Husband upset...what should I say?
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Anonymous
| OP I really feel for you. I am in a fairly close situation. My father has started to date as my mom has alzheimers. It has torn our family up and have to say..I don't think I will see my dad the same way. It is so hard when you have a vision of who your dad is and who your family is..to someone act so cold..and this is cold, it just is. I actually could understand him wanting company and not wanting to be a "social burden" but to foist this woman on the family and children at a yearly vacation less than a year after his wife died. Awful. I agree to just "be there for your husband"--I would actually suggest doing something else --your kids will be fine, they are kids and they are fine if you are fine. This also doesn't need to be world war three--maybe he just tells his dad he isn't ready for the new woman so the beach isn't a good venue to get ready. Again..I feel for your family..it is really really really hard. I also hate the comments about "maybe he wasn't happy"--awful!! |
Anonymous
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Am I the only one here who thinks the FIL has the right to date whoever he wants to date and to find happiness?
IMO -- too many adult children hate new girl/boyfriends and spouses for no other reason than "HE'S NOT DADDY!" If my Mom or Dad passed on, I'd want to give the new SO a chance at least (and odds are I'd probably already know the person in my parents' case.) I'm presupposing, of course, (1) there's no evidence of abuse or financial impropriety where the new honey is spending all the money/transferring all the estate to pass to her/him or (2) the new honey is actually nice to all the people involved. But I don't see evidence of that (maybe I didn't read it closely enough.) |
Anonymous
You are assuming too much never having been in this situation. No one is asking for their parents to be alone, just to have the decency to wait to hoist these new flings off on the children of their dead wives immediately after the death or until the grave has a headstone. |
Anonymous
+1. You can't comment unless you've been there. Look, I think this is America and my dad can do whatever he feels like. But, so can I. And that's the big issue. He wanted to pout like a baby when I refused to greet his new honey with open arms when my mom had been dead a week. My dad was a dick, still is, and to this day (7 years later!) I've never met the woman and don't intend to. He thought he could force me, but how? I'm grown. He's grown and should certainly do as he feels like, but I didn't need another reason to cut him out of my life. |
Anonymous
| FIL does not owe you anything. He does not owe your husband or family a certain vacation experience. FIL has a new life and he is inviting you and husband to be a part of it ~ if you want to ~ if you are ready. Totally reasonable if you are not ready, but it is not FIL's problem. Just tell FIL that you need additional time to mourn. Of course hopefully you can move past your reluctance, the sooner the better. |
Anonymous
| It's very reasonable that you would need additional time to mourn, IMHO. |
Anonymous
| Pay for your own vacation beach house. Stay nearby, but not together. Give the couple their space. |
Anonymous
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15:41 here.
I'll grant that a week is a little excessive IMO and I can begin to understand the upset others feel (although I wouldn't be so upset as to deny my DD her grandparents if grandparent + new honey remained nice and available to DD). |
Anonymous
Wow you sound like a jerk! |
Anonymous
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I havent read this whole thread, but I second the PPs who mention that the husbands date soon after because they recognize they need a wife to function and survive.
A lot of times a spouse dies within 2 yrs of another, like my dad. I think he would have lived years longer if he had managed to find a gf or new dw. With death so close, both their own and their prior spouses, we cant necessarily relate with our relative youth. |
Anonymous
I don't know. I agree that fil should do as he pleases, but where things fall apart usually is when the merry widower starts making demands on everyone else to embrace the newbie. But, as noted, family life is a two way street, and many a widower in an all fire hurry to remarry has found themselves repenting in leisure. |
Anonymous
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This isn't just about the father as a person, though, who has the right to move on at his own pace, but the responsibility of a father to respect his children's grief of their mother. It would be one thing for the adult children to shun the father just because he has moved on. But this first trip without their mother is going to be hard. How can the FIL in this thread not step outside his own desires for one moment and think to himself: "Hey, my children are grieving their mother. Even if I no longer think of her as my wife, or grieve myself, I need to respect the way they are feeling."
We are not talking about years here, we're talking about less than a year. I suspect that some of these men who remarry immediately are infants looking for caretakers, and selfish ones at that; which fits with what OP's FIL is doing. Still others are just afraid of their own grief, and that's a bit more complicated because FIL may be using this new woman as a way to avoid facing the death of his long time partner head on. Either way, parenting is hard. It doesn't stop being hard when your children are adults. If I lost my husband, with young children, do you think it would be right to bring in a new husband right away and just expect them to get used to it? Well, these are adults, not kids, but the dad in question does not need to put it in their faces so harshly. How awful to be at a vacation home at such an emotional time with a stranger to the family? OP, I would back out of this vacation. There will be other years. Take your children somewhere fancy. They will get over it. But if your husband is forced to deal with this unfair situation your dad is placing him in because you will not back out of a vacation, he may not. For the long term health of your husband's relationship with his father, he needs to politely decline and say "not this year dad, it's too soon for me to go to that vacation house without mom as it is, and I just can't bring myself to go through those emotions in front of your new girlfriend. You deserve to be happy, but I deserve time and space to grieve my mother." Bottom line: the father lost a wife, but the children lost their mother. They're all grieving and the father doesn't get to dictate how the kids grieve any more than the reverse. Skip the trip this year, do it next year or start a new tradition altogether. Times change, obviously. |
Anonymous
| Losing a spouse is harder than losing a parent. Doesn't anyone in the family have any sympathy for the bereaved husband? |
Anonymous
+1. PP here. I did not fully realize this until my MIL died. When she died, DH had me and the kids to get him through. His siblings all had their spouses. Who did FIL have? He stayed with us for a while, but then he went back to his house - which was empty and lonely. The center of his life for 45 years was gone. When she first passed, many of his friends said he would not last a year. He was heartbroken. But he met this new friend and he is happy and having a good quality of life. Our own personal grief aside, we are happy that he is moving forward. But it was tough. Nobody expected him to climb over into the caket with her - we know that he did not die when she died. Still, it was hard to see him dating just months after MIL passed. At the end of the day, I would hope that in the case of a parent's death, we would want the other parent to have a good quality of life for their remaining time. |
Anonymous
| My mother passed away unexpectedly and young. Before we even burried her ashes my father was screwing a neighbor. No respect for his spouse of 30 years, no considerstion for our feelings. That just killed me and tore the family apart. I have not spken to him since. It has been 7 years. |