Should a Widow Remarry? Grief and Companionship

Key takeaways

Healthy grief keeps living. A widow can still grieve her husband and also stay busy, connected and engaged with life.
Grief has no single timeline. Pastor Adam Mesa says everyone grieves differently, so a quick remarriage and a long wait can each be healthy or unhealthy.
Men and women often differ. Mesa observes that many men depend on a spouse for the daily running of the home, which can push them to move on quickly.
Desire for companionship is allowed. The group agreed that a widow can desire companionship again and can ask the Lord for it.
Adult children can be honest. Feeling uneasy about a parent dating is natural, and the conversation treats that unease as something to work through with care.

A joke that turned into a real question

The episode of the Beyond I Do podcast begins with a lot of teasing. Adam and his wife Ashley, along with Nancy and others in the room, joke about who would cook, who would pay the water bill and who would call Lester, Adam's friend who handles his accounts, if one spouse died.

Nancy says she would be fine on her own. Adam adds that he and Ashley are a team who enjoy each other's company, and that neither of them is dependent on the other in the way some couples are. From there the conversation moves to a question many families face: what happens when a surviving spouse is ready for a new relationship, and how should the people around them respond?

What a healthy widow looks like

Adam points to Ashley's mother as an example. Her husband has gone home to be with the Lord, and as Mesa says, "she has very much still thrived." She still grieves, but she has picked up pickleball, stays busy and belongs to a widows' group.

He contrasts her with other widows he knows. Some lost their husbands more than twenty years ago and still talk about it as if it happened yesterday, in a way he calls very unhealthy. As a pastor, he says, people come to him grieving a husband and he learns the husband died in the 1990s. Grief that has had no room to heal looks very different from grief that is being carried well.

Why men often move on faster

Ashley asks why some men seem to start a new relationship within a year of losing a wife. Adam offers his own view and is clear that he cannot speak for every man. In many traditional homes, he says, the wife handles the cooking, the laundry and the bills, and over the years the husband forgets how to do those things. He gives his own parents as an example: his father was the breadwinner but could not tell you where they bank, while his mother paid the bills and did the taxes.

He adds a second reason. Mesa believes that "men are able to compartmentalize their emotions and their grief" and still honor their spouse while moving forward. He thinks it is harder for a woman to hold those two things together until she has had years of distance. He also says, "I think women are better with healthy solitude than men." Many men, he says, stay busy with friends to avoid being alone.

He mentions a well-known pastor whose wife died after a long illness. The pastor remarried within a year and stepped out of public ministry for two or three years when rumors began about how quickly he had recovered. Adam offers it as one example of how fast remarriage can raise questions, and he does not pass judgment on the man.

When your own mother might date

The talk becomes personal when Ashley describes her mother. Her father died six years ago after thirty-nine years of marriage, and her parents were together from the time her mother was around seventeen or eighteen. Now in her sixties, her mother is experiencing independence for the first time.

Ashley says she has told her mother she will be her biggest cheerleader if the day ever comes. She is also honest about her feelings: "I don't want to see her with somebody else." If it made her mother happy, she says, maybe she could accept it. She jokes about ground rules and a few prerequisites for any suitor, and then admits she is not the right person to ask for advice. Adam responds, "You're not supposed to be perfect."

Nancy pushes back with warmth. She reminds Ashley that a new companion would not replace her father, and that he would be bringing companionship to a woman who lives alone and has her own life. Her point is that his purpose has to do with the mother, not with her children.

Adam agrees that this is a bridge many adult children may cross one day. His counsel is that if a widowed parent says she desires companionship, a child can respond that she deserves it. Someone in the conversation also points out that the Bible says a single person who desires companionship can ask the Lord for it, and that a widow can desire companionship again.

Everyone grieves differently

Adam notes that many of Ashley's mother's friends who lost husbands have started dating. Some have met good men, he says, and some of the relationships are going well. Others, from his experience pastoring and not from any talk with her mother, may have gone into relationships that turned unhealthy because they were trying to cope with pain more than build companionship.

In his view, Ashley's mother is taking a lot of time healing and grieving well. He describes her as a mature believer who would not jump into a relationship only to have someone to watch Jeopardy with. She has grandchildren, community and trips, and she is comfortable at home alone.

He also describes what a second season of marriage might look like. The two people would likely not be dependent on each other, and each might have family and a busy life of their own. If she did make that choice, he believes it would probably be a wise one.

What this means for you

If you are a widow or widower, the conversation gives you room to ask honestly what you need. Wanting companionship does not betray the spouse you lost, and the group treats it as something you can bring to the Lord. Healing and grieving well matter, and the speed of your timeline matters less than the reason behind a new relationship.

If you are the adult child of a widowed parent, you are allowed to have feelings about it. Ashley's candor shows that discomfort and support can exist at the same time. You can ask questions, work through your own grief, and still choose to be the biggest cheerleader. Your parent's new companion would bring something to her life, and your place in it stays the same.