Can You Still Love Someone Else After Your Partner Has Passed Away?
Losing a loved one can feel like losing a piece of yourself. Some people have been together for so long, and their lives are so intertwined, that you can no longer imagine your life without the other person. As if you’ve lost your other half. It calls for loving attention toward that pain. Some people are so overwhelmed by grief, and sometimes anger too, that they’ve lost their partner, and sometimes feel abandoned.
Why is it so hard to open yourself up to a new love after your partner’s death?
The moment someone comes into your life who gives you attention, it depends on whether you’ve already processed part of your grief. If, for example, you tuck the grief away behind a little wall because you don’t know how to deal with it, then there’s not only a wall between you and your grief, but also between you and the other person. Once you’re further along in the grieving process, you may be open to someone else again, or even long for someone else’s love again. Then a feeling of guilt can arise, because you feel you can’t do that to your deceased partner — opening yourself up to someone else. There can also sometimes be feelings of shame toward family or in-laws, causing you to keep it to yourself for a while. Telling the children is also a difficult step. Children are often still in their own grieving process and don’t want to see this new person as their father or mother, even though that is of course not what’s happening. You’re not getting a new father or mother, but a partner for your father or mother. In short, a complex story in which not only your own emotions as a widow or widower come into play, but also the emotions of the people around you.
After a partner’s death, can you love someone else just as much as your deceased partner?
In principle, you can love many different people, and over your life you can have multiple partners whom you each experience as “the love of your life.” When you’re in a relationship, you can’t imagine ever loving someone else that much again, but in practice that turns out to certainly be possible.
What are the pitfalls for a widow/widower when starting a new relationship?
- One pitfall is keeping feelings to yourself, so that your new partner has no idea how you feel and has to figure out from your behavior how you’re doing.
- Another pitfall is “deciding to stay alone.” In doing so, you may be denying yourself the chance at a new chapter of your life with a new love. And of course there are people who stay alone for the rest of their lives and feel completely happy with that. We don’t necessarily always need someone else to feel happy, of course. After all, it starts with yourself.
- Another pitfall can be that you take too much account of what others think of you, instead of following your own feelings and doing what’s good for you.
- If you haven’t yet processed your own grief, you may feel unhappy, and there may not yet be much room for the new love between you and your new partner.
Bio
Jacqueline Evers is a relationship therapist who helps couples build a loving, fulfilling relationship instead of a bitter and costly divorce. Over the past 16 years, she has helped more than 1,350 people through individual and relationship therapy. With her book ‘Cheating. Moving Forward Together in 5 Steps’, she offers couples affected by infidelity a new way of loving. She regularly works with expats and wrote the e-book ‘Cheating. 5 Steps to Recover from Infidelity.’ She works from her practices in Huizen, Almere Poort, and online, and is regularly heard on NPO1 radio. The Loveworkx podcasts can be heard on Spotify, among other platforms.