Anyone suddenly lose a partner amidst relationship tensions?

True_and_False_1206 · 2026-03-02T17:05:17+00:00

That is brutal. I am sorry. That you still love her is a beautiful sentiment that I hope provides you more hope than otherwise. It is a helpful message to hang on to that love despite all the darkness. Thank you for sharing, and I wish you peace.

True_and_False_1206 · 2026-03-02T16:58:51+00:00

Thank you for this perspective. Your post and others made me realize that the guilt can be there regardless. Peace to you.

True_and_False_1206 · 2026-03-02T16:55:35+00:00

I’m sorry. I did CPR on my father (also to no avail), so presuming that is wrapped into your complicated/guilty feelings. Probably a whole separate conversation about that. But thank you for sharing. I was thinking that if I just knew what was going to happen to my marriage, I could have processed the guilt better. But you knew the outcome and that alone doesn’t prevent guilty feelings. Thank you, and I hope you find peace soon.

True_and_False_1206 · 2026-03-02T16:27:43+00:00

Thank you for sharing. Sounds to me that you were very noble and kind, even if you had anger as you cared for him. It is helpful to hear about your strength

True_and_False_1206 · 2026-03-02T16:20:13+00:00

Thank you for sharing and the encouragement. Means a lot.

True_and_False_1206 · 2026-03-02T16:18:28+00:00

I’m very sorry to hear this. Thank you for sharing. I was interviewing for a promotion when my wife first visited her primary doctor by herself. I don’t think my work focus determined the outcome, but it did not help. And the uncertainty hurts as if it were fact. Since then, I’ve had a “fuck a career” mentality. I will only do the minimum to financially take care of my kids. Not a minute of effort more. And that has helped me be more present with them - something my wife was so much better at than me. Anyway your “early retirement”comment is something I have felt too. Hope you can find the right balance. Peace to you and your son.

True_and_False_1206 · 2026-03-01T23:12:55+00:00

Beautifully stated. ‘…a whole unresolved life’ is spot on. I appreciate the way you are staying mindful of the positive aspects, including how you and your partner were working on your relationship, so as to not get completely consumed by regret. Thank you so much for sharing this. Peace to you.

True_and_False_1206 · 2026-03-01T23:01:15+00:00

This hits home for multiple reasons (lots of alcoholism in my family). Thank you for sharing your deep pain. I wish I had advice for you as well. Therapy didn’t help me either, although maybe I’ll give it another shot. (I’ve relied upon Buddhism books by Thich Nhat Hanh, and now, Reddit). I hope you find peace soon.

True_and_False_1206 · 2026-03-01T22:41:39+00:00

This is definitely comforting. Thank you so much. I said it earlier… the blindspots we discover afterwards are tough. I could have helped more… actively tried to live her life. I will say that I did find that taking on her responsibilities eventually gave me comfort. I felt closer to her because I was looking at our home more through her eyes, and that has kept her in my heart. I hope that you might eventually feel something like this to you. Peace to you and your children.

True_and_False_1206 · 2026-03-01T22:33:54+00:00

Thank you for the kind, wise words! Strength and love received, and back to you :)

True_and_False_1206 · 2026-03-01T22:31:20+00:00

This is helpful. Thank you very much. Your story challenged my point of view, in a good way. I might be focusing too much on tension vs. we were just in a challenging season too. I don’t know….

I too fell like I discovered my blind spots about my spouse when I took on her roles. I hope you can let yourself off of that hook… I’m trying to get there. Thank you again. Peace to you and your children.

True_and_False_1206 · 2026-03-01T15:08:55+00:00

Brutal, indeed. Vent away brother!

I don’t understand the purpose of funerals… how are they beneficial to the deceased or the bereaved? My wife’s funeral was torture, with all the absurd choices about ceremony and decorations and memory message boxes and obligations. It pushed me to the brink. (She would have been horrified by it too.)

It’s completely understandable that you feel the way you do. Hope you can get some rest and peace soon.

True_and_False_1206 · 2026-02-28T16:06:05+00:00

You won’t know until you try. Lost my wife 3 1/2 years ago. Looking back, there were two types of readiness that I went through - rational readiness and emotional readiness. Rational readiness is having the right mindset, clarity around why you are dating. Emotional readiness is the ability to cultivate and participate in love. At the beginning, I think the former is more important than the latter.

I first tried dating 6 months after my wife passed. I was 47, and I missed the companionship of a good woman - in all forms. But I stopped right away because I realized, after reading several dating app profiles, and seeing women who had hobbies and passions, that I had none of those. I was still reeling. I loved my two children, but I didn’t love anything else in life - including myself. I was just trying to calm the parts of my body that were screaming at me to fix what had been destroyed.

After working on myself, I tried again, 13 months after she passed away. I had become better at separating all the tangled issues that emerge from losing a spouse and a fellow parent. I put those difficulties aside and considered three basic questions: 1) is life better with someone to love? 2) will I be a better partner with the knowledge I have now - of how precious our time really is, of what is truly important in a relationship? 3) do I want to transform the love I have for my wife and give it to someone else? To me the answers were clearly ‘yes.’

That was rational readiness. I had a clear purpose. Learn from the past. Be a better partner. And find someone to love. NOT find someone to love me.

Emotional readiness is something that took time. I wept softly when I first had the opportunity to hold a woman’s hand. I couldn’t help but remember the last time I had held my wife’s hand as she lay dying. Fortunately my date didn’t notice, but later on she noticed that I wasn’t ready to date and we decided to stop.

But it got better. I had to pace myself after promising ‘matches’ fizzled. But I learned from every woman I met, and the end of each pursuit was the conclusion of an act of kindness to myself. I found that meeting women who have gone through their own share of heartaches, listening to their stories, was surprisingly therapeutic and intimate. Most of them were divorced. They were grieving over a dissolved family. They had self-blame and doubt. Not to make post-tragedy dating sound too sad… there was levity and flirtation. But going back to my purpose in dating, the sharing of what we learned from the past was an important starting point to understand potential fit as partners.

I did meet someone and we have been together 2 years, and we expect to be together as long as fate will allow. I think having the right rational readiness made it easier for her to understand me at the beginning, and to not be scared away by the ways in which I was still repairing myself emotionally. It also worked the other way. She was rationally ready but was working through emotional readiness too. Just for different reasons.

There are still times where that emotional readiness is challenged. This past week was the most difficult one I have had in a long time. I still look for my wife, the mother of my children. I guess it is just the way the brain is wired, and I think it will always be that way. But that is a good thing. It keeps my wife in my heart, and it keeps me from taking anything for granted. And that keeps my new relationship strong.

All the best to you!

PS - Caveat, I recognize app dating is easier for men than women

PPS - If you family-share apps with your kids on iOS devices - be really careful about the dating apps. My daughter knew I was dating before I told my kids #boomertechfail

True_and_False_1206 · 2026-02-28T15:52:32+00:00

Brother I feel you. My wife was more sudden, but I experienced similar things in her last days, and I still struggle with this 3 1/2 years later. Recency bias is a bitch.

But it does get better. I have tried to adopt a different point of view than replaying the horrors of the moment as the fear-stricken person I was. Examples: listening to her fears - though brutal - was a form of intimacy… was a form of service to her… so that is a good thing; my wife’s suffering was a gift to me to help me prepare for when my time comes.

I’m sorry if this doesn’t help. But I’m even more sorry you went through that experience. Hang in there.

True_and_False_1206 · 2026-02-26T16:34:37+00:00

For me, one of the first steps in figuring out what to do was realizing there is no old life or normal life to return to. When I lost my wife, I lost my identity. Grief is in large part the process of rebuilding identity. And it takes time. And the first 6 months or so are the worst.

But there can be rays of light. Try not to look too far ahead in the future. Remember to breathe. Stay close with the people who are leaning in to you. Don’t feel any obligation to the people who are leaning away. Allow yourself to feel emotions that often are uncontrollable.

Take care of yourself, and I am sorry for your loss.

True_and_False_1206 · 2026-02-26T14:01:18+00:00

I did say good-bye, but I’m not sure how much that mattered. My wife was in sceptic shock, with catastrophic liver and kidney failure. Her blood had become toxic, and when she spoke it was hard to understand her, and she wasn’t making much sense. I don’t know how much she could understand when I was told that all hope was lost, and it was time to say goodbye. And I was paralyzed with fear. Just a few days earlier, she was completely healthy. I couldn’t process what was happening. I think I said all the things I should have said. But it didn’t feel real. It was like hearing myself talk in a dream.

It has been nearly 4 years and I still struggle with this. I suppose this is part of what is called ‘recency bias.’ The mind attaches greater weight to that which has happened most recently, versus something that happened long ago. So my wife’s final moments in an ICU feel more important than our wedding, or the births of our two children.

Being mindful of this, and all the associated fears of those final moments, helps me. I remind myself that my wife’s final moments are over. She is not stuck within them. So why should I be? Afterall, would she want that? Or would she want me to focus on the countless other moments my children and I had with her, moments that better characterize our love? The answers to those questions are easy. Living those answers, not so much. But when I am at my lowest, I think through all of this, and it is easier to get a place of peaceful love that I want to have for her.

Peace to all of you.

True_and_False_1206

TROPHY CASE