I know. It doesn’t make much sense. But there you have it.
Part of the lure of dating was that I wanted someone I had never met before to be attracted to me. When you’ve been married for a long time and your spouse has seen you give birth and suffer a bad case of food poisoning, you sometimes feel like the magic is gone.
I wanted to meet people who just knew me…and not the “me” that was attached to “us” for so long.
When you’re suddenly on your own, it’s tempting to try and find someone who will work for your attention. Who will notice when you’ve had a pedicure (or five). Who might tell you that you look nice every once in a while without being prompted. Who will wait until he’s outside to pass gas so that hopefully you won’t notice…rather than doing it in the car with the windows locked so that, much to his delight, you can experience the ultimate Dutch oven.
I’ve never liked being alone. And, up until that point, I had never been on my own. I moved out of my parents’ house right into a house with my husband when I was twenty years old. So at the time it seemed perfectly natural to try and take my old life, mesh it with someone else’s, and get on with things.
My method of grieving was also a contributing factor. When Brad died, I remember saying to my sister, “I can’t wait until it’s a year from now and people won’t think of me as a widow anymore.”
I don’t know why in the hell I thought that, but part of putting this whole annoying widow business behind me was finding a new relationship. And I thought that if I could find the right person to hang out with, people would stop thinking of me as a widow.
I honestly thought the first guy I dated a few months after Brad died had been put in my path by a higher power of some sort and, therefore, I trustingly stumbled right into the arms of the wrong relationship. Chad was someone I had known since high school and who I considered my first boyfriend. We’d kept in touch off and on for fifteen years…through marriages, kids, moving, and growing up.
The main reason why I got in touch with him was because he was a cop in the county where Brad had had his accident, and I was desperately trying to get the accident report so that I could send it on to the life insurance company. Thinking that Chad would have an inside edge and might be able to get it quickly for me, I called him to see if he could.
“Hello?”
“Hi…Chad? It’s me, Catherine.”
“Hey! How are you?”
“Well, I’m doing okay except Brad-died-a-few-weeks-ago-in-El-Paso-County-and-I’m-trying-to-get-the-accident-report-can-you-help-me-and-how-is-your-family?” I said without taking a breath.
Long pause. “Say that again?”
I concentrated on slowing down and told him the abbreviated story of what had happened. At which point he replied, “Oh my God. I’m so sorry.”
And then he dropped his own bomb.
“My wife just served me with divorce papers.”
I knew…I just knew that this was meant to be. At that moment, I thought that we were purposely being thrown together into one big, depressing, codependent mess that only we would understand. And you know what? I felt better. I felt like someone was looking out for me and telling me that I wouldn’t have to go through life alone. That the independence I said I was okay with but secretly feared would only have to happen for a little while and then I’d have someone to take care of me all over again. I’d spent weeks not being able to envision my future at all, and suddenly I could see getting remarried, being a stepmom, and living happily ever after.
And with someone I’ve known half my life! Not just some wacko off the street. How lucky was I?
What followed should have been made into an informative video on how not to start dating after the death of a spouse. Two people who were both digesting the fact that life wasn’t turning out as it was supposed to, both raising kids and imbalanced. As he was reeling from his divorce, I was alternating between running myself into the ground trying to keep busy and lying on my couch, staring at the wall, and thinking, “This is not my life. Is it? Is this really my life?”
I was so desperate to fill the void in my life that Brad had left. My partner had been stolen from me—yes, stolen—and I wanted him back in any form I could get him. I wanted my relationship with Chad to speed up past the beginning stages when you’re not sure of where everything is going, past worrying about whether he would call, past wondering if I would have a date on Friday night. I wanted to know that he was going to call at 5:00 p.m. and ask how my day had gone. I wanted him to come over on Saturday night so that we could just sit in comfortable silence and watch TV. I wanted to fight about what couples who have been together for years fight about.
And I wanted it now.
That feeling of desperation, combined with Chad’s inability to cope with what he had going on in his own life, was a deadly mix. I would call and text him, only to have him not return any messages for a week. And just when I would come to terms with the fact that he just didn’t want to have anything to do with me but didn’t have the balls to say it, he would call and ask me if I wanted to go to dinner. Then that dinner, where he said over and over how important I was to him and always would be, would be followed by two weeks when I wouldn’t hear from him at all.
I would sit on the floor of my bedroom looking at pictures of Brad and asking him over and over, “How could you leave me all alone here to deal with this?” I was terrified that this was what dating was like, and I knew I didn’t have it in me to handle it. I didn’t have the self-esteem at that point to say to myself, when I didn’t hear from Chad for a couple of weeks, “Screw it. There are other fish in the sea.” Because at that time, I didn’t know there were. Or if there were any fish who would want me.
After three months of this off-and-on communication, I stopped by Chad’s parents’ house to drop something off for the holidays. Since he and I had been getting together, I had seen them a few times, and from what I could understand, they seemed fairly happy that I was back in his life. Of course, I was under the impression that they knew we were dating. That’s because I was under the impression that we were, too. I think the only person who wasn’t was Chad. Because on that last visit to their house, I’ll never forget one sentence:
“Why can’t Chad date someone like you instead of Tammy?”
That’s right. In the middle of my feverish optimism that I had found someone who would save me from living a life alone, it turned out that he was seeing someone else all along. I felt manipulated and confused. Desperate and alone. Hysterically laughing at the situation I found myself in while writhing on the floor in complete agony. Stomach churning with the knowledge that I wouldn’t be attractive or worth anything to anyone else but Brad, who was gone and never coming back, I am still amazed that that relationship didn’t send me completely over the edge at that point in my life.
And he never got me that damn accident report.
• • •
It was around the time that Chad and I started dating (or whatever the hell it was that we were doing) that I decided to take my wedding ring off. I don’t know…maybe it was the idea of dating while also wearing a ring symbolizing my lifelong commitment to my husband that didn’t sit well with me. I couldn’t imagine someone else holding my left hand tightly and feeling the ring that Brad had given to me crushed between our palms, or sitting at dinner twirling my engagement ring around while I tried to make small talk with another man. Basically, I felt less disloyal by taking it off than I did if I wore it out with someone new.
I was never much of a ring wearer anyway. I know that there are many people out there who would never consider taking that ring off. I’ve seen the gold bands embedded into their skin like the rings have become a part of their bodies. The grimy prongs of the diamond that never gets cleaned because the wearer would never consider taking it off and handing it over to a jeweler. The gold bands of the men that looked scr
atched and beaten up, signifying a long commitment…and a love of working on cars.
I was not like that.
In fact, up until I got engaged, I had lost pretty much every ring I had ever owned. Which is why, after I agreed to marry Brad, the first thing he said was, “I’ve already insured the ring.”
Very romantic. And practical.
So it wasn’t uncommon for me to take my wedding ring off. If I was gardening, sleeping, or chopping garlic, that ring would be sitting in its crystal holder, waiting for me to put it on again.
The other reason why I took it off soon after he died was because I was tired of the questions. I mean, what’s the second question you ask someone wearing a ring when you first meet them?
“So…what does your husband do?”
And my only honest answer to that after he was gone was, “Oh, you know. He just lies around all day.”
At least when I didn’t wear it, people assumed that I was something normal, like divorced, and knew not to ask. People walking around with small children and no ring…they come across as complicated. I know I’ve always thought so. Any time I see a man with a four-year-old and a two-year-old sitting alone in a booth at McDonald’s on a Friday night, his bare left hand picking up a chicken nugget, I think, “I’ll bet there’s a story there. And I’ll bet it’s not pretty.”
I’ve always thought that becoming a widow should involve some sort of jewelry that announces our new title to the world. I know that there are “widow rings” out there, but the truth is that not a whole lot of people know about them. It’s not like a single diamond solitaire on your left ring finger, which everyone knows means you’re engaged. What the widow ring should be is about five carats of something that comes in a FedEx box with our first Social Security check. It should be placed on our right middle finger so that when people ask if we’re married…well…we can show them our status in a way that we see fit.
See? It allows us to answer complicated questions without even opening our mouths and it vents a little frustration at the same time. Marketing gold.
The idea of taking off that ring is difficult for so many. And it should be. It’s a huge step. In one motion, you are saying that you might be able to imagine your life differently. You’re owning your widowhood. You’re telling the world that you’re no longer attached by jewelry (which has nothing to do with the attachment you hold in your heart).
I never really thought of taking off my ring as entirely permanent. It was something I could test drive. I could leave it off for a few hours and see how I felt. If it didn’t send me into therapy, I’d leave it off for a few more hours. If I felt like I needed to start breathing into a paper bag in the condiment aisle of the grocery store, I’d put that sucker back on.
Years later, I still sometimes wear my wedding band. I can’t explain it, but sometimes I wake up in the morning and just feel like I need it and am completely insecure without it…like I’m getting ready to walk out the door without wearing pants or something. Sometimes I need the sense of attachment and the confidence that comes with it to get through the day. I thought I was the only person who did this until I met another widow at a retreat and realized that she did the same thing.
“I know this going to sound crazy,” I started off slowly. “But when I feel like I need a little courage, I wear my wedding ring on my right hand. It’s like a security blanket or something and I get a little extra boost. I don’t do it all the time, but sometimes I really need it.”
“I do, too!” said Diane in amazement. “When I need to feel my husband with me, I’ll put it on. I thought I was the only one who did that!”
Believe me. When it comes to widowhood, no one is the only one who did anything.
• • •
Just because I can deconstruct my dating timeline and make sense of it now doesn’t mean that it did then. I don’t think it’s possible to describe how guilty I felt. I felt like I had let my husband down by not wearing black and living like a hermit in my house for at least five years. Even though I talked a good game about how I didn’t care what anyone thought about my personal life, I worried constantly about what people would say. And when they didn’t say it, I felt sure I knew what they were thinking. A few things along the lines of: “What is wrong with her? Ohhhh…she’s making a huge mistake. Who is that guy she’s with? What is she thinking? If I were in her situation, I would never do that.”
In short, I was projecting all of my own insecurities about dating on everyone else around me and assuming that I didn’t have their support.
I knew that if I started dating within the first year, half of my friends and family would have thought it was too soon. And if I didn’t start dating until five years had passed, they’d wonder what in the hell was wrong with me. Everyone had different ideas about how I should go about this, and then I realized…I wasn’t going to please everybody. Hell, I probably wouldn’t please anybody. But if going out on a date on Friday night gave me something to look forward to on Monday and made it easier to get through my week, I don’t know why anyone should care about it but me.
I’ve often thought that there are people in my life who wanted to see me married but didn’t want to see the process that I had to go through to get there. I think they would have been perfectly happy if I had shown up at their doorstep with a middle-aged, childless, never-been-married billionaire and said, “Guess what? We were married last night in the Bahamas!”
Well, okay. I would have been happy with that, too.
Then there were people like Kristi, who just flat-out said, “Catherine. I don’t care if you hook up with someone every night of the week, dammit. Just stop feeling guilty about it.”
Sound advice.
And then there was the other group, the friends and family who I knew wanted me to be happy but had no idea how much my dating life would impact them and their own grief over losing Brad. For a long time, I watched my friends proceed with caution any time I introduced someone new to them (which wasn’t often). Oh, they were friendly. But as they shook someone’s hand for the first time, they couldn’t keep that look out of their eyes that seemed to say, “I’ll give you a chance, but if you hurt her, I’ll kill you.”
I know that my dating life was painful for some of my closest friends because we were set. We were a pack. If there was anything we were all sure about, it was each other. Getting together was effortless and it had taken years to get to that point. Now, anytime someone new was around, we didn’t have the same old conversations that picked up in the middle of where we’d left off. Our gatherings took work as we all tried to make the significant-other candidate comfortable and assure each other that we would weather this storm together.
I don’t know if they truly felt this way or if it was something I was insecure about and projecting on them, but a part of me thought that even if I got remarried and that marriage lasted fifty years, my marriage to Brad would always be considered the “real” one. He would always be my husband, and whoever came along after would always be considered somewhat of a stand-in.
But I was so eager to not be alone. Too eager. Something I didn’t do during those early days of dating, even after the nightmare of my first “dating” experience, was really ask myself what I wanted. What did I want in a new relationship? What was my goal? Did I want to get remarried? Did I want someone to go to dinner with every once in a while? Or did I want to just meet up for a roll in the hay and a handshake as I got in my car twenty minutes later?
What did I want?
If I had asked myself that question, I probably could have saved myself and several other people a lot of time and beer money.
20
One would think that after that experience with Chad, I would have shied away from the dating world for a while. That I would have learned my lesson: that I needed to figure out who I was and bulk up my confidence a little before I set out again. One wou
ld think that I would have been so worried about being hurt again that I would have stepped back and tried again in say…oh, twenty years or so.
Yes. One would think.
But in fact, my experience with Chad did the exact opposite. I felt the need, more than ever, to prove that I was still desirable. That I could rebuild my life. That I could move forward and be happy again. And even though I have since learned that I can do all of those things without being “attached,” at that time they all seemed to be related to being in a relationship.
The idea of getting remarried was never my prime motivation for dating again. It’s quite possible that what I was trying to do was fill the void of intimacy in my life that had been left by the early exit of my husband. See…this is why we’re not supposed to lose our spouses until we’re in our nineties, when everything is “dried up” and the fear of breaking a hip is larger than the desire to have sex. We’re not supposed to lose them when we’re young enough to miss that part of the relationship.
But obviously God and Cupid didn’t get that letter from Dr. Ruth. Because spouses still die too soon. And we are left with nothing to “intimately” fall back on.
Many of us go through the desire for intimacy. The need to be held, comforted, nurtured, kissed, and told that everything will be all right. Yearning to feel skin on skin in the middle of the night, even if it’s just the touching of hands. The fear that that part of our lives might be over because we don’t know how (or even if we want) to get it back.
The fact that the need for intimacy doesn’t get discussed as much as it should has widows around the world feeling shallow and lost because they think they’re the only ones. I know I did. When we think about being with another man—not even necessarily loving another man because we don’t know if we’re capable of that anymore—we feel slightly sleazy and, unfortunately, this is not something you can talk through with your “normal” friends. We think that missing out on the physical part of our relationship should be the least of our worries…and that we should be more concerned with other aspects of widowhood.
Confessions of a Mediocre Widow Page 24