Earlier this year a therapist and doctoral student, who works with Couples in Conflict Management, contacted me with questions she encountered in conversations with women dating widowers. These questions deal with the challenges faced by a woman trying to understand a widower’s ongoing relationship with his deceased wife. This is the second of a two-part article on this topic.

Question #4 from Dawna McKnight, Couples Therapist:

Should the new girlfriend insist on removing all the photos and mementos of the past relationship? How does a widow/widower give their new relationships focus, attention, intentional care, and nurturing while keeping reminders of a late spouse hanging around?  It would seem to me that having such symbols in plain sight would make a widow/widower still feel married to the previous spouse, thereby deflecting attention from the current relationship.  

 Response from Fred Colby, Author:

Please don't think that for someone to love you, they must leave someone else behind. Love is not finite. You can have one child or six children and love them all equally. Each child may ask questions like, “Am I your favorite? Do you love me more?” They think love is finite with you only able to give out so much. The people who can love unreservedly are often the ones to whom we become most attached.

Too often a new partner feels that they must have the widower wipe the slate clean of their past spouse. The more insistent the new partner is on this, the more likely they are to drive away the widower friend. I encourage my readers to remember, honor, and love their past spouses while moving forward with their lives. That means making room for new friends and/or partners in their lives but not feeling that they must ignore or diminish everything from their past.

The widower should be ready to remove photos in the more shared spaces, especially, for example, in the bedroom, living room, and kitchen. But to expect him to purge all photos from areas such as his office, man cave, or workout room is overkill. Often many of our best photos include not only our deceased wife but also our deceased parents and our children when younger or at their weddings. Asking a widower to purge these is asking him to purge all his family photos and memories. That is a step too far and suggests a very insecure new partner who wants to be the only and everything to the widower partner. Also, consider the impact this could have on visiting children who see every trace of their mom being erased from their dad’s home.

Please Note: We are also talking about the deceased wife's clothing, shoes, jewelry, mementos, and many other personal items that were important to her. I have known widowers who still had many of those things in their house years after their wife’s death. At the same time, many of these men were in new relationships. Eventually, they must come to terms with this dichotomy and finally part ways with the bulk of these items. If a widower is still hanging on to these years later, it may well be a sign that he needs some support from an experienced therapist to work through unprocessed grieving issues.

For up to two years after losing their wife, she is likely to remain very important and for a time, the primary focus for widowers. As a new relationship becomes stronger and more established the balance will gradually shift towards the new partner. At times both the new partner and the widower will have doubts (only natural) and fears. This can lead to pulling back for a bit. So, yes, the new relationship does eventually achieve predominance in our daily lives, but the new partner needs to allow that there will be moments (e.g. an old favorite song comes on) when the widower will be blindsided by memories that require a few moments of honoring the past relationship.  This is where taking a moment to "remember, honor, and love" your deceased wife is appropriate. The sooner the new partner realizes this and supports their new widower friend through these moments (rather than being threatened by them) the stronger the new relationship will become.

Both partners need to realize that photos are evidence of past lives, lives well lived, and wonderful memories from those times. These do not need to be obliterated to make room for the new couple. My partner and I have taken many new photos from our life together, and we each have posted some of these around our houses as evidence of our new relationship and new memories being made. There is evidence of this on our respective Facebook pages as well.

I think part of the trick is to realize that this is an evolving process and that you don't have to suddenly go from one extreme (e.g. photos of past wife everywhere) to another (no photos anywhere). Start small and allow the new relationship to naturally evolve and the expression of it through less of the old and more of the new to unfold as the bonds grow stronger.

© Copyright 2024 Fred Colby

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Fred Colby is the author of:

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