A Widower, a New Relationship, and “Unsupportive” Children

By: Margarita Holmes

 

Dear Dr Holmes and Mr Baer:

I am a widower and a retired ophthalmologist. My wife died 6 years ago. Since then, my 3 daughters, between the ages of 27-42, make sure I am not alone; inviting me for Sunday dinners, weekday lunches and family outings here and abroad. Each reassures me I can live with them if I get tired of living alone.

This support lessened when I met a lady whom I admire and see her every now and then. I enjoy her company, nothing more. I hinted that I wanted her to accompany me to the dinners and lunches they invite me to, but it is as if I am talking to the winds.

My new lady friend is a good woman, herself a medical doctor. I do not understand why my children are behaving this way.

How can I convince them that they are not being supportive of their father,? I have mourned their mother for 6 long years but am now moving on —a retired and confused doctor.

Dear RCD (retired and confused doctor),

Thank you for your email.

Societies have dealt with widowhood in various ways over the millennia, some of which have been more extreme than others. Interestingly, it seems that obligations after widowhood are driven by issues such as inheritance and blood lines, usually imposed on widows rather than widowers, no doubt reflecting the fact that only widows can give birth. Also discrimination and double standards have been with us since time immemorial.

Whatever the exotic and/ or barbaric customs elsewhere, in the Philippines it seems, at least to this foreigner, that the main factor is the potential conflict between maintaining close familial ties and a desire for individual independence, coupled with the belief, frequently held by the young, that one’s middle aged parents have lost all interest in sex – or if they haven’t, they should have!

The time has come for a frank exchange of views with your children. Your perfectly reasonable position is that you want a life that includes the world outside your immediate family and want to experience the joys of adult companionship free of family censure.

Be prepared for your children to counter with arguments based on the wonderful marriage you had with their mother, her Madonna like qualities, etc. They may even suggest that your having a relationships outside the family is implicitly a criticism of them, suggesting they failed to support you in your widowhood.

You will be best placed to judge for yourself the validity of whatever arguments they present, deciding whether these are based on their genuine desire for your well-being or something a little less savory, more hypocritical, like a wish to protect their inheritance and/or avoid you spending money on a non-family member. Sometimes the prospect of Dad sailing off into the sunset on a lengthy cruise with his new friend doesn’t bring quite the joy to their precious little hearts that it ought to!

Either way, you will then have a clearer idea of how to achieve the measure of independence you are entitled to enjoy at this time in your life. Best of luck – JAF Baer

 

Dear RCD:

I agree with Mr. Baer and his hypothesis that the reason your children prefer to ignore your blossoming relationship with a colleague is that they believe it will interfere with their relationship with you. It is as if the two relationships are mutually exclusive which, of course, they are not.

While happy that your daughters worry about you; it must be frustrating to realize that you are welcome only if you remain static: their beloved father grieving for their beloved mother.

But you are much more than that, RCD. Before being father and husband, you were your own person, and still are. Sometimes our children may just want to preserve their feeling that it is now you against the world, with no one to save you but them.

You ask: “How can I convince them that they are not being supportive of their father…(who) is now moving on?”

Alas, you can’t. Convincing is primarily cognitive, your children are grappling with their emotional issues.

They need to experience (and not just hear) that you love them and their mother, and that nothing will change that.

Sometimes our children have the opposite desire Dylan Thomas had for his father, exhorting him,

“Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light…”

May you continue celebrating every new day dawning, loving life so much that you too rage against the dying of the light.

—MG Holmes

*for the longer version, please go to rappler.com