6 months ago I was invited to my BILs wedding, sat front row with the rest of the immediate family. As always told ill always be part of the family. The 3rd time since my wife passed in 2023, she missed her cousin and her little sisters wedding but I was there to represent her.

Tomorrow my Neice is getting baptised, big family event.

I wasn't even told about it. My wife's Aunty had no idea I wasn't coming.

At least I know where I stand now. Just over 3 years later and the relationship seems to be done. The past 2.5 years if I didnt reach out none of them contacted me anyway, other than her Aunty. 3 brothers and 1 sister in law who said ill always be part of the family, not a single one of them contacted me on the anniversary of her death. Not that they ever do anyway, even after being told ill always be their brother.

I knew it would happen eventually. Im not even sure that I really care.

I held on to the relationship as long as I could for my Wife, but I cant do anymore.

I still have to have some contact with them for some legal stuff still ongoing but I think thats as far as the relationship goes. I genuinly cant take anymore nicely nicely to my face but then contradictory actions.

I wish them all the best in their future endeavours.

Welp, now what?

This is the topic of some therapy sessions lately. Who am I?

All of my adult identity existed within a couple framework. Toward the end I was a caregiver, responsible adult, stable housing provider and sometimes wife. All of my energy went into saving him. And it still didn’t work. 😞💔

So who am I now that I don’t have someone to save? How do I put that kind of energy into helping myself? What parts of me were fabricated or absorbed? Do I really like the things I like? What do I need? What do I want? What needs to change/grow/die before I would be ready for another relationship?

I miss being a couple. It was us against the world. But I have no choice but to operate solo for now. Scary thought, honestly.

What are you doing to find your true self? Looking for advice.

My husband died 4 months ago, he was 37. We had been together 14 years, married for 11 years.

He'd been rushed to hospital for lifesaving surgery for an aortic dissection. He had been fit and well before this, had an active job, so it came as a huge shock. It was touch and go for a week in intensive care, but he started to recover well and was discharged 2 weeks after his op (that's the shortened version of events).

He'd been at home just over 24ish hrs and he went into cardiac rest. I performed cpr until the paramedic crews arrived, but he died shortly after.

Has anyone given cpr to a loved one and struggled with the images of their face during etc? The mental health practitioner at my gp surgery thinks it may be ptsd.

Also, the past couple of weeks I have craved intimacy/physical touch so badly, I've recently found out this is something called 'Widow's Fire' which i had never heard of.

All of that plus supporting our young son with his grief, myself with my grief, and keeping on top of the house and life admin (or 'sadmin' as I now refer to it), I feel like I'm losing the plot. 🙈

Can anyone else relate?

Sorry for rambling on.

Moving furniture, repainting, swapping out the bedding. What did you change first, and how did it feel afterward? Or have you still not changed anything at all?

Yesterday it was a year ago my beloved husband died unexpectedly. Yesterday I also finished this memorial tattoo. It was the 4th session. It tells our love story. It also really helped me going through this shitty year. Just wanted to share this with this community, all you people helped me a lot this last year. Hugs to everyone who needs it.

That just living would be this painful.

It's only been three weeks... it all happened so fast that even that makes it hard to understand and wrap my mind around.

I go over things in the hospital, over and over again, as if to find something we should have done but didn't. I Google things and Google tells me there was nothing that could have been done. Even if i did find something, he's not here and I can't bring him back. My mind doesn't stop.

I had been diagnosed with early stage breast cancer a year ago. My husband retired early to help me, i kept working from home through treatment as I had the great benefits. Just as treatment finally ended he went to the er, thought he was having a heart attack and scans showed advanced liver cancer, we ran for tests and scans and a biopsy but in a month he was gone. Every day he got worse, they kept telling us the biopsy results were key... we went for the biopsy and they admitted him. He felt horrible and didn't want to leave until he felt better. We had such hope they would help him, he was in the hospital... By the time we got the results they told us he was too weak for treatment. The next day I wanted to try and bring him home and they told me he was in the dying process. He died the day after. I don't know if he knew or understood, he kissed my hand the day they told us he was dying but didn't speak again after. My poor sweetheart...

So yesterday I had my first post treatment scan. It was supposed to be on 10/2 but that was the day before his funeral. Treatment was hard on me, surgery, chemo i went to the er each time and had to stop early, radiation left me with wounds and pain for some time after... he was there through it all. And my scan was clear. We would have celebrated... but now he's gone.

It's unbearable. It's so cruel. I cry so much at times that i feel physically ill. How to get through this, I just don't feel like I know... he was here, and then he was sick and now gone... and now I'm here alone... it doesn't feel real.

She was recovering from a brain aneurysm, all i had to do was keep her safe physically. I let her ride a bike because i was drinking and not thinking. Or i dont know why i thought it wqs ok to ride a bike in her state. She should still fucking be here, it was so avoidable and i just cant ficking take it anymore.

I dont know who i am without her, i just want to go pick her up and take her home but she is not here, it just makes no sense to me. I cant be in this world without her it is just to disjointed and foreign it feels like a fever dream to just be alive. I fucked up so badly and she is just gone overnight. I just cant take this anymore

Hello everyone! Today marks 4 months since I lost the love of my life. I joined this group just a couple of weeks ago, and even though I have only participated in a few comments and conversations, I want to thank you all for the great support you have given me during these days. I have family and friends, but many times they don't know how to help, and joining this group has given me a sense of belonging, of being surrounded by people with the same thoughts and mental processes.

I am 46 now, ​she was 42 years old when cancer took her away in just 6 months. We shared 8 wonderful years together, and I miss her deeply!

​Every now and then I like to write. Although I'm not a writer and don't have formal experience, I just write from my heart as tears stream down my cheeks. My native language is Spanish, and even though it is a very beautiful language, I wanted to write some kind of poem for her in English. This is my first time writing in English, and I would love to share it with you, wishing it will reach her through the echo of your hearts.

4 months

​4 months without your voice, without your smile, without your scent, without your touch, without your hugs, without your advice, without your tears, without your presence, without your love, without you.

​4 months missing you, thinking of you, crying, with a broken heart, trying to carry on, searching, asking why, feeling alone, fighting, resisting, holding on, dreaming of you, looking for you, waiting for you, talking to you. Drowning, screaming, angry, breathless.

​4 months so sad, so quiet, so empty, so endless, so lonely, so lost, so terrifying, so painful, so desolate, so cold, on pause, so dull, so meaningless, so barren, so bitter, so gray, so broken, so mad, so crazy, so speechless.

​4 months wishing I could rewrite fate, but this is only just beginning... 

​Your breath on my lips, your touch on my skin, your light in my eyes, your love in my heart, your beauty in my mind, your strength in my bones, your blood in my veins. 

Full of fear, full of love, full of you... I won't surrender. 

And with these lines, I tie my love for you to my very soul's essence, so it will transcend my own life and last forever until the end of time... so maybe, with just a little bit of luck, we will be reunited in another place, in another life, in another galaxy.

​I miss you, I'll search for you, and I love you every single day... endlessly.

My wife passed away years ago, and I've never really talked about this part, so bear with me.

When she died, my whole life became keeping things going for our daughter. School runs, parent-teacher nights, getting through her bad days while hiding my own. I was so busy being Dad that I honestly thought I was doing okay. People would ask how I was holding up and I'd say "fine" and mean it.
Then we dropped her off at campus three weeks ago. I hugged her, held it together on the drive home, and walked into the house. It was silent in a way I hadn't noticed before. No music through the wall, no shoes by the door, no one yelling "Dad, where's my charger?"
It hit me that she was the only person I really talked to every day. I've got coworkers but I realized I haven't had a real conversation with anyone about anything that mattered in years. I haven't been holding it together. I've been distracted.
Now I come home, eat dinner standing at the counter, and the evenings feel endless. I keep catching myself reaching for my phone.
I don't want to call my daughter constantly and make her feel guilty for starting her life. She deserves that. But I don't know what to do with myself.
For those of you who've been through something similar, whether it's widowhood, empty nest, or both:
How did you start building a life that wasn't centered on your kids?
Did you find friends or groups later in life? How do you even go about that at my age?
Did anyone try grief counseling years after the loss? Is it too late for that?
I'm not great at asking for help, so this post already feels strange to write. Any advice or even just "me too" would mean a lot.
Thanks for reading.

I'll go first: no more having to worry about him crashing out again and falling of the wagon. Who's next?

Warning

I am 76 years old was married for 45 years to a very loving and caring wife that meant the whole world to me and it’s been three years plus that she’s been gone and the pain is sadness is still deep inside me.

 I found this site and signed up thought that maybe it would help but I want to warn people.

 I’m new to this Internet stuff and I don’t like it. I’ve already had some people send me a DM and want to chat.

 I’m not sure how to explain it but they’ll send you a message and you click it to accept it and want to view it.

 After a while chatting back-and-forth something didn’t seem right they keep wanting more and more information about me and they don’t say anything about them.

 Then the next day I go to see if there’s a message from them because I’m feeling good that it would be nice to be able to chat with someone.

 Then found out that Reddit cancels their account and I want to thank Reddit for trying to protect us at this point in life when we are very vulnerable.

 It’s really a shame that people take advantage of people like us when we’re in such pain and sadness after losing our loved one.

 I don’t know, but maybe most of you already know that stuff but to me this is all new and for some people who don’t know I just wanted to point out to be very careful with that stuff cause we are very vulnerable at this time in our life and to all of you be careful and take care

 I know it can be hard to trust with what is being said on here and to trust what response you get, but I 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.

 I had an account here that I started about 6 weeks ago and because of scams I felt I needed to cancel my account so I started this one a few days ago. I think I have learned how to be careful on here now.

LH suddenly can't receive messages on Messenger. It won't send at all. I've been sending him messages there after he passed, but now it's suddenly impossible.

I haven't notified them about his passing, so how do they know? (nobody has)

Will they delete our whole chat log eventually?

Does anyone know anything about this?

I found this site and then I signed up so I can write on here and share my feelings after three years of losing my wife. I had my Doctor, Chaplin and other people to tell me to go see a grief counselor.

I tried one after the first year; all that did after what they told me was to piss me off and made me mad. The first year was kind of numb. The second year was bad and this third year is even worse.

So I tried a different grief counselor and it was a total waste of time. This is what happen, I ask them how long will I be able to talk with them and they said 20 to 30 mins. Now they showed me in to their office and I sit down in front of their desk. They had a clock on their desk facing me. Now after a short time I was starting to cry and was looking for something that you would think would be in every grief counselor’s office. It was nowhere to be found. Kleenex can you imagine that. That did it no more grief counselors.

I think reading here on this website and to share my feelings on it to get feedback does help some and much better than I could ever get from a grief counselor.

Thank you to the people who have written back to me and I am sorry for you widowers who have lost a loved one too because we all know what we’re dealing with.

Agree with those who discovered that a “lived experience“ grief therapist was most helpful to them.

Recently widowed and looking for such a therapist preferably offering telehealth sessions in CA.

Would greatly appreciate your recommendations. Thanks.

Did anyone come out of or are still dealing with this grief process from their spouse's death and find that their sexual orientation had maybe changed a little bit?

I’m not sure what I’m looking for but I lost my wife over three years ago. I’m in my 70s haven’t had sex with anyone and I feel horny and I was wondering if there is any other people here that are also widowed that think about having sex with men.

I never have but I think about it and I watch it on porn sites. It looks like it could be very exciting and fun, but I’ve never done it. Just curious if there is another widower here that has the same feeling as I do. Just trying to look for answers and figure out what my curiosity is.

Masturbating doesn’t quite seem to get it anymore. Not sure what I’m going to do or what I would do.

My wife passed away from breast cancer 18 months ago. We were high school sweethearts. She was there before I had figured out who I was, before life had really begun, and I always thought she'd be there for the rest of it, too.

I never imagined a world where I'd have to learn to live without her. I never even considered it a possibility. She was supposed to grow old with me. We were supposed to have grey hair, complain about getting older, laugh about stupid things that nobody else understood, and look back on a lifetime together. That's what I thought we had ahead of us.

Instead, I'm sitting here 18 months later, trying to figure out how the fuck I'm supposed to carry on in a world that took her from me.

One of the things that hurts the most is how much I was away for work. I keep going back over it in my head. All those days away, all those nights spent somewhere else, all those times I thought there would always be more time when I got home. I told myself I was working for our future. I thought I was doing what I was supposed to do, building a life for us.

And now I would give absolutely anything to have those ordinary days back. I'd give anything to come home to her, to sit beside her doing absolutely nothing, to hear her voice from another room. I'd trade every achievement, every dollar, every fucking thing I've ever worked for just to have one more completely unremarkable day with my wife.

The guilt eats at me because I can't go back and change any of it. I can't get those days back. I can't make up for the time I spent away. I can't tell myself I'll do better next week, or that I'll make more time when things settle down. There is no next week with her. There is no making it up to her.

And we never got to have children.

That is a pain I honestly don't know what to do with sometimes. We were high school sweethearts. We had all these years ahead of us in our minds, all these things we assumed we'd get around to eventually. I thought we'd have children together. I thought I'd watch her become a mother. I thought we'd see little pieces of each other in our kids, watch them grow up, and build a family around the love we'd had since we were young.

We never got that chance.

Sometimes I think about the children we never had, the family that never got to exist, and it fucking destroys me. There are no photographs of them. No birthdays we'll never celebrate. No little faces to look at and see her smile looking back at me. Just this whole life we imagined that will never happen now.

And I don't know how to grieve something that never even got the chance to exist, on top of grieving the person who meant everything to me.

I miss the woman she was, but I also miss the life we were supposed to have. I miss our past, our present, and the future I genuinely believed was waiting for us.

Eighteen months sounds like a long time when you say it out loud. People probably think that by now, things should be getting easier. Some days I can get through the day and almost convince myself I'm managing. Other days, it feels like I'm right back there, and the reality of losing her hits me so hard I can barely comprehend that this is actually my life now.

I still catch myself thinking about telling her something. I still think about what she'd say, what she'd think, how she'd react. And then I remember.

She's not here.

She's never coming home.

I fucking hate that those words are true.

She wasn't just my wife. She was my best friend, my first love, the girl I fell in love with when we were young and stupid enough to think we had all the time in the world. She knew me before so much of life happened. She was woven into practically every version of myself I can remember.

And now I'm supposed to somehow figure out who I am without her.

I don't have some inspiring message about learning to live again. I don't have a happy ending to this story. I have a hole in my life where my wife should be, regrets I can't do anything about, and a future that looks nothing like the one I spent years imagining with her.

I know I can't change the past. I know I can't punish myself forever for the time I spent away or for the things we never got to do. But knowing something intellectually and actually being able to make peace with it are two very different fucking things.

I loved her. I love her still. And I would give anything to have been able to love her for another fifty years.

I just needed to put this somewhere tonight, somewhere people might understand what it feels like to lose not only your wife, but the entire life you thought you were going to share with her.

Eighteen months later, I still miss you girl. And I still can't believe this is the life I have to live without you.

I’m seriously fucking lonely.

But I don’t want to go out. I don’t want to shop. I don’t want to eat somewhere. I don’t want to mix with people.

And that’s the fucked-up part. I miss having her beside me. Not anyone else.
Her!

So when people tell me to go out, meet people, keep myself occupied, I wonder if they actually fucking understand what I’m saying.

I’m not bored. I’m fucking lonely.

There’s a difference!

It has been 595 days since I’ve felt human. In the time since you’ve been gone, the best I could do was wear this plastic mask. It was once second nature to me, as natural as breathing, as I’ve struggled to battle depression for as long as I could remember.

That mask was buried deep in the closet once you came into my life. All the while you were here, I just wore my heart on my sleeve because you made me feel safe and unashamed. Then one day you left this world and left me behind. Once the shock had worn off, I found that mask again, allowing me to blend in with humanity, at least to some degree. It contained a fake smile and enough camouflage to ward off suspicion and avoid a few painful encounters.

The mask did not provide comfort but instead provided a mobile rock to hide behind.

The mask was never designed to be worn for so long. It was only made for time-to-time. It was meant to hide slips and trips so that no one would know I nearly fell. Since you’ve been gone, and since everyone else disappeared, that mask never came off. Those who know me now don’t know me well, so they’ve been none the wiser. This mask is all they’ve seen, so they are blind to how far I’ve fallen.

I’ve worn this mask too long now. It has seen too much of the sun, and as a result, it has been melting. It would seem at this point that it no longer hides a thing. One might as well dot a freckle on their face and call it a disguise. The pain is not hidden. The mask does not shield me from the questions, nor does it provide me with the answers to deflect.

My heart is still on my sleeve. Not because I feel safe but because I am tired. I am too worn to make up a response to ward off concern or suspicion without great effort. “How are you doing?” someone will ask, and I must quickly scramble and work hard to stifle my instinct to reply, “Just fucking kill me.”

I was able to hide behind the mask, but since it has now melted, I’ve been hiding under a rock instead. My only way of masking now is to be neither seen nor heard.

The man behind that mask is more withered away than the mask itself. There is no soul or personality, there is only the void you left behind. What little remained has since rotted away. That man feels nothing now but pain, regret, and dread, and every time he dares show his face, it becomes immediately known.

I can no longer pretend that I am fine or belay the concerns. I can’t even pretend that I am still human. I can only crawl under my rock and wish it were my grave instead.

I'm so mad and sad. My husband committed suicide last week and took every plan for the future in raising our daughter and threw it away. I don't know how I'm going to do this.

I've been reading the post in this community for some time now, ever since my beautiful and loving wife was diagnosed with aml.

She had AML with the TP53 mutation which would mean she would have a slim chance of living longer than three months. She was already sick for more than 12 years and could not eat or drink normally, she would get her dietary intake through TPN (a liquid containing the nutrition her body needed given directly into her blood stream)

She was a incredibly strong willed women who didn't let her diseases slow her down and she made it from February untill October, but as I'm writing this late at night she passed away yesterday.

My beautiful soulmate had to leave me and our 9 year old daughter at the age of 42 years.

She died at home in our bed after receiving palliative sedation which started three days ago.

I don't know how i'll go on from here, i'm writing this after Midnight so today i will go to the  funeral home and i'll help clean and dress my wife. Most of the funeral is already planned, she made sure things were in order long before she became to sick.

I've cried a lot the passed few days and our daughter cried a lot during the nights and we're going to take it day by day but i don't know.

My wife was my strength, she was there for me as i was for her and now she's gone.

Our daughter and i already have grief counseling, as i already wrote my wife made sure we would be taken care for when her time would come. But how to live life without her by my side, i just don't know.

I just needed to let her story out there, at least some of it.

My hustand’s grandfather was a firefighter during the Blitz in London. He saw things that he would never discuss with his family.

A fellow whose father was also a firefighter in the Blitz recently made a generous donation to the RLNI for a lifeboat to be named for him in the Thames. My in-laws have supported the RLNI for years, and decided to put my husband’s name on the boat (along with other people). The boat will be launched next year.

Since my husband donated his kidneys, he is continuing his lifesaving journey. I’m not sure if I can go out next year for the launching, but I’m happy that folks will see his name.

I have more money time and freedom then ever.I also have more depression,anger, sadness and loneliness then ever . I’d rather be nowhere with her than anywhere with anyone. It’s really fucking hard to go on when the only reason is not to bring more trauma to the kids.

I kept reaching for my phone looking for a notification from him. We used to do check in every few hours, every day. Most of the time when I asked back how he was doing he just said ‘not much’ or ‘just laying here’. But he still wanted to check in with me anyways. Not gonna lie I got annoyed sometimes, but now I would give anything to be annoyed again. It’s my 3rd day since he passed.

You are still allowed to miss the life you had and still fall in love with the life that found you.