Authors’ Note: This section for the widowed was compiled and written by Nelse Grundvig of Bismarck, North Dakota, and Robert Stewart of Denver, Colorado. We’re grateful to Nelse and Robert for this important contribution that allows widowed people to participate in and benefit from the rebuilding model.
The purpose of this appendix is to shed some light on the unique issues affecting the widowed. The rebuilding concepts are thus translated into a language that better fits widowed people.
You may be asking, “What does ‘dumper’ or ‘dumpee’ have to do with me? I am widowed.” At first glance, these terms do not seem to apply to your case. The person you loved did not leave the relationship to continue with his or her life. Your love partner left the relationship in one of two ways: through sudden death or through lingering illness. Remember, though, that dumpers are those who begin to grieve before the end of the relationship. Dumpees begin the grieving when the relationship ends. Using these definitions, it is possible to apply the terms to yourself.
A widow or widower whose spouse died quickly is forced to begin the grieving process abruptly and can feel emotionally numb at first. The full impact of what has happened is often not felt until after the funeral. In one sense, the widowed have been dumped on—they did not choose to end the relationship. Therefore, the surviving spouse is similar to the dumpee in a divorce, experiencing many of the same thoughts and feelings, because the death occurred suddenly.
However, when the death is slow, over a long period of time, the surviving spouse may experience thoughts and feelings more parallel to the dumper’s. Widows whose spouses die after a prolonged illness will be more likely to start the grieving process before the death of their loved one. They may react to the death of their spouse with relief. They will often appear to be coping well, but they have had more time to react to the situation because they started grieving at a different point in the relationship.
It is also possible for the widowed to have some combination of dumper and dumpee thoughts and feelings. You may not precisely fit into one of the categories. What is important is that you become aware of, and acknowledge, how you are experiencing your spouse’s death. You may have conflicting feelings regarding how being widowed will impact your life. You may have some underlying judgments regarding those feelings that hinder you from fully embracing what you are experiencing.
The following is an attempt to translate the rebuilding blocks into a more meaningful exploration of the issues directly impacting your life.
Denial is an emotional safety valve. When faced with something physically painful, the body will try to compensate; when in severe pain, it can even cause unconsciousness. Emotions can respond to pain in a similar way.
For dumpees, denial is reflected in statements like, “This can’t be happening to me” and “This is a sick joke. It can’t be true.” In extreme cases, denial may include clinging to the delusion that the spouse will return. You may have said to yourself, “When I go home today, my wife will be in the kitchen cooking dinner, like she always is” or “If I just wait long enough, he’ll be back.”
Dumpers also experience denial, but usually before the actual death. Denial for you occurs when you first hear the news that your spouse is dying. “He isn’t really dying” or “Medicine will find a cure” are statements that may indicate denial. It may be difficult to distinguish between denial and hope. However, an unwillingness to even acknowledge the possibility of death is a strong sign you may be struggling with denial.
The important thing to remember about this stage is that it occurs very strongly at first and does not fade entirely until the grieving process is well under way.
Fear may be your predominant emotion. It is one of the reasons for denial—facing the fear seems like too much to bear. There are two primary categories of fear you may experience: (1) fear of dying and (2) fear of living. When your spouse died, you came closer than ever to your own mortality. Many people avoid facing the fact that death is inevitable. When your spouse died, your own underlying fear that you, too, will die may have surfaced. This is especially true if your spouse died suddenly. You may also fear dying because your spouse is no longer available to meet your needs or take care of you. Many widows or widowers were totally dependent in some way upon their spouses. A common fear thus becomes “What’s going to happen to me now?”
The fear of living may take on any number of faces. You may fear all the lifestyle adjustments and new choices ahead. You may fear your own feelings and thoughts related to your spouse’s death, especially if you experienced some relief, which is likely to be true when death occurred over a period of time.
We live in a couple’s world. When we pledged “till death do us part,” none of us planned to actually see the end of our marriage. Oh, we knew that we would not live forever, but we never consciously thought that our spouse would die. Well, yours did, and here you are, still alive, left to make a thousand adjustments—the first one being dealing with the fact that you are now single.
You may resist accepting this fact. What if someone asks you out on a date? That would be absolutely terrifying. All the dynamics of potentially starting a new relationship may seem so complicated. Stepping into the unknown of meeting another person is one of the major adjustments of being widowed. The longer the marriage, the more difficult this prospect may be. You may cling to an image of your love partner and may have an even more idealized image now that your partner is dead.
It may sound cruel, but the death of your spouse is an opportunity for self-examination. How do you view yourself, life, and others? In which areas have you fallen into a rut or become stagnant? The death of your spouse is a way for you to examine any ways in which you have taken life for granted.
This time is also an opportunity to consider why you got married in the first place. Did you experience a successful, full, interactive relationship? Were you satisfied with the nature and dynamics of the relationship? As you adjust to singleness, introspection is an option for increasing your present awareness and future freedom.
You may be feeling the loneliest you’ve ever felt. It’s painful to live with the knowledge that your spouse is not going to laugh at your jokes or be there for you when you cry. You may have had a time apart before, such as a vacation, business trip, or hospitalization, but you have not experienced this depth of loneliness. Now that the relationship has permanently ended, the other person is no longer there, and you feel totally alone.
That loneliness is magnified by the question “Am I going to be lonely like this forever?” You begin to wonder if you’ll ever have the companionship of a love relationship again. Even with the comfort and encouragement of children and friends, this feeling can be overwhelming.
You may have felt lonely while in the relationship, especially if your spouse was in the hospital or diagnosed with a terminal illness. That form of loneliness is a special kind of pain, and the death of your spouse may actually ease some of that burden.
Socially, you might isolate yourself. You feel like the third wheel on a bicycle—not really fitting in, not needed. You imagine that everyone is talking about you, while privately, you wonder who really cares about your pain. When someone asks you about your dead spouse, you don’t know whether to be offended, cry, or just walk away.
You may try to escape the feelings of loneliness by being in a crowd or constantly having people around you. You may seek relief by becoming super busy, doing anything to avoid being home alone. You may find people to go out with just to keep from being alone, even if you don’t enjoy their company. Sometimes anything is better than being home alone with all those feelings and memories.
As time goes on, you will move beyond loneliness into accepting your aloneness. Aloneness is the process of becoming comfortable with yourself. It involves a willingness to stop running from the pain and accepting all aspects of who you are during this time. It also means realizing there is a uniqueness to your experience that others may not be able to share in or fully understand.
To reach this point, we have to realize that the fear of being alone is much worse than actually being alone. When we experience being alone, we discover resources we never knew we had. We also learn to gather the resources we need but don’t have. We are then able to accept that aloneness is part of the human condition.
Being alone can become a way of healing ourselves. You need time to be introspective and reflective, to reconnect with disowned thoughts and feelings. Through reclaiming feelings and thoughts, you come to realize that you are not empty, but rather full, when alone. This inner fullness comes when you allow yourself to grow and develop, reaching a point of comfort when not in the company of others. Eventually, you will reach the point of understanding that being with another person to escape loneliness is destructive and painful. Learning what you need for healing—so that you can choose to enter into a relationship rather than needing one to escape loneliness—will be one of your greatest challenges.
When we experience pain, especially emotional pain, it is often helpful to share that pain with friends. It is not that they can remedy our pain, but the act of sharing seems to lessen the burden. Unfortunately, many of the friends we had while married will no longer be with us now that we are single.
There are several reasons why you may experience the loss of friends. The first is, as a single, you may be seen as a threat to your married friends, as you are now an eligible love object. If a relationship is not secure, you may pose a threat. It is also threatening to others to acknowledge that one’s partner is mortal. Since your partner has died, you are a reminder of this fact.
Another reason you may lose friends is that since you are now single, you have become, regardless of your willingness to accept it, a member of a different subculture: that of single adults. It may be more difficult for you to relate to your married friends. If you want to keep your friends, you must remember that the similarities of your past are now differences; other similarities will have to be strengthened. Also, you may want to reach out to others who are in a similar situation, that of being single again, as they have circumstances you can relate to.
It may not sound rational, but you can feel rejection because you are still alive. We may feel that our spouse chose death rather than living with us. This is a normal thought and part of the grieving process. However, rejection implies there is something wrong with you. You may begin searching for some imagined defect in your personality. What is so terrible about you that your partner would choose death over life with you? Perhaps you feel guilty because you did not express your feelings of love often enough. Another cause for guilt is surviving or moving on with your life. You can feel guilty because you did not want to be left alone, even if it meant your spouse suffered. If your spouse was experiencing pain, you may feel guilty because of your relief from the stress of watching a loved one suffer.
This is not all negative. If, when looking at your own behavior, you find that it causes difficulty in your interactions with others, you can change that. The goal of working through this process is to be able to see yourself as a loving and beautiful person and to come to appreciate yourself as if you are your own best friend.
Guilt is not entirely useless. It helps us realize we have not lived up to our own standards. However, excessive guilt is destructive. When we live our lives with “ought tos,” “should haves,” and “could have beens,” we are not able to live life fully. We end up becoming inhibited and controlled. If you have not lived up to realistic expectations, you may need to make amends (if possible) and change behaviors in the future. If the guilt you feel is based on unrealistic expectations, you need to remind yourself that you did the best with what you had at the time.
The goal here is to be able to look rationally at your guilt and see if it is appropriate. To feel guilty because we want to go on with our lives, or because we prayed for the suffering of our loved one to end, is normal. However, to feel guilty because you didn’t prevent your spouse’s death is being unfair to yourself.
People experience the stages of grieving in many different ways. But some patterns do emerge, regardless of whether one is in the dumper or dumpee role. You will most likely experience denial, bargaining, anger, depression, and eventually acceptance.
Grief is an important part of the healing process once your partner has died. The death of your spouse included a funeral, a burial, and the surrounding of friends and relatives. However, the grief process is not something that has a time limit. Well-intentioned people will say, “Isn’t it time for you to move on with your life? It has been X number of months.” What they don’t realize is that we need to grieve in order to say good-bye to the relationship and that we have to say good-bye not only to our spouse, but also to our way of life. We often limit ourselves by not allowing ourselves to cry and feel the pain. Unfortunately, this only forestalls the grieving process; it doesn’t put it aside. We need to acknowledge the pain and the loss of control in our lives. Only then are we able to move on with our lives.
There are two different faces to the bargaining phase of the grief process. For dumpers, it often takes the form of, “I’d do anything to prevent this from happening to my love partner.” For dumpees, it may mean attending church to guarantee safe passage for your loved one or a willingness to give anything to ensure that the pain will be less. Bargaining can be helpful. Many people come to support groups in an effort to bargain away their grief. In these cases, the person grieving will try to get into another relationship to shortcut the pain and insecurity of being alone. It should be stressed that if you are hurting from a past relationship, you will not be able to dedicate the needed time and energy to create an authentic intimate relationship.
The depression stage usually lasts one day longer than we thought we could stand. We spend so much of our energy being concerned with our love partner that when we do not have access to that partner, it hurts. You may have the feeling that everything you touch dies. This is not the case, but the feelings of depression still need to be examined and dealt with. Some people argue that depression is anger that has no external outlet. Whatever the cause, it is important to realize that others have, or are experiencing, the same emotion.
When you finally stop asking, “Why did my spouse have to die?” the process of acceptance is well under way. The emotional pain of separation does lessen over time. Hopefully, the pain you are experiencing will enable you to learn who you are and to reach out toward a full and enriching experience. Acceptance is funny because we don’t know we have reached it until we are confronted by either our past or someone else’s pain. Acceptance can be achieved partially and can slip away when we have uncovered some painful feelings from our past. When acceptance does slip from us, it is often an indicator that we need more self-discovery and personal growth.
Anger is a natural part of the grieving, and therefore the healing, process. You may have many targets for your anger. God is often a good target, because God took your love partner away. You might feel angry with your dead spouse for leaving you, or friends and clergy for not realizing your emotional pain. Even those who understand and are willing to help may become targets of your anger. You may also feel angry at yourself because your emotional upheaval makes it difficult to go on with life.
Anger is a feeling, and feelings are a part of life. You may be tempted to deny or suppress your anger. However, anger can be very constructive as a positive energy force because it leads you to acknowledge your humanness and the humanness of others. As you work through your anger, you begin to experience feelings of peace and of letting go what you could not, and cannot, control.
This difficult and painful process is about releasing our emotional ties to our former spouse. At some point, your heart releases all the rights and privileges of being married to your spouse. Your mind declares that it is time to go on with what you still do have, as your focus moves away from what was toward what can be.
An example of someone who has not disentangled from the past is a widow who still wears her wedding band or still refers to herself as “Mrs. John Doe” (where John Doe is the name of her dead spouse, of course). A part of you may resist the disentanglement process. You may experience anger or guilt as you attempt to let go.
This final stage of the grieving process can be much easier if you have, or develop, other interests, such as a job or hobby, and if you maintain a good support system. To help you disentangle, we suggest you move the bedroom furniture, put away personal belongings of your dead spouse, and experiment with some small changes in your life. Later, when you have fewer emotional ties to your past, you can revisit those items you have put away. However, you may want to have a friend nearby when you journey back into those memories.
Your self-concept may be at an all-time low when your love relationship ends. So much of your personality was invested into the relationship that it is devastating to face the empty place in your identity. All too often, you thought of yourself only in terms of the relationship. When you used to introduce yourself to others, you often referred to yourself as “the husband of” or “the wife of.” When you weren’t with your mate, others would jokingly ask, “Where’s your better half?”
Dr. Fisher found that it’s common for people to have a poor self-image immediately following the loss of a love relationship. He argues that our self-image is a learned attitude. The way we refer to ourselves as “the spouse of,” “children of,” or “parents of” gives us a sense of identity. When you are widowed, you lose that identification. If your self-esteem has dropped and remains low, the grieving process can become even more difficult.
You are in the midst of perhaps the greatest transition of your life. What makes it even more difficult is that it wasn’t one that you chose. In all aspects of your life, you are moving from a lifestyle of marriage toward becoming single.
Beneath this transition may be an even larger one: a transition from unconscious influences over your life into a new freedom. With your spouse no longer a part of your life, you may begin to evaluate many of the choices you made in your marriage, including the motivations behind those choices. You may experience a new awareness of how leftovers from your past may still be influencing your life.
Openness refers to your willingness to drop your guard, a willingness to pursue intimacy with another person. The thought of becoming vulnerable to another may stir up feelings of fear and guilt. You may have created masks to keep people from knowing your pain during the grieving process. Perhaps you have hid behind masks your entire life. Taking the chance to “let someone in” may seem too risky.
There are many masks you might take on to protect yourself during this time. One common one is that of the “merry widow.” Everything is seen in a positive light; all pain is covered up. Another mask is that of the “busy beaver,” which refers to the widowed who preoccupy themselves with only logistical details and keep conversations on the surface. There are many different masks. Have you adopted a mask to help cope with the pain and uncertainty of this time?
Masks are not always bad. They are often necessary for surviving difficult circumstances, such as losing a spouse to death. There comes a time, though, when the energy required to maintain the mask hinders personal growth and the potential for intimacy. At that point, the mask is a burden. You will need to decide when the time is right to begin letting others see beyond your mask.
Try writing down the masks you wear to protect yourself. Which, if any, developed as a result of your spouse’s death? What feelings does each mask hide or protect? Which would you like to let go of?
Typically, “love” is defined only in terms of some external object, usually a person. However, the beginning point of true love is yourself. You may discover some parts of yourself you consider unacceptable; grieving has a way of exposing deeper parts of our being. Learning to embrace those parts is the beginning point of loving others. How can you love others if you don’t love yourself?
You have lost the one person toward whom you directed your love. Now you may feel lost trying to direct that same love inward. Perhaps you have not experienced the beauty of that type of acceptance from another person, making it even more difficult to give it to yourself. Yet this time can become an opportunity to appreciate the unique person you are. In the midst of caring for yourself, you may begin to discover the desire to experience love again with another. You may find it difficult to avoid comparing potential future partners to your former spouse. You may wish to find someone to replace your spouse. While the desire is understandable, it is not possible. However, experiencing intimacy is.
You may be thinking, Don’t love others; they can die on you. When you get past this thought, though, those who are available just don’t seem to measure up. What’s happening is that you might be making yourself unavailable so you won’t get hurt again. Being with others requires that we share ourselves. When we trust, we expose ourselves to pain. If we don’t trust, however, we merely exist and fail to live life.
You lived, your spouse died, and yet if you fail to get involved in life, you are the one who is acting emotionally dead. Lack of trust is not necessarily a bad thing, but failure to trust anyone, including yourself, causes pain, doubt, and fear that only you can feel.
As you continue along the “climb,” as it is referred to in the rebuilding process, you may find others to connect with along the way. It is not uncommon for the widowed to seek out others from whom they can receive comfort, support, and encouragement. These “growing” relationships are not necessarily romantic and often are short-lived.
When you were married, you knew what to expect sexually from your spouse. You may not have always had your needs met or felt satisfied in this area of the relationship, but what you did have was familiar. For some, the thought of entering a new sexual relationship may be exciting. For many, however, the unknown variables make this stressful.
You are also faced with a new set of choices. What are your values around sex? Losing our love partner creates the need for sexual fulfillment and exposes the fears we have about becoming intimate with another person. You may even feel guilty for being sexually attracted to someone new.
Earlier in the grieving process, you may have felt like you could not live without another love relationship. When you get to the point of saying, “I am content being single,” then you reach a stage of personal satisfaction. This doesn’t mean you will be single for the rest of your life, but it does mean you have accepted your aloneness.
If most of your identity revolved around being related to your former spouse, singleness may at first feel like failure. Something inside you may say, “I’m only okay if I’m married.” Although this is a difficult belief to change, it is possible for you to renew your view of yourself. This renewal is an awakening—an understanding that your value as a human being does not come from being related to another person. You are valuable even if you are alone. In your marriage or family of origin, you may have either not felt valued or, somewhere along the way of bonding, given up your value. Now you have an opportunity to reclaim what is rightfully yours.
This exciting time signals that you are nearing the end of the grieving process. You begin to feel alive as if for the first time. You may be opening up to experiences that before you had taken for granted or simply neglected, because you were immersed in the pain of losing your spouse.
During this period, you stop defining your life in the context of your former marriage. You begin to develop purpose based upon your needs, perceptions, and goals. This may be a time to evaluate the direction your life has been going and decide if it’s the path you really want. You also begin living more in the present, letting go of the past, while planning ahead for the future.
Freedom is about fully being yourself. It is accepting, and acting upon, an integration of your various personality parts. You are free to feel, to think, and to relate. Assuming you are successful in resolving the former rebuilding blocks, you are now free to become the person you want to be. You realize that relationships can be your teachers and that connecting to others means reconnecting with yourself. You have climbed the mountain and are now ready to move on with your life. You have grieved the loss of your former love partner and are now open to experiencing intimacy with others.
Congratulations!