What Will You Do When Your Spouse Dies?
We had some friends over for dinner the other week, just a last minute pot-luck casual kind of thing. The best kind, in my opinion. During the meal the question was floated: if your spouse were to die, would you remarry? Little did we know, as we discussed the issue, that we were replicating, in real time, decades of research.
The women all vigorously said “absolutely not” and while the men said, “oh probably not”, it wasn’t nearly as convincing. And of course, there’s the gap between what you say you will do and what you will actually do when the circumstance is upon you.
Between the ideaAnd the realityBetween the motionAnd the actFalls the Shadow — T. S. Eliot
The challenge, as Eliot and studies bear out [https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9386038/], is that there is a distinct gap between what we intend to do, say we intend to do, and what ultimately happens. We all know we’d like to be brave and stoic in the face of a terminal disease diagnosis and go bravely into the good night but will we, when the time comes?
The circumstance of having your spouse die is, one hopes, remote and so it feels emotionally foreign. How then, can we even form an intention when we don’t know how we’ll feel, who and where we’ll be, when it occurs? In general we also imagine grief in the abstract. We expect to feel the loss of that person in our everyday life, the loneliness, the silent house. Women, it seems, also imagine the freedom, right there with the loss, and men may not entirely appreciate how much of their personal infrastructure is sustained by their wives. Sorry for the broad strokes or, as my Warsaw uncle puts it, “that was sewn with a pretty thick thread”.
As you might imagine, the rationale for individual choices about remarriage relies on many varied factors including the potential co-mingling of assets which could, and does, go badly in many such circumstances. It’s pretty common to hear that the children, and even grandchildren, of the recently bereaved take huge exception to any new relationship which might intrude on the estate. This isn’t always selfish but rather a need to protect the widow/er from being pillaged.
Other concerns hinge on the feeling that the deceased spouse would be, in some way, betrayed by a new relationship, assuming affection was still extant at TOD. Then there’s the thorny challenge of having to meet someone new before any kind of subsequent relationship can even occur.
Naturally, I wanted to know what the stats say, as compared to our highly unscientific dinner table data. And, I wanted to canvas my friends and colleagues, of various ages, to see if I could get a sense of the differences across age and gender.
Here’s what I found, with the statistical research first:
Without allowing for age brackets, Wikipedia says more than 60% of men, and less than 20% of women are remarried or re-paired within two years of being widowed. Within that window, men remarry almost twice as quickly. That gap is even wider as you get older with widowed older men remarrying almost five times more than women do and cohabiting more than twice as much. Sounds like a lot but it’s a percentage of a very small subset. 94% of women remain single after the death of a spouse compared to 75% of men. In other words, most of us will not remarry and very few of us ( A year and half after bereavement, 15% of widows and 37% of widowers over 65) are even interested in dating.
As we heard at the dinner table, it’s not just the act of remarrying, it’s the desire or intent that varies.
30% of men say they’re interested in a new spouse within the first six months of their last one dying. That compares to 16% of women. Within that first six months, 15% of those men are actively dating. Less than 1% of women are.
Statistics Canada reports women aged 55 and up have more exposure to remarriage as they live longer than men on average, but still have significantly lower rates of remarriage. In Canada in 2022 [https://www.statista.com/statistics/446075/resident-population-canada-by-marital-status-and-gender/], there were 1.59 million widowed women versus 472,170 widowed men so the fishing pond is not evenly stocked.
In this country, twice as many widows and widowers remarry than simply live together. Strangely, that’s reversed in Quebec.
The average age for these Canadian brides was 63.4 (in 2008) and 72 for the grooms.
There’s a saying that “women grieve while men replace” but that wasn’t what I was hearing from my circle, nor does the research necessarily support it. Widows grieve, but not forever. They often come to value freedom they may not have enjoyed earlier, and sometimes they are released from caregiving duties and in no way interested in taking those on with someone new. Especially someone new who’s old.
Men, on the other hand, are not driven so much by loneliness as by the need for social and domestic support, particularly amongst men who don’t have a tight circle of friends. The more friends a man has, the less he needs a new wife, basically.
It comes as absolutely no surprise that the older you are, the probability of remarriage falls but the drop is much steeper for women. The ground falls away for men around age 65, for women, say goodbye to the fairytale ending at age 55.
Pretty much the entire global population shows the same patterns and the same gap over age and gender. No doubt there are some pockets which buck the trend but I’ve yet to discover them. Atlantis maybe?
I wanted to canvas my friends and colleagues, of various ages, to see if I could get a sense of the differences across age and gender.
I’m absurdly grateful to those of my friends who sent me thoughtful responses. Some of them were, or currently are, in exactly the post-death period, tentatively dipping a toe into the dating pool, only to find the water is slimy and full of disgusting creatures that defy categorization. Others are in the anticipation boat, pushing off into the unknown.
A young friend, with young children, explained why I might not have heard from all the other young marrieds I canvassed.
I can’t even bring myself to imagine losing my husband with my children so young. Their loss brings me to my knees. With any luck the chances of being widowed are so far in the future that I might be able to think about it, but right now I just can’t.
For those in middle age and up, dating is part of the pragmatic side of the situation; the emotional side is much more nuanced:
First I have had to get to a space where I am actually ready to wrap my mind around dating someone else. After 3.5 years, I am finally getting there. Until then it has felt like a big no. The thought of dating is tough.
Then the thought of finding someone who can show the respect that my husband had for women. Super tough. And a biggie for me. I know I should not try to replace him but he was such an amazing partner and person, he is a really tough act to follow.
Regarding the question of marriage, I think it relates to age. If I do actually meet someone, I don’t think I would want to get married. I am not even sure if I would want to live together. Why would I need to? Seeing them a few times a week would be plenty I would think. I like my space. Also, if you did decide to live together, whose place would it be?
Also with marriage, there is the financial aspect. I am not interested in sorting that out. I have adult kids and grandkids, and a sister, who will be needing my monies — lol.
Remarriage if necessary, but not necessarily remarriage.
Never again. I have a cardinal rule …..no co-mingling; not bank accounts, property, credit cards, family and space (closet, bathroom and desk).
Only fun, good times, great conversation and thoughtful, caring consideration.
Back to displacement theory, for a minute.
I look at it from the other end; how would I feel about being dead and having someone new move into my house, use the dishes I chose and sleep in my bed with my husband? Irrational for sure but it’s the way I think about the what-if time, after.
Women of a certain age all expressed a concern that anyone they connected with now would likely need caretaking, whether they’re explicitly looking for it or not.
There has always been a part of me that felt I wasn’t complete unless I had someone with whom to share my life. That’s no longer the case. I’ve decided the negatives outweigh the positives. Any man who comes into my life now is going to be looking for someone to take care of him. It never seems to be an even playing field, at least in my experience. After my last relationship, my kids questioned why I felt the need to ‘take on’ men. They have told me I’m great on my own, and I’m actually beginning to believe that!
Men who have been widowed have different comments about their choices.
I know what it is like to lose a spouse of many years and there is a tumble that can lead to deeper loss or somehow a new awakening.
For me after about a year and a few early relationships I recognized that I wanted deeper and richer relationships. I spent a lot of time reflecting on the future. What did I want? That emerged fairly quickly for me. Less than one year. I think it bubbled to the surface because of the relationship I had with my wife. One thought that emerged was not to remarry. My commitment is my bond. I had married and felt that if I were to make a commitment to another woman, I did not need a ritual sanctified by the state or church to bless my relationship. I would also have very clear expectations about what I wanted out of a new relationship and would not jump back into a cohabitation arrangement without knowing someone more deeply.
I seem to recall four requirements. One, the new partner needed to be intellectually strong, two physically active, three attractive but not a beauty queen with only Gucci clothing; and finally, financially sound. BTW I did not get everything.
Another male friend, who lost his wife to cancer when they were in their late 40s, demurs at my recollection of his phone ringing off the wall from would-be partners, in the year following his wife’s death. He does admit, however, that he already had a large circle of single friends and met other singles courtesy of well-intentioned friends who didn’t want to see him alone for too long.
At first I thought, oh man, this doesn’t feel right. There were a lot of emotions around it [dating]. I hadn’t closed the door on another long term relationship, lots of guys do, but honestly, I didn’t expect to meet someone just right. When I did, she was ten years younger with young kids and I thought, am I crazy?
My dad died when I was 14 and my mom was 47. She began dating what felt like pretty soon after and I asked her why she felt she had to get married again. She was born in the 20s, had never worked and told me she felt she simply had to have a man to look after.
A recently widowed female friend has begun dating, with huge reservations.
When I fell so madly in love with [my husband] I had no idea how much the loss of him would cost me. The pain has been equal to the love. I wouldn’t want to remarry without that degree of love but fuck me that is scary. I was already an avoidant so add to that a gaping hole in me and it is terrifying to consider doing that again. My girlfriend asked me, “did it not hurt enough the first time”?
Some days when I am very lonely, hooking up with a long term partner feels like the solution. This always worries me because another person is never the solution.
What no one mentioned, in all my field and scientific research, was the possibility of your late spouse haunting your days so please, enjoy this scene from the 1945 film of the Noel Coward play, “Blithe Spirit”.
Poor Ruth, indeed. Until next time, remember what Joni told us: you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.
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