“I am quite surprised at the advice you gave the family of a widower of five moths and his new dating venture. While one would be churlish to discourage the man feeling his way into a new position in society at large, I would have expected you to raise a cautionary note on rebound relationships. I have known several to fail and cause great heartbreak all round. It will be difficult to get the message across but perhaps a confidant with no strong emotional attachments would be the one to have a quiet chat to the widower.”

Thank you for your beautiful response. A “cautionary note on rebound relationships” from “a confidant” may well be a way to avoid further heartbreak.

I did not raise rebounds for three reasons:

• Adult sons and daughters tend (in my experience) to treat the bereaved parent as if in the loss, mom or dad also lost autonomy, something of adulthood.
• “I lost my wife, not my brain,” I heard a man say. Loss does not turn an adult into a child.
• People who find new romantic attachments (at 17 or 70) become unreachable and resist logic. Resisting, blocking the new attachments causes fruitless, unnecessary conflicts that become hurdles when support is later needed.

Posted on October 9, 2016 at 8:40 am in Difficult Relationships   |  RSS feed |   Reply   |   Trackback URL