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[quote=Anonymous]It is depressing but my observation is that it is usually easier if husbands die first because widows seem to do a better job of getting by without their husbands than the reverse. Even in the case of my MIL, who has struggled quite a bit on her own, she still does a good job maintaining friendships, staying busy, staying involved at church. She has grief, which is of course understandable, but she's not sitting around upset that her husband isn't around to look after her.

Most of the men I know who are 70+ and widowers are much more of a burden to their families and act more helpless and angry to be alone. They don't do a great job of maintaining social ties and their personalities calcify somewhat. They are also WAY more likely to somehow find girlfriends (often a decade or so younger) whereas only one of the older widows I know has a boyfriend and he is just a travel companion and sometimes date and doesn't do any caretaking -- the girlfriends always do caretaking.

Some of this is generational and hopefully future generations of men won't be like this, but a lot of the older boomers I know still have some retrograde ideas about gender and it becomes uncomfortably obvious if a wife passes before the husband because yes these men seem to have more expectations for being looked after than the women do.[/quote]

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