Dating After Widowhood: Signs and Signals of Emotional Readiness

Widows often look for a specific protocol to follow when thoughts like, am I ready to date again or how long should a widow wait to date again come up.

However, no protocol exists. Because it’s different for everyone. One widow may be ready to date again six months after her partner dies, while another might wait six years.

We’ve had ALL the thoughts. Asked ourselves ALL the questions. And waffled back and forth as most widows do when it comes to the question, when is it OK to start dating again after the death of your spouse?

Listen in as we explore the signs and signals that indicate you might (or might not) be ready to dip your toe into the dating pool by:

• Paying attention to specific signs that come up for you to know when you’re ready
• Keeping your mind open to the possibility of dating
• Experimenting and having fun (it takes the pressure off yourself)
• And much more!

By understanding some specific emotional indicators, widows can navigate the delicate balance between honoring their past and embracing the possibilities of a future filled with love.

Listen to the Full Episode

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Episode Transcript

Melissa: Welcome to the Widow Squad podcast. I’m Melissa Pierce, and I’m here with my fellow Widow Squad hosts Jen Zwinck and Kim Murray.

So today we want to chat a little bit about dating, and specifically around knowing when you’re ready. How do you know when you’re ready? That’s another question that comes up a lot with the folks in our Widow Squad.

Kim, you want to start us off?

How do you know when you’re ready to date?

From Hesitation to Curiosity: Exploring the Possibility of Dating After Widowhood

Kim: That is such a good question. And we get this question all the time. I think we expect there to be a specific protocol to follow, right? Like, you know that this happens, and this happens, and then you feel like this, and then you can go forward this way. And that’s just not the way widowhood works. We want it to work that way, but it’s just not the way it works.

But how do you know you’re ready? I don’t know. It’s up to you, right? Like, you have to figure out where you are in your widowhood journey and where you feel like you want to go.

In my case, I didn’t necessarily know that I was ready. It kind of happened to me instead of me going out to look for it. And I’ll kind of explain that there’s a little bit of a story that goes behind that.

About a year and a half after my husband died, a man had asked me if I wanted to go on a date. But it wasn’t just, like, a simple thing. Our kids were friends, and they played sports together. So, I saw this dad at the sporting events, and whenever we talked, I wasn’t feeling anything at the time. There were no “cues” or anything in my mind. I was just talking to another person, another dad. And as the season progressed, he would come over and talk to me more. And I still, at this point, just to preface the story, didn’t know what was happening. But he would talk to me more, whatever. And so, our kids got to be better friends. And they spent the night, had sleepovers and all that kind of stuff. Well, one day he called me. I thought he was calling because our kids were making plans with each other, but he called to ask if he could see me sometime. So my point to this is I was not actively going out and looking for a date. I didn’t know I was ready. It wasn’t like I was on a mission.

So when I got this phone call, he said, “well, I just wanted to know if I could see you sometime.” And if you could’ve seen my face on this call, my mouth dropped to the floor and I’m thinking, what? Like, what does that even mean? Can you see me sometime? I’m on this call like a deer in headlights. I don’t know what this means. So I was like, “um, I guess, yeah. Are you asking to go on a date?” And he’s like, “yeah, I just wondered if I could see you sometime.” In his mind he left an open-ended, can I see you sometime? I was like, what does that mean? Like, are we going to meet for coffee next Thursday or lunch on Tuesday? What does that mean? Can I see you sometime?

So I was just like, okay. Kind of embarrassed. Didn’t know what to say. I was like, “sure, that sounds good.” But that was it. Sure, that sounds good. But it wasn’t like he said, “let’s go on a date on Saturday night,” or anything.

Now a couple of days go by. I’m calling my girlfriend, who knows this mutual acquaintance. And I’m like, “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what this means.” She’s like, “let’s just play it by ear and see how it goes.” So, long story short, he never did actually ask me out on a date. He just asked if he could see me sometime. I guess that just meant when he decided he was ready. But it turns out he had a girlfriend. So I’m not going to go through the whole sordid story about that. But, he had a girlfriend. It was really kind of strange. So I think he thought, can I see you sometime? Meaning maybe after I break up with this other lady or whatever.

First of all, I’m confused because again, I was not prepared to be dating. Not thinking I was going to be dating. This happened organically. This phone call came out of the blue. So, as we were communicating back and forth, text and whatever, I realized that I was actually, not because of him as a person, but just because of the situation, I was actually a little excited about the prospect of dating again.

I was thinking, huh, this is interesting. I’m having feelings I haven’t felt in a long time. And thinking that another man is attractive and kind of like, trying to figure out what this means, and going through all the questions in my head that every widow ever goes through, like should I do this? Is it the right thing? Is it the right time? And all that.

He wasn’t the person that I would eventually date. We never actually went on a date. But the fact that I started to have these feelings, the fact that I started to think that maybe it was a possibility, that all stemmed from this person.

When I found out that a girlfriend and I said, “listen, not for nothing, I don’t play second fiddle to anybody, so if something doesn’t work out with you two, give me a call. But until then, I’m out.”

This is not something I’m prepared to do. Yeah, no, it was just a very strange situation.

But I started having butterflies, and I started having feelings. And then I actually, believe it or not, then I started viewing other people, like, oh, look he’s kind of cute. Or this guy is kind of attractive. All these things that I hadn’t been feeling for so long were suddenly opened up.

I wasn’t deciding to date, I wasn’t thinking this was my goal for the next six months. It just sort of happened. Then I thought, okay, I’m not dead inside. I’m still living, I’m still alive, and I still have these feelings. So I thought, huh, what if I did explore it? What if I did move forward with that?

So I talked to my neighbor, and she had known all about this fiasco that was going on with this other “relationship.” She’s a nurse at the local hospital and I said, “Just introduce me to one of your doctor friends. Let’s just get this over with. Just introduce me to a doctor.” And she said, “no, I will absolutely not introduce you to a doctor, because they work long hours, and they can be very narcissistic.” Anyway, I’m not trying to generalize doctors, but she said, I wouldn’t do that for you. However, she had somebody that she wanted me to meet. She had been waiting for me to let her know that I was ready to date, because she had someone waiting in the wings. But didn’t want to say anything to me because it was only two years after Mark died.

When I said to her, “introduce me to a doctor,” and she said, “no, but I have somebody else I want you to meet,” I was like, “no, I’m just kidding.” No, no, no. I wasn’t serious about meeting someone. I wasn’t serious about dating.

But in my mind, I’m like, do I dip my toe into the pool of dating? Do I just open up the possibility that maybe I could do it, eventually? We all go through these same feelings. We talk ourselves out of something before we talk ourselves back into it. I do this. This is my nature. And it took me a while to even come back to her with an answer. I was like, no, I’m just kidding. No, I wasn’t serious. No, because at the time my kids were only ten and twelve, so they were still young. I had a lot of those feelings about what to do with my kids and dating and stuff, too. Anyway, so that long roundabout answer to your question, when do you know? Sometimes you don’t actually know. Sometimes it happens to you, and not because you were putting it out to the universe. So that’s kind of the way it started, just organically.

Melissa: It woke something up inside you, an idea like, oh, this might be a possibility. So

Kim: Yeah, it did.

So then I pursued that option and thought, okay, this could be good for me, this could be something that I could do. And I said this before, I’ve written about it in my blog, so the listeners might have heard this story before, but I wanted to go on a date to get over that hump. That first date after the death hump.

So that was really at that point I thought, okay, I’m not dead inside. That’s good. I still can get butterflies, I still find other people attractive. That’s all good. But all I really wanted to do was get over that hump. I had no other goal in mind than just get that first date over with. Because I knew once that first date happened, everything after that would be okay, but that first date had to happen. So anyway, that was what my goal was. Yes, sometimes it just happens organically.

Melissa, did you have any specific signs or any feelings that you were ready?

Rediscovering Intimacy: Baby Steps and Safe Experiences on the Dating Journey

Melissa: I relate to what you’re saying because it wasn’t like I thought, um, it’s the 18-month mark and let’s do this thing. That first year, I was in such a fog and in such shock, but I think it was the one-year anniversary of Dave’s death, and I took myself out for a weekend. My brother watched my two boys, and I’m like, I’m just going to go to this place up in Washington. They have natural hot springs and I’m just going to really just soothe myself. A lot of how I move myself through is self-care. A lot of body self-care.

And I’m like, let’s just talk about this, ladies. I had not been touched by a man in a year. That’s a big deal. When you’re used to having somebody hug you and hold your hand and touch you, and then when it’s gone, that’s a big deal. So I’m like, well, I’m going to get a massage. And this is not sordid or anything, but I’m going to get a massage and I’m going to have a male massage therapist.

Kim: Good idea.

Melissa: Because I want to see what it feels like to have a male’s hands on my body. This is getting weird! What that would feel like in a safe way.

I wasn’t ready to be intimate or anything that wasn’t awoken in me yet. So I’m like, okay, I’m going to do this because I always get massages by females. I lined it up and then I started thinking about what if he’s cute or all this stuff. I was weirding out. When I got into the massage room, bless his heart, this man had like, a lazy eye and a potbelly and really thinning hair with a ponytail in the back. It was like, okay, I can relax now. And it was a fabulous massage. It was amazing. So that was kind of like my baby step because I want to feel safe. 

Kim: I love that, though. I love, first of all, that you were self-aware enough to know that this is what you needed. So, I applaud you for getting what you need and then doing it in a safe place makes perfect sense. I like that analogy. And then you wanted to be touched again. That’s what we all want. We missed that intimacy.

Melissa: Kind of that closeness. Sure. And so that was the one-year mark. And then again, it kind of woke something up in me. It’s like, okay, maybe, I’m not ready to date, but let’s see if I can actually have an intelligent conversation with somebody from the opposite sex that’s not related to me. Rather than going on a date, I said another safe thing for me to do was grab my girlfriend who’s divorced, and we went speed dating together.

I don’t know if you know about speed dating, but the women don’t move. They sit in one spot. And then these guys come and talk to you, and they have like two or three minutes. They kind of just cycle through. You try to find out as much as you can about this person, about each other. That’s another weird story. The speed dating group was for folks who were like 35 to 50. And this guy comes up and starts talking to me, who is clearly considerably over the age of 50 and a very nice gentleman. So, I’m chatting with him and I’m like, okay, hey, we’re talking about high school. “What year did you graduate?” And he told me what year and I’m like, oh, busted. He was really nice. So you speed date and then you find there’s like an app afterwards. If you choose each other, you have like, numbers. If you choose each other, then they give you the contact info and you can chat with each other. So I did that, and I chatted with a couple of people, but I never met up with anybody through the app because that’s really not what I wanted to do. My intention was like, can I be comfortable talking with somebody from the opposite sex who I may or may not be attracted to?

I was just thinking about intimacy. I was kind of not starving for it, but I really wanted that. And I also had to kind of decide, like, what did I want in the future? I like partnership, I’m good at it. That’s what I want that in my life. What does that look like? So, I had to go through months and months of trying to figure out what that looked like for me before I actually did start dating actively.

Kim: I think that’s a good point though, that you don’t have to go into this with the intention of finding a mate, right?  You just go into it with the intention of figuring out what you want. And what your wants and needs are. You know, going speed dating, I love that. I think that’s a great idea. You don’t have to pick a mate, but then you had the experience of talking to, like you said, another human male that wasn’t your relative. So those are all great ideas to just start opening up the possibility instead of putting all the pressure on yourself to make a decision that you’re going to date again. You don’t have to make that decision. You can just take steps to move in that direction.

Melissa: Right. It was just about being curious. I hadn’t dated in 20 years. So, what does this look like in this new landscape? And what’s my part in it? What do I want? It was a huge growth period for me, actually. And ladies, believe it or not, I have no game. I have no idea if somebody is flirting with me.

Kim: Oh, I hear you, sister. I hear you.

Melissa: I have zero game. Zero. So people would say, “oh, I think he likes you.” And I’m like, “no, I don’t think so.”  So this was a way for me to kind of get some feedback, like, oh, I do feel attractive? Somebody else might be attracted to me. What is that bringing up inside of me? Am I scared? Am I excited? All these things. It’s kind of like being a newborn. It really is. If you haven’t dated in such a long time because you’ve been with your partner, just be curious. I just thought it was such fun. It was actually fun. It was a fun growth experience for me.

Kim: Well, and if you can look at it as fun, then that makes a lot of difference, too.

Fear and excitement are actually the same feeling. They produce the same results in your body, right? So you might think you’re afraid, but excitement feels the same way. You could flip it around and say, “yeah, I’m excited about this.” You can be excited and scared, but it doesn’t have to always be the fear leading the way. It could be excitement leading the way, too.

Melissa: Yeah, totally.

Jen, so I’m curious to know, how did you know you’re ready? Or did you know, or what did this bring up in you?

Taking the Pressure Off: Exploring Wants and Needs Before Jumping Back into Dating

Jen: Well, I guess like Kim, it wasn’t really a thought so much in my head, and it wasn’t a timing thing either. It was a slow go for me, you guys. It was a couple of years before the thought even crossed my mind.

But I remember one particular night because my routine with Claire was to put her to bed and then I would read a book or whatever, try and get myself to go to sleep, which was difficult. So, a lot of times I was outside on the balcony looking at the stars, just talking to myself or talking to Brent. And there was one night where I was doing this and looking up at the stars, and I said, “I wish I could have love in my life again.” It was just a thought that just popped into my head out of nowhere. I wasn’t thinking about anything or anyone that I had met, so it kind of surprised me. And then Kim, like you, it was like, okay, this is the thought now, this is the thought in my head. I might actually be open to this.

What would this person look like? Who am I envisioning that I could even be with, which is so hard to do after you’ve been with your partner for so long. You don’t think that there’s anyone else that will ever fit into that family picture. And you kind of get stuck there sometimes. So, I was just thinking there’s this fuzzy image of a person next to me. I don’t know who that is. I don’t know what he looks like. Who knows what that is? But I feel like I might be open to that. And that was probably two years, maybe two and a half years, even, before I got to that point. So there was, like you said, Melissa, a lot of growth, a lot of processing, what I had been through. I had the blinders on for any future potential person that was going to come into my life. I just wasn’t even there. I wasn’t going there. So once I started thinking about that and I made that wish about having love in my life again, I did start to notice people. And Kim, like you said, I wasn’t dead inside.

You start to notice people and then you think, oh, my goodness, he’s kind of an attractive guy. And look at me. I am actually attracted to another guy. This is crazy, because you don’t think that that could ever possibly happen again. And when it does, it’s exciting! You’re nervous, but it’s good butterflies. It’s an exciting kind of nervous. And it’s going back to that feeling, like in high school, you’re back to the beginning again.

At that point, I also was trying not to convince myself one way or the other, but I knew that I was comfortable being alone. I was not going to settle for somebody at that point just to have a warm body next to me, either. I’m okay with who I am. Whether or not another person comes into my life or not, I’m okay being alone. I am okay with being myself. Yes, life is more enjoyable with another person next to you to share it, but I’m okay if that doesn’t happen. And so going into it with that attitude too is you could just have more confidence. You’re not going to settle. You’re not going to just pick the first person that comes along. You are comfortable with yourself.

And then also some things, as far as being ready. I guess there are a couple of things that you could ask yourself or just be aware of about yourself. If you are still at a point where you’re crying every single day over your husband and what happened, then you are not ready, in my opinion, to start dating. You’re not in a good place. You have to be in a good place by yourself in order to invite somebody else into your life.

Anyway, I just feel like if you are ready to open it up to someone and fully put yourself into that new relationship, then yes, you are ready. So, I mean, there’s just a lot of reflection that happens with it. And, Kim, like you said, you go back and forth and you try to talk yourself out of things. You just project these other things, like what might happen if I do start dating? Maybe they break up with me. Maybe this person rejects me. And again, I told myself, who cares? Who cares if I get rejected? Who cares if I get hurt? If this person leaves me? They are not the person that I’m supposed to be with.

I have already been hurt with the most hurt and the most pain that I will ever go through in my life. So, dating needs to be fun. I need to approach it and just have fun with it and not take it so seriously because the worst had already happened. Anything from here on out was nothing compared to what I had been through.

The Power of Possibility

Kim: I have a question for you guys. We all have fear, right? I mean, fear is a big part of it, and I think we all have guilt. We think, like, if we’re considering another man, we’ve somehow stopped loving our deceased spouse. Which is not true. We know that’s not true. Okay. But before you think dating is a possibility, you’re closed off to the thought, right? And you’re physically closed off. You’re kind of hunched over, or your arms are crossed, or your body language is closed off, too.

But when you start to think about the possibilities and you open up your mind, that kind of opens up your body language, too. So, you’re attracting people to you when you’re open to the idea or the possibility. If you’re not open to the idea or possibility, and you’re closed off in your mind and body language, then you’re pushing people away. It’s interesting how once that thought becomes a possibility, you literally open up all that channels. Everything starts to activate again, right? So then you draw people to you, or start talking to people about what you want. This opens up the possibility for you even further or you go to events like Melissa did to open up even more possibility. You can’t do any of that if you don’t have the thought in your head that it’s a possibility first.

 Jen: Yeah, 100%.

Melissa: That’s a great visual, just being open. Physically open.

And then you’re kind of attracting it, and you don’t really consciously know it, but you’re subconsciously attracting what your soul is ready for. Your heart and your soul is ready, and it comes to you.

Kim: You don’t actually have to believe it. You just have to think it’s a possibility. That’s all.

So it’s almost like tricking your brain. Because we’ve all been through that thought process. I’m not ready. It’s not okay. I’m cheating on my husband. What will people think? Any number of things. We could go down the list. We’ve all thought about all those things.

Widows will say, “well, nobody can replace my husband.” Nobody could replace our husbands either, right? We’re not trying to replace our husbands. That’s not the goal. So, all the things that we do to tell ourselves, no? We’ve all done it. We’ve thought the thoughts. So we’ve done all the things to tell ourselves, no.  And even the older widows who say, “well, I’m too old,” or “I can’t find somebody in my life now. I’m too old, I’m too old to date.” Well, those thoughts just aren’t true. It’s what do you want? You could be 90. It doesn’t matter how old you are, it’s what do you want.

But if you’re closing yourself off, it’s never going to happen. Just keep your mind open to the possibility, and then see where that takes you.

Melissa: Yeah, that’s beautiful. I know a 70-year-old year old who wanted to date. She was open to the possibility. She’s got a boyfriend. It’s like, yeah, good for you. Like, 74. She’s like, I want this, and if you want it, you deserve to have it.

 You do.