Question from Tom: My girlfriend and I dated for two years (a few years ago) and then split up. She quickly married someone else. He passed away after four years. We started dating again a year after his death. She still grieves over him. Am I an ass for not being sympathetic. I just found out she is still going to his grave. Is this normal?
Michele Neff Hernandez, executive director of Soaring Spirits Loss Foundation, responds: Dear Tom: Watching someone you care about grieve over a lost love takes a lot of patience and compassion. When someone dies, our love for them does not vanish, and in the absence of their physical presence, the things we do have left of them often become very significant.
Visiting the grave of a person we care about is a way to help us process the fact that they are actually gone. Though our rational brains realize this fact, our hearts can be slow to accept this new reality. Not only is your girlfriend visiting the grave of her former husband normal, it is likely a step towards healing the wound in her heart left by his death.
A gift you can give your girlfriend, as she continues to grow and heal through the grief process, is the opportunity to talk to you about how she feels about the loss of her husband. Sometimes grieving people are afraid to hurt the person they are in a new relationship with by speaking of their former love. There can be a false perception that if she still loves him, than she must love you less. The reality is that every person we open our hearts to expands our ability to love.
When parents welcome a new child into their family, they do not love their first child less; instead, they find they love them both more. Though our bodies inevitably die, our love for those who have touched our lives does not. If you are able to listen to your girlfriend, perhaps even visit the grave with her, you give her the chance to allow you to become a part of her healing journey. By freeing her of the fear of losing you or hurting you by continuing on the natural grief path, you will give her the opportunity to fully heal the wound of loss she has experienced.
Tom, grief is a process. We hear this phrase over and over, and sometimes in its repetition the meaning is lost. Even when people appear to be much better or through the worst of it after losing someone they love, there are still unexpected memories or situations that can take a grieving person’s breath away.
The reality of death takes time to accept, and the loss of a person from our lives has a reverberating impact that is hard to predict. The only thing I know of that makes a difference in accepting the grim reality of loss is the continuous love of the people left in our lives. You can make a difference by loving your girlfriend where she is and walking with her as the days pass and the sun shines a bit more every day.
Yours in hope, Michele
Michele Neff Hernandez is Executive Director of Soaring Spirits Loss Foundation. Reach her at micheleh@sslf.org or through her websites, www.sslf.org or www.widowsbond.com.
Tags: grief, hope
Unfortunately you will not even hold up a candle to this God-Like entity. Get out now and move on. I know, I’ve been there. If you don’t believe me, wait til she continuously posts on public forums(Facebook) about her undying love towards this individual, you will feel so small and insignificant, and all your friends and family know this. The only way to even be considered equal is if you were to die/be killed.
People can say i am a coward, NOPE, i had been with her for 4 years and took over responsibility of their 2 year old daughter(7 now). I am the only Father figure she new, but she would rather i left and her real dad came back. Understandably so, but not cool brainwashing your kid to someone they didn’t know.
Take my advice, If you are belittled now, it’s only going to get worse.
Despite popular opinion, I can tell you (as someone who’s been there) her grief does not deminish her love for you. I lost my husband a couple of years ago. About six months ago, I started dating one of his close friends. At first it was a little awkward, but the reality is he has been instrumental to the healing of our family, myself and the son hubby left behind. After two years of paying for the storage where his stuff was placed just to get the house sold, I have just recently had the courage to face the physical remnants of the life we shared and lost. My BF has been waking through that fire with me, and I couldn’t do it without him. It’s been many a long night in tears, but he knows that my grief doesn’t deminish the love I have for him. In many ways, it has built trust and closeness in our relationship, even tho the average outsider might say it’s “weird.” We don’t stop living when those we love aren’t here with us anymore, and tho it may not be pretty, we do heal. Standing by her through one of the hardest things she’ll ever have to face doesn’t make you less, it makes you more to her.
The comment about loving the first child less than the second is not the same as an individual real ADULT love. You are wrong in that analogy. Of course you love all of your children the same. Would you be capable of loving another woman and loving your current wife at the same time with your current wife being aware of that. You shouldn’t and you really can’t. You would be in divorce court most likely. You can’t serve two masters in real adult love. That’s why they call it devotion.
This is also true of a widow or widower still maintaining eternal love for their deceased spouse. Another mate will never truly be there. There is always three people in a relationship with a widow or widower in the vast majority of the cases. If you are the third person you will always be almost loved.
Also, if there were unresolved issues before he died, those are transferred to the new relationship. No one should have to carry the burden of someone else’s past or compete for the widow or widowers love and affection. I have lost people I deeply cared for, so I understand loss and grieving. But widows and widowers tend to place the dead spouse above those who are alive and really never take them down. What sense is there in that? How is that fair to the new partner? It’s not.
If the widow isn’t completely ready for a new relationship, many never are, and ready for a new “One and Only”, and they are dating, then they are being selfish, looking for pseudo replacement, or trying force the situation that another will suffer for.
Most widows should not date! They need to grieve and completely heal, which rarely seems to happen in my experience, before even thinking about starting a new relationship. Understand that what matters now, is the PRESENT moment! Life happens to the living, not the dead!!