Just a bit more than a year after being widowed, Cathy DeCarlo of Orlando found herself in an awkward spot.
Bette Midler was coming to town, and DeCarlo, who had lost her husband of 10 years to a heart attack the year before, wanted to see the show. But she felt she needed an escort.
So she asked a family friend along. He agreed. On the night of the show, as DeCarlo dressed, she suddenly realized she was dating again.
“I felt like I was 19 again,” DeCarlo, now 46, said of that night in 1994. “I was very self-conscious. It felt strange to dress up again. I felt tremendous guilt, but I felt God had given me the green light to go on.”
Every year, nearly 1 million people in the United States lose a spouse. Suddenly alone, survivors are forced to forge new lives while wrestling with a tangle of potent emotions. For many, such as DeCarlo, the journey ends when a little voice inside whispers it’s time to date again.
For surviving spouses, dating is “a difficult process and journey, from numbness through grieving into possibilities” of experiencing a new life, said Larry Hof, vice president of relationship consulting at Advanta Corp., a financial-services company in Horsham, Pa., and a consultant with the Great Expectations dating service.
It might take up to two years or longer for survivors to tunnel through the numbness and pain and move on to a life that includes relationships with other people.
Early on, dating is the last thing on the minds of most survivors. Instead, they grapple with emotional boggles such as how long to wear a wedding band after the spouse’s death or what to do with his or her clothing.
These questions mingle with concerns about finances and–for survivors left with children–child care or college.
It’s not unusual for young widows to feel anger toward their husbands for leaving them with all the responsibility or to feel overwhelmed by the prospect of shouldering it all.
The biggest issue that survivors grapple with is the loneliness of losing one’s partner for life.
Hof, a marriage and family therapist, says surviving spouses go through three stages of recovery.
Numbness defines the impact stage as the survivor struggles with what has happened. Recoil hits when the full weight of the circumstances sinks in. Recovery results when the surviving spouse has “satisfactorily resolved the many issues involved or moved emotionally to a place where they feel they can live in a satisfactory way as a single person,” Hof said.
Age, particularly for women who fear their looks have faded after years of marriage, influences dating prospects.
Evelyn Boehms has buried three husbands in her 72 years: Jacob Wingard, killed in World War II in 1944; Henry Wassman, heart attack in 1972; Lewis Boehms, heart attack in 1995.
She was 21 when Wingard died. Dating wasn’t difficult; she suffered blind dates brokered by “married people who wanted you to be married,” she said. As Wassman’s 51-year-old widow, she found her contemporaries were looking for younger women.
“It is easier for a 30-year-old woman than a 50-year-old woman because men tend to date down more often than women do,” Hof said. “A 50-year-old man can probably easily find women in their 30s who would date him. Women who are 45 have a tough time. Women who are 65 have a tough time for another reason– there are fewer men alive.”
Sometimes survivors just aren’t interested in dating right away or figure they’re just too rusty to try.
This is the time, according to “The Widow’s Handbook” (Fulcrum, $8.99), that surviving spouses must force themselves to fill their empty weekends and get out and meet new friends.
DeCarlo, whose husband died in 1993, inched back into living firmly tethered to the friends she made in her widows support group. As her confidence bloomed she tried–to mixed success–singles dances, formal singles dinner parties and on-line services.
DeCarlo went “looking for someone mature, very caring, very nurturing who enjoys life and is willing to be an equal–to walk through life with me, not a step behind or in front of me.”
What she often found were shallow guys with stale lines about big houses and bigger bank accounts or guys whose eyes never rose above her decolletage and whose minds never crawled out of the gutter.
Dating can be discouraging. Survivors say that dating adage about “more fish in the sea” needs a disclaimer because the sea is filled with flawed fish.
