I just cant believe hes actually gone. But I did everything I could. Was he sole full-time care giver for 10 years. I sang to him, you are my sunshine. And amazing grace. Told him I promise I will be ok. But I don't see how I will actually be OK. I'm just so empty. Feels like someone is standing on my chest. Does it really get easier with time?
My late wife’s birthday today and I wondered about this for a long time, I never believed it, until she died. She didn’t believe so, I reckon she wouldn’t still. So I’m gonna just share this poem here if that’s OK?
——————————————————————————————
the dead have birthdays
as they live in other ways
don’t believe me?
tell it to the snow
that your footprints
cemented by your Uggs
sing it to the bells
that will forever echo
the soundtrack to our union
put a hole in that logic
with broken coils in all the beds
that pierced our bodies
so i’ll wait for the wind
to blow out the candles
as i hold on to your wish
the dead have birthdays
as they live in other ways
therefore, happy birthday
It hasn't even been two weeks yet and i know I shouldn't make any major decisions in the first year... but I'm curious and making conversation too. When I come home it's hard for me to get out of the driveway and come inside knowing he's not here.
Did you move out of the home you shared or did you stay? Why or why not?
I lost my husband after 21 years of marriage. For a long time, I couldn’t imagine ever wanting another person in my life. It almost felt wrong to even think about it.
But something has changed.
I miss having my person. I miss having someone to talk to at the end of the day, someone to laugh with, have dinner with, go somewhere with, or just sit beside. I miss affection and intimacy too. I don’t think there is anything wrong with admitting that anymore.
I’m in my 50s and trying to build a completely different life from the one I thought I would have. I’m going back to school, making plans for my future, and learning how to enjoy being alive again.
None of that means I’ve stopped loving my husband. I’m not looking to replace him. Twenty-one years together can’t be replaced, and I wouldn’t want them to be.
But I do think I’m ready for another chapter.
Sometimes I wonder if another widowed person would understand this better than someone who hasn’t experienced it. There are things about losing a spouse that are difficult to explain—the grief, loneliness, guilt, memories, and even the strange emotions that can come with realizing you want affection and companionship again. How do you know you were ready to let someone into your life again? Would you find that another widow or widower understands you differently?
They mean well. I know they do. And it sounds like good advice.
But I was 17 YEARS OLD when we met. A literal child. She and I were together our entire adult lives.
"Remembering" what I enjoyed at 17 isn't terribly relevant at 53. I have to build an entirely new human being FROM SCRATCH. In addition to building an entirely new LIFE from scratch.
And let's be honest: I DON'T WANT anything new. I want my old life back.
I don’t know if it’s possible for a 70s widowed man who lost his wife three years ago and had a very loving and caring wife and miss her so bad that I can’t even put into words. To find a widowed woman to be friends with that also, who had a husband that was very loving and caring just so we can share our feelings and each of us would know that the other one would totally understand how the other one feels in the grief and the sadness that we have. I can’t feel that I could ever get married again, but at this point in time after 3+ years of her being gone, I sure would like I think to have another person to talk to that has gone through what I’ve gone through, I don’t know how far the friendship would go, but it would be nice to have somebody to go do things with go for rides out in the country just somebody to share time with for what time we have left. I don’t know if it’s possible, but how would you even find somebody like that I’m not a very social person. My wife and I were always kind of on the loaner side. We just love being together more than anything else. We didn’t need other people we had each other and that’s all we needed and that’s all we wanted. I still feel that I’m not very social. Don’t care to be around a lot of people I just like things, quiet, peaceful just had these thoughts in my head. I found this site a few weeks ago and have posted in the past a few things, but I just thought I’d post this get any input that might be out there
I also need to add that reading other things on this site and what I have posted I’ve had a few times women try to contact me and it was nothing but a scam and I’ve posted a warning on here to let people know that that stuff goes on. At this time in our lives when we’re widowed, we can be very vulnerable to that stuff and I know it can be hard to trust with what is being said on here and to trust what response you get, but I have feel I need to try something and I don’t know. Maybe I’ll just spend the rest of my life all by myself, but I just thought I’d try something.
Last year my wife battled breast cancer. She did chemo, dealt with infections, double mastectomy, radiation and is now on her last few rounds of hormone therapy. Her pathology after the surgery was great - no detectable signs of cancer.
She's been having headaches in the same spot for a few weeks and told her doctor. They sent her to get a CAT scan (she has an expander in each breast, which has magnets, so she couldn't do an MRI). The scan found 4 tumors.
We saw her oncologist on Friday and said that we still must do testing before a treatment plan can be made, but his best guess right now is 3-4 years. It can never be cured, just managed.
Obviously, she is devastated. We have three kids. The youngest is 3. We should be planning her birthday party or getting everything ready for our vacation in the summer. Instead she is scheduling scans and surgeries and asking me how I am going to survive on one salary and making me promise to not move them away.
I'm in a fog. It doesn't feel real. I guess I've been ready for news like this since last year so it's not that much of a shock, but I don't know what I'm going to do. I know I should be preparing for every outcome, but I don't even know where to start. It just can't be real. I don't even know what to do next.
I don’t know why. Today is not a special or significant day. He’s been gone almost 15 months now. Today it feels like he is still alive. It feels like nothing ever happened. He CANT be gone. How could this have actually happened? I see him in my memory as if he is going to come back any moment. I long to be with him again so strongly that it makes me nauseous.
I had to just let it all out today. The cries the screams the wails. The wimpers and the moans and groans. The neighbors probably hear me and think I’m insane.
In the beginning I thought I just needed to make it “through”. That there would be some “other side” I would eventually reach and then it would all be okay.
I started dating someone new and he’s really great, he’s been an absolute trooper dealing with me and my grief. I feel very lucky to have him. But I thought that would also “fix” me. I thought it would make me better. It hasn’t.
I miss my best friend. I miss my other half. I miss living without grief. And I’m getting caught up in all the “whys” again. Why did this happen to him and to us? Why didn’t he deserve to live several more decades? Why didn’t I deserve to grow old with him? Why couldn’t we have just had that ONE thing?
I'm a little early to this page. My wife is dying of cancer. We've done everything we can do and, by the most generous estimate, she has less than 2 years left to live. That's only if she continues chemo, which is making her life miserable. We are both 47, so I'm still working and my time is not all my own. Still, from those who have lost their partner like this--slowly and, weirdly, with time to plan--what do you wish you had done more or less of with your partner?
I can function.
I work. Pay the bills. Eat. Shop. Watch a movie with the children. Talk with them.
Even have an objectively “pretty okay” life.
And still come home to the fact that she isn't here.
An absence so enormous, it has become part of the architecture of my life.
I thought we'd be together for a while, but it's so hard without her. Just so difficult.
I’m 28. I have had an (understandably) impossibly difficult 2 years after the loss of my partner and a string of devastating medical issues. My daily life has been sadness and anger mixed with constant exhaustion, which has created an enormous shift in my emotional fragility. And I’m really sick of it. On Friday I completed my first ever Hyrox, and I was over the moon. I hadn’t felt this good in so long. I needed a win SO bad. We traveled to Germany for it, so my friends and I decided to hit two birds with one stone and go to Oktoberfest. My friends are all single and were looking for hookups, and I thought it would be fun too, but I haven’t actually put myself out there since I lost my partner. Anyway, we get to a club and these two guys approach me and my friend, but it turns out it was just because the first guy was into my friend, and the second guy couldn’t have looked less interested in me. Normally that’s fine, but I did find him attractive and this never happens to me. So I started feeling shit. Then we go to the dance floor, and my friend kisses guy 1, and guy 2 is gone somewhere. When he finally arrives, my other friends go to pull him towards me and I stop them: I’m not desperate and in need of someone being forced to dance with me. That was so embarrassing.
And then, guy 1 accidentally spills all of his drink on me. I’m fully drenched, I smell like sweet sticky vodka, I turn around to look at him, and he’s basically giggling and “apologizing”. No one has ever spilled their entire drink like that on me. My friend playfully chastise him, but I really didn’t feel supported at all. So I rush out with my other friend because I feel the tears welling up, and I feel so vulnerable and stupid and ugly and unwanted, and above all I feel so angry because I don’t even want this. I wanted to enjoy this club, I wanted to have fun tonight, and I wanted to not have to think about finding someone else after my partner.
I’m never the one being approached on a night out, but I had gotten over that when I met my partner because he thought I was so beautiful and incredible. But now I feel like I’m back in this horrible place of insecurity and self-disgust, which I never thought I’d experience again. I wasn’t meant to experience it again. He was supposed to still be here.
And for this to happen immediately after a really, really positive experience was just devastating. So fucking devastating. I should still be on the high of Hyrox right now, a competition I’ve been training for since June. Not thinking about a random guy spilling his drink on me and his friend not liking me and feeling forced to speak to me. I’m tired. I don’t deserve this.
There were only two times that I said those words since November 2, 2025, but I was wrong. Those three words, "I'm doing better "which I kept saying to myself, were fkg bullshit. I was trying to convince myself that I was going to be okay after 44 years of marriage , to the best man in the world.
I AM NOT DOING BETTER
I left my old job after she passed and started a new one so I could be closer to our son and the pay will eventually be better but it has lately been harder and harder to wake up and go to work. It feels draining and I don’t want to do it anymore.
Today is my husband’s birthday and just a little over a month since he died. He will never be 41. We were together 19 years, married 12. I miss and love him so much but I’m not the mess I thought I’d be today. I’m sad, I’m thinking about him and I have my moments of tears. I’m worried that I will crash tomorrow. Or maybe the lead up and worrying about how I’d be today was worse than what it actually is?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m so, so, so sad. But I don’t feel like I did on day 1. Has anyone actually had an easier time with milestones than they thought they would? It’s the day to day that I’m struggling with more at the moment I feel.
I am not religious, but if you could take 30 seconds and give a thought, a prayer, an exhale or anything else to someone who died way too suddenly, way too young - it would truly mean the world to me.
I lost my soul mate 2 years and 3 months ago. Our relationship ended a few months before he died due to his mental illness and a whole lot of life stressors, but he was and always will be the love of my life. We loved each other to the end, but couldn't find a way to be together.
Im 47 and hate that I'm navigating life alone and dont want to be flying solo forever but I just cannot imagine life with anyone else. Ive looked at dating apps and met a couple of people, but they just aren't him. No one else even begins to come close.
Has anyone been where I am? How did you deal with it?
My love is gone. September 7th, 4 days after a severe brain bleed. I cry, then I try to remember 46 years worth of wonderful. Nobody is half the man he was. Yes, I do have family.
It’s been seven months since my wife passed away of a massive stroke and she was in excellent had just turned 65 two months before just made retirement and Medicare and she was now after 47 years of I don’t even wanna leave the house. emEvery time I I have to come home to emptiness. Tears every day seems to be slightly improving, but not much. I miss her so desperately I’ve built a couple of shrines in her honor. I have no fear of death. In I would welcome it now I do have a fear pain of as I have been in numerous long-term painful things in my wlife.
A few years before I met my wife, I was in what I thought was my rock-bottom in life. My early twenties were cruel to me. I hated myself and my lot in life. I hated it so much that I was quoted numerous times saying that I didn't want to see the other side of 40.
Once I hit my "rock-bottom," I had an epiphany and worked hard to turn things around. I wanted more from life. I wanted to be a better person. I wanted to feel better about myself. I wanted to be worthy of finding love. I worked on myself for years to get to a place where I felt good enough about myself to feel comfortable asking someone else to be with me. I completely rebuilt myself from scratch. It turned out that if you hate yourself enough, it can give you access to your core settings and allow you the freedom to change things as you see fit.
One day, I finally felt like I'd reached that goal point and decided to make a Tinder profile. I matched with my wife just hours later and I was head over heels for her from the night we first started messaging. Not only was all that work worth the effort, it came with practically instant gratification once I put myself out there. We were engaged the following year, married two years after that, and we had 9.5 years together. Most of it felt like a fairy tale dream, though the last 6 months or so were getting rough between my wife's deteriorating state of mind and our relationship in general.
Then suddenly, while she was out of state visiting relatives, my wife took her own life.
For 19 months I've been in this evolving hell known as widowhood. I've cried so much that the well's run dry. I've felt joy, and the capacity to feel it, ripped away from my soul. I've felt pain so deep that it continues to hollow out what little is left of that soul and it erodes my mind.
Sometimes I find myself wondering, "Was it still worth it?"
That so called "rock-bottom" of mine was nothing compared to this. I never thought it could be possible to hate myself or my life even more than I did back then. That "rock-bottom" feels so far above my current state. All that work to be a better person. All that work to have a better life. All that work to be healthier. All that work to be worthy of love. All of that, years of effort, and this is where I end up? What was the point of all that just so I again say I hope I don't see the other side of 40?
Don't get me wrong, I don't regret meeting my wife. Life before I met her was like a black and white television, but once she appeared, everything turned to vibrant and splashing color.
Since she's been gone, so has that color, only now I know what color looks like. The world was always black and white before we met and I didn't know anything else, but now I'm taunted by that knowledge as it exists only in my memory.
I died when she did, only my corpse is still animated. I only wish the rest of me was lucky enough to die along with her.
I (24) ost my husband (33) 6 months ago , I just came back from visiting his resting place in Ireland. Being at the grave was so comforting, it became my new routine for the week. In the morning I would go to him followed by doing the daily things, and in the evening I would go back to him to tell him all about the day. Now that I am back I feel so much more lost then before. I made a “shrine “ ??? I think is the word in my room and took one of his snuggies and filled it with cushions , just to ??? Hug I guess ?
I don’t know why but I feel like I am losing my mind. I don’t know if he would understand what I am doing ? Has anyone any experience in this. Or am I just completely freaking alone