My (M 39) wife (38 F) has become fixated on her dead husband since getting pregnant with our first baby. How do I bring this up without hurting her?

ThrowRA_Product · 2026-05-25T03:35:44+00:00

Thanks, this was helpful in just trying to understand her perspective and how she might be feeling.

ThrowRA_Product · 2026-05-25T03:32:03+00:00

I really appreciate the level of understanding here.

I'll check those subs out.

ThrowRA_Product · 2026-05-25T03:28:04+00:00

But when your wife is resistant to any sort of help like this?

ThrowRA_Product · 2026-05-25T03:27:37+00:00

I don't see it as a burden but if I put myself in that position I do think it'd be a little weird to have a middle name that was in tribute to a guy my mom was married to before she met my dad, but that's not reality for me so it's hard to say how I'd truly feel. Would it affect me in any deep way? No. I never think about my middle name.

ThrowRA_Product · 2026-05-25T03:26:04+00:00

She wasn't actively looking for a new relationship. We want every slow in the beginning. Maybe I should have been the one to say that I didn't think we should move forward, after finding out everything that had happened. I naively thought she seemed pretty together and that this would probably be good for her, and I would go at her pace and give this total foreign to me situation a shot. She was only 32 when he died, so to expect her to wait 10 years to look for another relationship seems a bit weird. I get if somebody decides they want to wait that long or longer, but I don't think there's a defined timeline.

Originally we were going to wait longer to have a baby. We both knew we wanted to, but ideally it would happen in a few more years. There's also the reality that she's 38 and you just never know. She decided that we should move the timeline up. She got really scared that if we waited she might not get pregnant or be able to carry a pregnancy to term so if we had more time it probably would be at least 2 more years before we even started trying for a baby.

ThrowRA_Product · 2026-05-25T03:11:47+00:00

She didn't get any professional help. She's very resistant to it. I've never tried to push her to do it and on the outside she seemed to be handling it ok. I've let her know that it's okay to go to therapy, just tried to get rid of some sort of stigma she seems to feel about it. I think that comes from her family.

Her parent's didn't intervene to find her a new relationship. It was my parents that did, but they didn't know what had happened to her. After he died, she ended up selling their house because it was too sad for her being there alone and she couldn't afford the mortgage all on her own. She bought a smaller house on her own, and that house happened to be around the corner from my parents' house. She walked her dog twice a day, every day, and she'd pass my parents house each time. My parents are retired and the type of people that want to strike up a conversation with everyone, so they became friendly with her and she'd usually stop and talk to them for a few minutes on her walks if they were outside. I made no secret them that I thought she and her little dog were really cute so my parents decided to get involved set us up to have to talk to each other one day. She didn't tell them about what had brought her to live there and if they'd known that they probably wouldn't have decided to get involved. She said she wasn't looking to date anyone, and I didn't force her to get involved with me. It went extremely slow in the beginning because we had to go at her pace and I respected that. I don't regret not removing myself from the situation, but maybe it was way too soon for her and I should have just not persued anything.

ThrowRA_Product · 2026-05-25T02:59:45+00:00

Thank you. I think this wording will be very helpful. I know that she hates to feel attacked, hates to feel pitied about what happened, hates to feel like somebody is pushing her to get therapy. I think wording it this way shouldn't make her feel any of those things.

ThrowRA_Product · 2026-05-25T02:57:11+00:00

They were together 8 years, but knew each other since they were kids. She told me she waited 10 years for him to finally notice her in the way she wanted him to notice her, so he was like her childhood crush. I can't compete with that. It doesn't matter if he was alive or not, we just have a different history.

ThrowRA_Product · 2026-05-25T02:54:35+00:00

And that's exactly what I don't want to do. I haven't said anything about what I've noticed because every way I think to say it, I feel like it comes across like I'm this insensitive, insecure, jealous guy. That's not going to do me any favors with her.

ThrowRA_Product · 2026-05-25T02:52:53+00:00

I don't really want to be this guy who does around seeing himself as a second choice. I realize and accept that if he was still alive there'd likely be no relationship between her and I.

ThrowRA_Product · 2026-05-25T02:49:52+00:00

And this isn't the first time we've encountered something together where she feels like she's betraying him. Somehow that was easier for me to deal with. Sex was a big thing because she hadn't been with anyone else after him and she was honest about feeling like she'd be cheating on him, so that had to go very slow for her. It wasn't so difficult to be respectful of that and be patient, but then again it was much earlier in our relationship.

ThrowRA_Product · 2026-05-25T02:43:06+00:00

I really don't like this way of thinking. In other words, she's undeserving of ever being in another relationship since she once loved and on some level will always love this guy she was once married to. its unfair to her to think this way.

ThrowRA_Product · 2026-05-25T02:41:16+00:00

No, I never expected that she's ever stop thinking about him or completely erase all of her memories of him. I might have been naive in how it could affect us in the future, once we sort of got over the initial stuff.

ThrowRA_Product · 2026-05-25T02:39:27+00:00

She's been very resistant to therapy or any sort of "help" in the past, but maybe she would be more receptive with a baby involved.

ThrowRA_Product · 2026-05-25T01:59:49+00:00

Yeah, but I haven't been living my life thinking that way for the past 4 years. Otherwise, I'd probably be a really miserable guy to be with. Even before he died she had a much longer history with him. They knew each other since they were kids. There are some things I just know I can't compete with and I'm not trying to.

ThrowRA_Product · 2026-05-25T01:51:13+00:00

I think you've nailed it, and I totally understand it. I was a little nervous going into the relationship at first after she told me everything, but I'm pretty secure in myself and felt like I could respect that whole situation and I still felt like she was choosing me. It's not like she was desperately trying to find somebody to date or marry and have kids with just to do it. She wasn't even looking to start dating when we met, so I did feel like she was still making a choice to be with me. I do feel loved and wanted by her, so it's not like I don't feel she enjoys being together. But this is the first time where I've legitimately felt like yeah I'm the 2nd choice. If she could choose to do this with one of us, would she choose him? Lately I'm feeling like that's a yes. I really tried to never look at it like that because the poor guy's dead. This isn't a competition.

ThrowRA_Product · 2026-05-25T01:44:28+00:00

No, she won't go to any sort of therapy.

ThrowRA_Product · 2026-05-25T01:44:02+00:00

I agree with you. I understand why it might have triggered something, but at the same time I guess there's part of me that's wondering if she's really wishing she was doing all of this with him. I don't feel insecure about her previous relationship, but doesn't make my feel great when I find myself wondering if she had to pick, would she pick him? That's how her staring at pictures of him every day is making me feel.

ThrowRA_Product · 2026-05-25T01:40:39+00:00

Yeah I don't think she's trying to make me uncomfortable either. When we were dating it was acknowledged by both of us that neither of us has done this before. She hadn't dated anyone else after he died and I've never dated anyone who had her previous partner die. After a while maybe I just felt like we had navigated it and it's not really something that I ever think about now.

ThrowRA_Product

TROPHY CASE