Love after Coleen

Written by RJ on February 19, 2014. Posted in Coleen, Dating, Discovery, Healing

Coleen and I had a wonderful relationship for 33 years. We were madly in love and shared a life that others would be envious of. Now, I am envious of that life and jealous that I don’t have it anymore. Coleen knew I would feel that way and that is one of the reasons she instructed me to find someone after her. By telling me that, she was relieving me of the guilt I would foster in myself by taking that course. She was giving me her permission to let go.

I wondered when the timing would be right for me to put myself in play and actively seek out another woman. I admit to thinking about becoming active for a while, a couple of months at least, but always questioned if I was being too quick in looking for love after Coleen. I felt guilt about doing something that I would have done with her if she hadn’t died. But she did die and that’s the conundrum I faced and still face. I must let go in order to move on.

And what of the woman I find and invite into my life? How fair is of me to ask her to understand me at this particular place in my time? She meets me as a single man slowly recovering from the loss of his beloved wife. I think I am in the right condition to begin a new relationship, maybe even a romance. Yet I know that I am still hanging on to Coleen in different ways. And although my house is slowly becoming my home, it still has much of Coleen and the 27 years of her life here to overlook. It wouldn’t bother me so much to enter a woman’s house after her husband died, but girls are different and I know that would be an issue for most of them. I have been told by a friend that I might want to look for a different house because no woman will ever be completely comfortable where I live. Or how about the rings I wear on a chain around my neck? Coleen’s engagement ring and wedding ring have been dangling around my neck, flirting with my heart since about a week after she died. I don’t ever want to take them off. But what should I expect a new girl to think when I take my shirt off someday and display those rings? How is that supposed to make her feel?

Sometimes, I think I would be better off if I met a woman who had lost her husband. Since I became a widower, I have felt that losing a spouse is the worst kind of loss. There is just nobody in your life that you share the things with that you share with your spouse. All your emotions, troubles, worries, joys and intimacies are placed in the trusts of each other until death do you part. And then what happens after death parts you? A sorrow and vacancy overwhelms us and we want to do what we have always done and that is turn to our spouse for comfort. Only we can’t. A victim of the same pain, a fellow survivor would be able to best understand what my dilemmas are. We would be well equipped to comfort each other, share our loss and our healing. I would not be asking as much of her as I would be asking of an otherwise single woman.

During the past few months, I have developed several activities that not only keep me busy but interest me immensely. I am on a board of directors for a new nonprofit, do a lot of writing here, take yoga classes, get reiki and massage therapies, attend a support group, and have contributed time to my church and some cancer organizations. I am very inspired by these interests and plan on not just continuing them but to also expand them. I want to become more involved in helping people understand loss and their healing and find ways to develop new projects, market and grow the nonprofit, advocate for breast cancer concerns. Of course, most of these interests and inspirations were born as a result of losing Coleen. I would argue that although inspired by her, my participation comes from my enjoyment and ability to bring special talents and skills to those projects. A new girl in my life might think otherwise. She might see my interests as a another way of me holding on instead of letting go.

Some people have already expressed discomfort with the idea of me being together with someone other that Coleen. We were not the perfect couple but we got along well and had a lot of fun together. We presented well and made people very happy and comfortable around us. Coleen and I had many diverse interests and explored those individually but we did so many things as a couple. We were Coleen and Rob to almost everyone. In my new life I am just Rob and that is hard enough for people to accept. It is already a harsh and constant reminder that Coleen is gone. Imagine the uneasiness I will cause when I introduce my “friend” to them. They all know it’s coming but nobody wants to see that.

How fair is it for me to ask a woman into my life and she has that issue to deal with? How comfortable will she be in that situation when I introduce her to my daughters or son or friends or sister-in-law? Or if I am with her and run into one of Coleen’s friends or someone we knew as a couple? I envision that scenario as being not only inevitable, but extremely awkward and uncomfortable for everyone involved. Am I being fair to ask a girl to enter my life and be put in such stressful situations? How about the old friend? She would be troubled seeing me someone other that Coleen. And I would feel bad about being the catalyst for all this discomfort.

Ultimately, I guess it’s going to come down to me being comfortable with myself, my situation and my new friend. Once I am that, I can share or pass that comfort on to everyone else. I don’t want to fall in love right now. It’s too early for me to do that and I am too selfish with my time and interests. But I would like to be able to spend time with a new girl, get to know each other, do some dating and see what happens. I know I have a lot of luggage with me that I have to deal with and that she will have to deal with and I’m worried about how fair all that is for her. I worry about how I will affect my family and friends by being with another girl. I worry about how I will react when I start getting closer to her, when I feel myself slipping away from my past and reaching out for newness. I want to let go but a part of me wants to hang on, too. I never wanted to think about love without Coleen, let alone love after her.

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