is forever gone. There is also a sense of anger and rebellion looking at people who have been married for 50 years and yet here I am. It’s the realization of losing it all again to the randomness of life.
I agree. A few weeks before my husband died we were discussing surviving bereavement. Both of us had been widowed when we met. I uttered those fateful words “ I managed on my own once, I dare say I could manage again if I had to”. How I wish I had never said that. Now I feel as if God heard me and thought “ Okay, well we will see about that.”
I am really struggling this time.
Xx
Hi @Willow112 I am so sorry this has happened to you twice. We often think about things we have said but therapists will tell you that words can’t bring about something happening. It doesn’t stop us wondering or believing that it did. I’m like you, in that I have said things in the past and then blamed myself for something happening. Please don’t blame yourself for what happened. I’m not in a good place today. Nothing to do and no one to see. Take care of yourself.x
Hi Viajera,
I also feel I being punished. Married happily both times and now they are gone. I was seeing a really nice guy and he passed away in January.
Difficult to move on
Christina47
I have wondered recently if the fiance I had in college with whom I broke up had married me. Would he be dead? Would that have been the fate of any man who exchanged vows with me? I really understand your feelings of being punished.Personally even though I turned 70 in May people say I look fifty- but I will not get close to any other man for the remainder of my life. I am grieving also the loss of any more chances at love. My heart can’t handle any more pain due to death 
I am the same Christina. I will not marry again. Not that there would be much chance of that anyway. I did not intend to marry a second time and nobody was more surprised than me when I said ‘I do’ for the second time. But he was a very special man, happy to help me care for and support my disabled daughter. He had lost his first wife to bowel cancer and had cared for her throughout her illness.
My head tells me that my name went back into the hat with everyone else’s name after I lost my first husband. My heart, however, thinks it’s just not fair. Not only for me but also for my daughter who had already lost one daddy. She loved him and just doesn’t understand where he has gone. Same as me, really.
I feel the same way, I cannot take the chance of meeting someone, which would be most unlikely. I cannot stand the pain again.
Today I read about the Broken Heart Syndrome and it shook me. Sometimes I worry because the heartache and crying spells are so intense that they leave me exhausted. And I have to be gentle to myself and careful with this intense grief. It’s such hard work and you don’t want to do it but there is no choice.
Hi Viajera,
I feel exactly the same. Three deaths and cannot cope. I see my family and a few friends for which I am grateful but nothing seems real.