#466： What It's Like to Become a Widower
Episode Stats
Summary
No matter which group you fall into, we could all benefit from understanding more about the journey widowers take through loss, grief, and the effort to establish a new life. Here, to walk us through this process, we have Herb Noel, who lost his wife himself and has dedicated his life to helping his fellow widowers.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast what's it like
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for a man to lose the person at the very center of his life his wife maybe you know firsthand
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because you've lost a spouse yourself or maybe you know a friend or a family member who's a
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widower and have wondered what he's going through and how to help him or maybe you're just curious
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about what this journey is like should you heaven forbid become a widower one day yourself no matter
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which group you fall into we could all benefit from understanding more about the journey widowers
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take through loss grief and the effort to establish a new life here today to walk us through this
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process is herb noel who lost his wife himself and has dedicated his life to helping his fellow
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widowers herb is the founder of the widower support network which provides free advice and resources
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to men who've lost their spouses and the author of the book the widower's journey today on the show
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we discuss herb's own experience of becoming a widower how and why he found that there were
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few resources available specifically focused on helping men deal with the loss of their wives
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and how that catalyzed him in creating such resources himself we then get into the different
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issues widowers face including loneliness isolation depression a decline in their own physical health
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poor decision making and how and why these issues can manifest themselves differently in men than in
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women herb also shares tips on what family and friends could do to support a widower the months after
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his spouse dies we then discuss what dating and marriage is like for a widower including when the time
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is right to start dating again and how to handle a second marriage with kids both financially and
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psychologically after the show's over check out our show notes at aom.is slash widowers journey and herb
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joins me now via clearcast.io herb noel welcome to the show well thank you so much it's good to be with
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you today so you published a book the widower's journey and you've also become an advocate sort of
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helping other widowers navigate this transition from you know to becoming a widower before we get to that
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let's talk about your story of when you became a widower what happened there uh it was uh december
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2004 on the 23rd of the month my wife happened to be her birthday she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer
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she was 49 years old and our lives changed forever after that um it included 39 months of surgery
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chemotherapy chemo radiation trips to places like md anderson in houston and vanderbilt medical center
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in nashville and at the end of 39 months we lost her she was 52 years old and she lasted actually quite
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a bit longer than the average pancreatic cancer patient does but it caused me to take a journey that
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i never wanted to take and i took a lot of notes mental and otherwise and following all of that i
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went looking for help one day i did so because i was in the banking field and i had an employee walk into
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my office four months after my wife died and she looked at me and she said the entire floor
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missus your laughter and then i realized that i probably needed some help i was going in at four
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in the morning going home at eight at night and that was pretty much my life so i went to my church
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i went to the veterans administration because i'm a disabled vet and i went to barnes and noble and i
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asked the gentleman at barnes and noble what do you have for a widower he typed widower into his
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search engine and looked up at me and said mister i don't have a damn thing for you
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well following all that i decided somebody better write a book for men
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and actually he was wrong there were some books out there but there was nothing
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that satisfied my thirst and very few written by men so i within a few months decided to leave my 38
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year career and rededicate my life to serving widowers and those who love them and it's been
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an interesting journey and a rewarding journey ever since and frankly it's the best thing i've ever done
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i imagine that and i thought that was interesting you talk about in the book that yeah you went to
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barnes and noble looking for books and there really wasn't anything out there for widowers i'm
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curious where are there books out there a lot of more books out there for widows than there are for
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widowers oh absolutely in fact i spent the next nine years researching my book and had an agent out of
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new york and all that and we paraded a manuscript around to over 30 different publishers about 18 of
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them showed some level of interest but a couple of them were were interesting these they were candid
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enough and honest enough to say we don't think men buy books so we're not going to do a book about
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widowers we are going to do another book this year for widows however so they think that the widow market
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is much stronger my response to them was men certainly can't buy what's not on the shelf
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so as it turns out i self-published and there's lots of reasons why you want to do that instead of
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having a publisher anyways and that was a good decision as well but there's very little out there
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a lot of it's written by academics from some university perspective uh some think tank somewhere
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or it's one man's journey you know he tells his story his journal that to me is not what men want what men
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want is answers men act because they're fixers they face a problem and they want to put a remedy on it
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and i love telling the story of my brother my brother don was traveling with his wife kathy
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and kathy said the little boy behind me is kicking the back of my airline seat well my brother did what
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every man would do he leaned over the top of the seat and told the young man behind it to knock it off
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well kathy leaned over to my brother again and said what'd you do that for he said well you you said he
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was kicking your seat and she said well yes but i didn't want you to do anything i just wanted you to
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know about it well men aren't like that men want answers even if they're 80 right or 70 right they'll try
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it and that's and that's a little bit risky because men are vulnerable when they become widowers because of
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that very behavior so when i wrote my book i didn't attack it as my story my journey or that of any one
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person rather i took on the issues of the day and i had 40 men from across the country who were brave
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enough to share their stories with me and share their innermost secrets and their tears and their grief
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and their best practices and we dissected the issues of the day that what it was faced and then we
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elaborated by sharing how that one problem whether it be financial or religion or health or relationships or
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their career or whatever the issue is how it impacted a few men and then on top of all that we brought in a team of
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experts who made even further analysis of what that issue is all about and how men can go after
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it and it's been very successful as a result of that so it's a very tactical book it's a very
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strategic book that men can pick up grab an idea and put it back down and pick it up again in a month
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from now when they have another problem well let's talk about the need for a book like this or a resource
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like this for widowers because you start off the book talking about some of the unique problems that
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widowers face with you know you list all these statistics can you walk us through some of those
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numbers and you know and talk about why widowers have that those those problems well depending on
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what research you look at there's approximately 2.7 million widowers in america there are 420 000
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new widowers in america alone each year and it's interesting very few people can name even one
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widower they may they'll pause and then they'll say oh wait a minute i do know one and he lives down
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the street or he's in the next department at work but they don't come top of mind because widowers
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live in the shadows they're not out front they're they're more reserved because basically they're told
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that that boys don't cry since the time they're able to crawl and walk and they go off to war they
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commit horrific acts in conflict and they don't even talk about it when they get home because men don't
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think that anybody cares and that it's not manly to reveal those kind of feelings so some of the other
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facts are that the suicide rate among widowers is three or four times greater than that of married men
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they have an increased rate of diabetes hypertension and heart attacks because they abuse themselves
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after all it's the wives that keep us healthy it's the wives that make sure we eat right that we get
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exercise that we get our psas checked once in a while it's the wives that do all that and if the man happens
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to be a caregiver of a terminally ill wife then he's even less likely to get any medical attention if he
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feels an ache or pain and then finally when he when the extra pain get more severe it may be too late
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now he's got a problem so men abuse themselves on their health and that's a big risk for men a very
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big risk and also the you know going on that statistic of depression and suicide a big factor
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in that is men or widowers become very lonely because the wives are often the social linchpin
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right they're the ones who created the social life no that's no question about it wives keep the social
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calendar sometimes we wish they wouldn't sometimes they overdo it and they line us up on our calendars for
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things that we don't even want to go to but we sort of follow along well when that's gone there's nobody
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to do that for us and after a week or two maybe three after the passing of your spouse all the
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well-wishers the ones who ran to your to your aid to your side at that dark moment suddenly go back to
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their lives and suddenly it becomes very very quiet one of the men in my book there's 40 in all
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used to be a lieutenant colonel in the air force he was a career officer
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and when his wife died he's a man of great faith and i asked him oh he became a priest so i asked him
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what's the worst part about being a priest he said the same thing that is the worst part about being
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a widower when you go home at night and it's dead silent he said the same thing happens in the priest
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will you know he said actually he said the priests are fussed over by everybody all day but when we go
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home there's nothing there's one man who's in my book he tells me that he plays cooking shows in the
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background in his house all day the cooking channel the food channel or whatever those
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channels are called because he doesn't want drama in his life and he can't stand the silence so he
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listens to cooking shows so this the silence is definite and that's helps depression and other
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things happen and a lot of them aren't very good was that pretty deaf like do you notice that silence
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you know right away when you became when your wife passed away i noticed uh brett i'll tell you
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my wife died at 9 15 on a friday night in san antonio texas we had just moved there about six months
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earlier i changed jobs with another bank and the nurse comes in them into the room 15 minutes later and
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says what are you going to do with her remains and i said i don't know i just moved into town i i've got
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to figure it out and the nurse said well you have to remove her remains by midnight because your
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insurance doesn't cover her after midnight i said well don't you have a morgue and she said no
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so i literally in 2008 got a phone directory out and went through yellow pages looking for somebody to
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come and pick up my wife and when i left that hospital that night and i walked across that parking
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out to my car it was the loneliest walk i ever made and when i walked into my house that night
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and i could still smell her perfume in the house and but i i caught the silence right away and it was
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unpleasant and stayed that way for a while well let's let's talk about that grieving process
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as you talk to these the men in this book and also the experts did you discover that men grieve
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differently than women do or widowers grieve differently than widows do uh the professionals
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will tell you in full disclosure i'm not a licensed anything i'm just a widower but the professionals
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will tell you that grief is grief but the difference is that ladies are more social and that men have egos
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and that get in the way and as a result of that they become isolated my ministry became the subject of
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a play of two act 15 scene play that actually i was very pleased to see it won best new play of the
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year in upstate new york last year and the most impressive scene in the play is a man sitting in his
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recliner looking at his tv changing the station with a tv dinner laying on his belly and he falls asleep
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that way he never speaks a word that's his life that's his life he goes home to an empty house
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and he's he's reluctant to ask for help because after all he's a man he shouldn't need that and
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people say things like well why isn't he back in the game yet how come he hasn't gotten over it after
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all it's been three weeks or four weeks and people say ridiculous things so these men become very
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isolated very quickly and i'll tell you there was in addition to the 40 men that were in my book
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there were three men who backed out and you know and i was calling them regularly over a nine-year
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period doing my research and my editor said let's find out why these three men backed out
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so i called the first one and he said herb it's just simply too painful to have these conversations
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with you i understand the second gentleman says to me herb my new girlfriend doesn't want like it when
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i even talk about my deceased wife so i told him to get a new girlfriend
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the third man actually said to me it's not manly to have these discussions with you
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and therein lies the problem that men don't feel that they have permission to grieve
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in one of my speaking engagements in connecticut one of the men in the room was a former captain of a
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nuclear powered submarine and yet when he lost his wife he needed to talk to somebody he could run a
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submarine an attack submarine but when he lost his bride he needed help and men it's so hard for men to
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ask for that help and that's what i do all day long is i help men actually beyond north america now and i
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do it free of charge i mean are there support groups out there for widowers just for widowers
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mine is for widowers and those who love them so if there is a child i i have children that call me
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and they're worried about dad i have ladies call me who are dating widowers i have siblings call me
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i'll tell you a funny story there was one lady who called me and she didn't like that the man she was
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seen goes online and leaves messages for his deceased wife in a chat room and i said
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well does he take out billboards along the highway talking about his deceased wife no does he talk
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about her in front of other people all the time at parties and other places no and i said so he found
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his little place where he can grieve and he can do it discreetly privately he's grieving i said you can't
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expect the grief to go away just because he found you there's still the pain you still had the loss
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and after a while i said actually i think he should have more questions about you and she said why is
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that i said well you were married before and your marriage ended in divorce you know so he he loved
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his wife to the end he cared for his wife to the very end you know that's an attribute that i think most
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people would like to have in a mate and she said you made your point and she dropped her concern so
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i'm sorry the last question was just i mean where there are there support groups for widowers and it
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sounds like oh yes there are yeah there sounds like there are and uh a lot of them are faith-based
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you can go to churches different you know places like hospice have support groups but there aren't a
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lot for men men have to search a little bit deeper but they are out there in small numbers i'm
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certainly available to anybody and i'm happy to be of service but they can go to places like grief
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share which is a well-known program that's all over the country it's in most of christian churches
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the men will find that for every man that attends there'll be four or five women that attend so
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they'll be outnumbered the challenge is will the men open up in front of women and men tend not to
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do that they go and they sit there and they'll let the women do all the talking and most of the
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instructors are ladies and sometimes men are slow to take the instruction from a lady even though it may
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be good instruction but there's just the sense that she doesn't understand so men like to come to men and
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i recognize that earlier this year like never before and while i've had a facebook page for a long time
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for my organization which is the widower support network i created a second facebook page just for
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men and the only men i allow on there are either caregivers of very seriously ill women
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widowed men or good-hearted men who want to help these gentlemen and we don't let any women have
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access to that facebook page and i can tell you it has been a major hit the men open up they share
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their their deepest concerns their most private concerns and other men who are in the same boat rush to their
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rescue and encourage them daily we have interactions with these men every single day i have men in
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nigeria in turkey and as far away as australia on that facebook page and they are constantly helping
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each other and we talk about everything we talk sports we talk money on mondays we talk about their health
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on wednesday we have music videos we talk gardening we talk about cooking for one we talk about estate
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planning we talk about grief we talk about religion not that we preach to anybody but in fact we celebrate all
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faiths on friday we celebrate the jewish community on sundays we celebrate the
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the christian community and we turn nobody away and no topic is off limits and the men just love it
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because it's only men that they're talking to so i imagine okay if you are a widower first step is
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reach out find some help don't try to do it alone but let's let's let's talk to the people who may be
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friends and family of a widower what can they do to help and support and should they i mean i think a lot
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of times even with just death in general when someone dies people are just really reluctant to
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reach out because it's you know death it's awkward i don't know people don't know how to handle it
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what can friends and family members of widowers do to help and support these guys uh they can do a lot
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first of all and i will tell you people do say silly things i had a vice president in the bank
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where i worked walked up to me and she asked me a few questions following my wife's passing it was my
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first day back to work 10 days after my wife's death and at then as she's getting ready to leave
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me she says i want to introduce you to my aunt well my wife sarah you know uh memorial service hadn't
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even taken place yet so i said well that's not going to happen i walked away in retrospect i know she
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was well-intentioned and she and she didn't know what to say because for some reason in our society we
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don't talk about death we don't talk about being prepared for death and in fact one man in the book
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again john vandahar john said to me one time i asked him what's the best thing that happened to you when
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when you were grieving and he said when i told my family and friends i'm fine leave me alone with my
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thoughts they ignored my instructions and forced their way into my life and i'm so grateful that they
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did people think men are different than women and if for some reason we don't need help we need a lot of
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help because we're extremely vulnerable and we are making impulsive bad decisions again because we're fixers
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and i'll give you another example there was a gentleman who attended one of my talks and i was
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talking about predator women and he comes up to me afterwards and he said i need to share something with
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you and your readers he said i'm a victim of a predator he said after my wife died i remarried too soon
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and the woman i married spent 1.2 million dollars of mine in 24 months and and they ended in divorce
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but again he he was isolated and vulnerable so the family members you know it's in everybody's best
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interest to reach out to that man to knock on that door when you think oh otherwise i don't want to
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bother you no please do please do stop by you'll also find that a lot of men don't get invited to
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things you know whether it be parties even from close friends because they are they feel like they're
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the third leg on a stool well you need to invite them out and let them find their own comfort zone
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you need to talk about to the deceased if that's what he wants to talk about celebrate her life by living
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his life but get it i try to get the man to frankly practice his faith if he has a faith
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talk to professional counselors make sure that he's healthy that he's not run down he's not depressed
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the number one thing i tell every widower to do is to see a medical doctor his chances are very good
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he's abused himself in some fashion either through neglect or else with purpose like alcohol or illegal
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drugs or something like that and that's why you can't leave a widower alone because they are too
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vulnerable and i would encourage employers society family members neighbors everybody needs to do their
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part and today it's not going to happen all by itself and not not unless somebody decides it's going
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to happen because they're just the way society is built in corporations as an example if you have a
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loss in your family if you're grieving whether it be a spouse a child or a parent or whatever corporations
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send you off to their eap program and you go see a psychologist three times for one hour
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well that's not going to do it that's not enough they need more than that and then corporations sort of
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wash their hands of it and want to know why the person you know isn't performing top of their game on the job
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you know and i'm even working on a study right now where i work with the international grief institute
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and you know we've figured out from the other research that corporations lose 75 billion dollars a
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year on grief because they don't address it properly and there's lots of different discussion points on
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that we can chat about that another time if you like but by all means the men are vulnerable and nobody
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should leave them alone they're at risk we're going to take a quick break for your word from our
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sponsors and now back to the show and i imagine the thing friends and family need to really be
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cognizant of is i think them they might give a lot of attention right in the aftermath of the death of
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the spouse but then months later like you said earlier people just their lives move on and they just
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forget about this guy and like you can't forget right because he still needs help he still needs help
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and and grief doesn't go away grief takes on new dimensions new forms as an example i found love a
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second time and i am happily married i am a fulfilled man and i love my wife her name is maria as much as i
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love my deceased wife one love does not take anything away from the previous love it doesn't diminish at one
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iota if people don't believe that that's possible look at all the people who remarry after a divorce
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well they love their divorced partner at one point and they learn to love somebody else later so the
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human heart will heal over time and it takes effort on the part of the man and a lot of a lot of men like
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i said they're reluctant to ask for help and they're impulsive and they make a whole bunch of bad choices
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what were some of the surprising challenges you encountered as you adjusted to becoming a widower
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like you know you thought about like i didn't think i'd have this problem but you had that problem
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i've been living on my own since i was 18 so i'm pretty i can handle a lot of that but frankly a lot
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of men can't the thing that also surprised me is universally every single man i've talked to
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has some level of regret that they're living with i have regrets about my wife and that i wish i would
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have done different things on different days whether you whether it's you tell her you love her whether
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you take her to her favorite restaurant whether you paid attention to her when she was talking or
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complaining about her aches and pains i have one man right now who says i'm not convinced i got my
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wife or found the the best medical care possible for her and i'm living with that guilt every single
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man has some level of guilt and it you can't erase that so that's always going to be in place and
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over time you're you're i've i've discovered that the bad memories become less noticeable
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they fade into the background and center stage becomes the favorable memories now but you're
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always going to have triggers but as an example i happened to move back into the same town that i
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once lived in with my deceased wife every time i drive down lake mary boulevard in lake mary florida
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i've passed this one restaurant and i can tell you what dress she had on who we were with
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and what she ordered and every time i passed that restaurant my eyes sort of you know shift in that
00:28:54.260
direction to look at it because it's a trigger it's a trigger of a memory that i can't recapture
00:29:01.380
i can't go back in time it's over but it's a trigger and we all have triggers and it could be a meal it could
00:29:08.340
be a song it could be a movie it could be a friend it could be a location it could be almost anything
00:29:15.620
that will take us back and if it's a sad moment hopefully it becomes overpowered by the better
00:29:23.460
memories and i have found that the human mind is able to handle that pretty well it will
00:29:29.780
the good memories will emerge over time i don't necessarily accept the argument time heals all
00:29:36.900
wounds but i think you can have grief it's it's a phase of life we we don't talk about it
00:29:47.300
but we all have to deal with it in fact one of the men once said to me since we're if we're all going to
00:29:54.340
die why we have such difficulty dealing with it why are we so ill prepared because we don't talk
00:29:59.940
about it most people die without a will and then they're at the mercy of the courts there's so many
00:30:05.060
issues here because in our society we don't like talking about death other societies do a much better
00:30:11.860
job than we do the the other surprises that i found is that besides the grief that all men have
00:30:20.340
besides the regrets that all men have the impulsiveness is almost universal
00:30:28.340
they they all want to make choices they want to relocate sell their house change their job go on a
00:30:34.260
trip that they all want to pull triggers and i always encourage them to slow down let's get your health
00:30:41.860
squared away let's hope that the medical doctor refers you to a mental health professional just to be
00:30:48.820
sure and and let me reinforce that when my wife was sick we were living in nashville tennessee
00:30:57.940
i went to vanderbilt medical center and i had an examination with a psychiatrist now everything was
00:31:05.860
fine at that point except for my wife's diagnosis but i wanted to be sure that i was properly anchored as
00:31:13.300
i cared for her i wanted to be sure i wasn't making bad choices with somebody else's life the
00:31:20.100
good news was i got the green light i was doing okay but four months after she passed and i went and saw
00:31:28.020
va there i saw a counselor and the counselor was extremely helpful to me and i was put on an antidepressant for
00:31:36.100
four weeks and i'm not ashamed of that it's it's there's a reason why they give these people phds
00:31:42.020
there's a reason why the medical community has this help available and it helped me get through a
00:31:47.700
very difficult period but so many men hold themselves up because of their ego and what they think others
00:31:56.260
expect of them and they need to cast that aside and just deal with what they need to deal with and
00:32:03.060
these are some of the issues that we talk about in the book some of the issues we talk about on my
00:32:06.660
facebook page and elsewhere and we're having a lot of success with this i'm really i'm i'm really
00:32:14.180
pleased with the work that we're doing and the results that we're receiving well i'm curious with
00:32:18.500
all your work with widowers i'm sure you've worked with older widowers you know middle-aged widowers and
00:32:23.540
also younger widowers but i'm curious is there are there different challenges that say a younger
00:32:28.580
widower faces compared to say a man in his 60s or 50s so i'm talking like a widower in their like 30s
00:32:35.860
early 40s yes okay let me give you some examples none of this is absolute but i can give you some
00:32:43.140
examples there was a man in buffalo new york who was on the phone with his wife 15 minutes he hung up the
00:32:52.740
phone 15 minutes later the phone rang again he saw it was his wife he said yes dear and it was a man's
00:32:58.180
voice and the man said it's not your wife i just picked up her phone she just got struck by a car
00:33:06.660
and five hours later he had to disconnect life support and left him with three children
00:33:14.100
that he needed to raise so that's one example of a younger man frankly i have many of a man in rochester
00:33:21.780
new york whose wife died at the age of 28 i have a man whose wife was in the u.s air force and she
00:33:28.340
was serving in afghanistan she died and left him with two children so there's lots of cases of younger
00:33:34.340
men as well there's a man in los angeles that came home and found his wife dead of a heart attack he was
00:33:39.140
in his early 40s there's there's just a lot of them but the older men are interesting the older men are
00:33:46.180
either frightened that they're gonna live alone the older generation aren't as versatile in their
00:33:53.860
skills and being able to care for themselves cook for themselves do the laundry all the domestic chores
00:34:00.420
they're not very good at that some of them don't even know how to pay the paper boy does he get a check
00:34:05.700
or credit card or do we go online they tend to panic more than the younger men the these from my
00:34:13.780
experience they want somebody in their life and a lot of times it's the first woman they say hello to
00:34:20.820
they again make bad choices and i always encourage them to take it slow be aware of your circumstances
00:34:30.740
don't rush to use the l word things will work out and there's also financial considerations some men
00:34:37.620
are afraid of perhaps getting seriously sick themselves and then having somebody to take care
00:34:44.340
of them and there's a saying in the industry are are we going to replace the wife that we lost or are we
00:34:52.820
going to fall in love with somebody and marry them some men don't care i mean they literally just want
00:34:59.700
someone in their life and frequently that ends in badly either in divorce or a breakup of some type
00:35:09.540
the the other issue that comes into play are financial because of the tax code in the united states
00:35:18.260
married couples or older people who marry if one of them gets sick and are hospitalized or sent to a nursing home
00:35:27.700
their spouse's life savings could be put into the pool of available resources to pay for that
00:35:36.500
and that surprises a lot of people because they think that they have a little nest egg that they could leave
00:35:42.180
their children or whatever but if they marry they are assuming financial responsibility for their marriage partner
00:35:50.580
that's why several of the couples that i work with never married they just moved in together
00:35:56.420
and it's a shame that the tax code actually encourages that but that's a reality so i imagine so there's
00:36:04.660
that one challenge for older widowers that fear of being alone i imagine for younger widowers oftentimes
00:36:10.260
there's young kids involved it's like suddenly they're also a single dad of young children that they have
00:36:16.340
to take care of by themselves yeah for every for every case that i'm involved with that works out well
00:36:26.420
there's another one that works out very badly and sometimes the children of the deceased
00:36:36.740
are not sympathetic to dad's needs and at the same time you know dads can't be too aggressive in
00:36:45.620
replacing mom it needs to make sense and sometimes dads don't care about what the kids think
00:36:52.740
but there's a there's a lot of turmoil among widowers who find another woman in their life
00:37:02.020
that doesn't satisfy the kids impressions of what should be
00:37:08.100
it's tragic and they need they need counseling is what they need they need to understand each other better in
00:37:14.500
in my case i will tell you i went to my stepson and i asked him do you think i loved your mother
00:37:25.380
and he said yes and i said i did and i still do but i'm going to try to find a new life for myself and
00:37:33.700
that's going to include introducing myself to ladies and his response to me was a blessing he said it's about time
00:37:42.660
so i've had my son's blessing from day one and unfortunately siblings of widowed men parents of
00:37:54.820
widowed men even with children think you know he's got motives he just wants somebody to take care of his
00:38:01.380
kids you know people can draw a lot of cruel impressions but if you that's why you just can't
00:38:09.220
rush into these things you need to think it through because there are ramifications and a lot of them
00:38:14.740
are hurtful and a lot of them become permanent well you've been taught we've been talking about this
00:38:18.820
you know relationship after being a widower how do you know how does a widower know because this is
00:38:25.940
something that i think a lot of people are curious about like how do you how do you know when the time
00:38:30.260
is right to start dating again because there's like well it's if it's too soon that just looks bad if
00:38:35.220
it's too long well something's wrong there maybe so how do you figure out that um this is again you
00:38:43.780
know every every man's journey is unique to itself and i actually have one one woman called me from
00:38:53.460
quebec and her father asked a woman out at his at her mother's funeral and i spoke with the father
00:39:02.660
father and the father said i took care of my deceased wife now deceased wife for like five
00:39:09.700
years or whatever it was it was a long time he said i've done all my grieving and you know i sort of
00:39:17.620
get that as i sort of get that because every morning for 39 months before i opened my eyes i knew i could feel
00:39:29.620
the presence of my wife next to me and i thought to myself privately she's dying and i have to give
00:39:37.540
her another good day and i did my very best to do that so i sort of understood this man but it just
00:39:43.700
was in poor taste and it's it wasn't a good move on his part but i would answer it this way the man is
00:39:50.340
ready to date when he feels he's ready he shouldn't be concerned about the instructions or doesn't need to
00:39:58.500
meet anybody else's expectations but he does need to be mindful that other people are entitled to form
00:40:05.300
opinions and he's going to have to live with those opinions so he may want to be somewhat tactical in
00:40:12.580
how he goes about doing things and being sensitive to others he's not the only one that's grieving
00:40:18.660
there could be children involved siblings involved neighbors involved co-workers involved who are also
00:40:23.940
grieving the loss of the same woman who happened to be his wife and if he wants those relationships to
00:40:29.460
be solid into the future he needs to have some sensitivity too it's not all about him and how how
00:40:36.420
does like i guess one thing i've wondered about is like okay you're if you're a widower you might have
00:40:42.100
been married for years decades so it's been a while since you've been in the dating scene where you've been
00:40:48.900
trying to court right yeah that's a skill right and you you haven't used it in possibly years or
00:40:55.620
decades like you don't you've lost your game basically so like how do you how do you get it
00:41:00.100
back i mean is it awkward i mean is it is like learning how to date again a challenge that some
00:41:03.940
widowers have absolutely i mean i mean all sorts of things have changed hair hair styles or the presence of
00:41:12.980
hair a lot of men's self-esteem have suffered you know maybe their weight has you know shifted maybe
00:41:19.860
they don't have the physique or even the teeth that they used to have i mean it's just all sorts of
00:41:24.900
things that they're self-conscious about right and i understand that completely but if they're themselves
00:41:32.740
and frankly not not to preach because i would never want to do that but the men should pray over it
00:41:39.300
you know and my mother used to say to me when i was a young man you want to meet a nice woman go to
00:41:45.620
church okay but there's a lot of nice women out there the ratio is about five to one widows over
00:41:53.220
widowers so there's a lot of ladies that would love to have a relationship again and are you know mature
00:42:01.300
enough and sensitive enough the fact that you had one before and they're understanding that maybe your
00:42:06.740
physique has been modified and your hairline may have receded and whatever else and they understand
00:42:14.020
it and they look way past that and i just wouldn't rush it i just wouldn't rush it at all let it take
00:42:21.460
its natural course and and don't be that impulsive male that wants to pull triggers i mean i i unfortunately
00:42:29.540
i have guys who have proposed within in fact this past week i have a guy was i'm helping him coaching him
00:42:36.100
and his wife has been deceased for four months and he met this woman and now he's he's referring to
00:42:42.900
it as a relationship i said you've had one date is he calling it a relationship i said it's not i mean
00:42:49.540
you just barely set a low so guys seem to rush and the older men are even more insistent about rushing
00:42:59.380
unfortunately right and i'm sure it's because they're lonely and they're scared and i imagine
00:43:04.180
going back this this difference between older widowers and younger widowers like an older
00:43:09.220
widower you know the chances of him finding another like a widow are probably better than say a younger
00:43:14.740
widow a guy in his 30s and so you know if you find a widow you have you have that in common you you
00:43:19.940
both have had or possibly a happy relationship right and so you understand each other but like for a
00:43:24.820
younger widower you know he's in his 30s early 40s he might be got in the dating scene he might find
00:43:29.140
one who's never been married before right and so like he yeah they she doesn't understand really
00:43:33.460
understand what he's gone through so how does that play out in your experience okay with my experience
00:43:40.340
it's much harder for the younger widower because they're good chance there's children involved
00:43:46.340
good chance that the lady is not going to be a widow that she good chance she's going to be divorced
00:43:52.420
so there's going to be an ex-husband involved there could be financial considerations involved
00:43:59.300
if there's a divorce in in in there somewhere and the children you know that you have to protect the
00:44:08.260
children that's when you need to bring in professional assistance to talk things through completely because if the
00:44:15.220
children don't buy in and they're especially if they're young children you are asking for trouble for the rest of your life
00:44:22.260
and most of the men that i work with who have children have not remarried so we've been talking
00:44:29.300
about the dating scene getting back into that and differences different challenges older younger
00:44:35.060
widowers might find in that situation but marriage also has its challenge let's get a little more tactical
00:44:41.380
here so one thing that widowers will probably have to consider this time around they get married the
00:44:47.220
second time is the legal ramifications of marriage right maybe they might have to do a prenup agreement
00:44:52.580
that they might not have done with their first spouse because he married her because they got
00:44:58.740
married when they had nothing right and now he's in his now yeah yeah minus right now he's in his 60s
00:45:06.180
and has you know built accumulated some net uh some assets i highly recommend prenups
00:45:12.180
particularly if there are children involved it's the right thing to do and if the person that you're
00:45:20.500
involved with says i won't sign one then i mean i would walk away i would walk away because your
00:45:30.820
deceased spouse had expectations that you would take care of your children and that doesn't mean you
00:45:38.740
share whatever the two of you worked for they give it to a third party now some couples may say they
00:45:44.340
can work it out and maybe they do and god bless them that they can make that happen but you need to
00:45:50.660
protect the children because then if anything happens to the male later on who's to say that the the
00:45:58.900
surviving children of now both parents being deceased are probably taken care of by the next husband and
00:46:05.540
their stepmom i mean you have to protect the children it's just the right thing to do right
00:46:11.860
so i mean something you know everyone should consider even if their their wife is healthy and
00:46:17.060
happy estate planning right do a trust do a will get that in place so you don't have to think about
00:46:23.460
that absolutely whenever when you have to make a decision i i spent 38 years in the financial service
00:46:28.740
industries and banking and it's scary how few people are prepared for difficult times
00:46:36.980
i think it's something like some ridiculous number like 70 of americans have less than ten thousand
00:46:43.460
dollars and that can barely handle even a small crisis and yet they go into retirement depending
00:46:50.820
almost and sometimes solely on social security and when you are widowed and let's say your wife had a
00:46:57.940
pension or she had a social security check coming in and now that's gone now what do you do can you
00:47:04.660
even afford the house that you're sleeping in you might have to sell then you have a fire sale what
00:47:09.940
if it's a down market then you have a double hit but you lost on the market conditions and you lost
00:47:14.580
because you're moving i mean there's so many considerations and that's one of the reasons why i also
00:47:20.820
work with caregivers of terminally ill or seriously ill women because if i can get to them before they
00:47:28.660
experience the loss of their of their spouse i can possibly prevent some bad things from happening
00:47:36.740
down the road financially and that will help me help them avoid future regrets because if they don't take
00:47:46.340
care of things whether they you know they're distracted they're scared their wife's in trouble
00:47:51.220
and they just say the hell with my health the hell with my financial affairs i'm just i can't deal with
00:47:57.300
it now i got too much on my mind i get it but unfortunately the business world the financial
00:48:03.460
world doesn't wait for anybody and if the wife passes and those documents aren't in good order
00:48:10.020
you could have an awful lot of regrets later on that would prevent you from even taking care of
00:48:15.540
yourself and your children the children of the deceased so i recommend that every man get with
00:48:23.380
an appropriate attorney and get your financial affairs and get your legal affairs in proper order
00:48:28.980
because it can happen to anybody like that poor man who lost his wife that was hit by a car
00:48:33.940
well and then we've been talking a lot about widowers themselves but another issue that widowers
00:48:38.500
are often thinking about it when there's kids involved like how do they help their kids grieve
00:48:43.060
their mothers so what what have you found that widowers what what's helpful for widowers to do to help
00:48:48.420
their children as they go through their own grieving process well first of all there is a lot of
00:48:53.620
resources available for children when i entered this industry 10 years ago 11 years ago i was actually
00:49:01.060
surprised and delighted about some of the materials that are out there and if you go to my website which
00:49:08.260
is the widowers support network dot com you're going to find a list of links of all a lot of
00:49:15.060
different organizations that you can turn to including soaring spirits and the grief toolbox and and others
00:49:22.020
that specialize in programming for children the founder of the grief toolbox which is out of new
00:49:28.340
hampshire you know he tragically lost his son at the age of four so he has a lot of material for
00:49:36.020
children and been parents who have children who experienced a loss but it's because there's such
00:49:43.060
great resources out there nobody should assume that they somehow magically inherited all the skills needed to
00:49:49.940
be a parent times two it's it's a difficult assignment and and not everybody can do it you know years
00:49:57.780
ago there used to be a tv show called the courtship of eddie's father and it was a glamorous story about
00:50:05.620
a marketing executive who lost his wife he was raising his son and he dressed really cool and he had a lot
00:50:11.780
of pretty girlfriends it was bill bixby was the star of the show and it glamorized being a widower well it's
00:50:19.300
not like that i mean it's difficult and it's down in the trenches and you're cooking meals and you're
00:50:24.260
going off the pta meetings and you're taking kids to their football practice and and the little girl misses
00:50:31.860
their mom and the man doesn't know how to what to say to the little girl as she's going through you know
00:50:37.380
critical points in her life that's why men need to tap into the resources that are out there and
00:50:42.420
there's plenty out there for the children if the men would only take it right so yeah again widowers
00:50:48.100
with children reach out for help exactly well her and and we can help direct them you know if they
00:50:55.460
want to call on us or just google it i mean you'll find a lot of different resources for children some
00:51:02.020
terrific books there's a wonderful book if you have a very young child called a goodbye book and
00:51:08.420
it's a story of a of a fish who lost its friend and what feelings a little fish went through it's um
00:51:18.180
it's a terrific piece and i think it was a new york times bestseller so you'll want to look for that
00:51:25.380
well herb this has been a great conversation where can people go to learn more about your work
00:51:28.820
well there's three different places that i would encourage them to take a peek at one is the
00:51:34.500
website which is a widowers support network.com there's an s on widowers plural so widowers support
00:51:42.340
network.com and on facebook again there's two facebook pages there's one for the general public
00:51:49.140
which is widowers support network the second one is for men only and it's widowers support network dash
00:51:58.020
members members only and all of our services are free we don't even solicit donations that's not
00:52:07.140
what we're about we're about helping men who have few places to turn and we're proud to be here for
00:52:14.820
them well herb noel thanks so much coming on the show this has been a pleasure thank you so much for
00:52:19.060
the opportunity my guest is herb noel he's the author of the book the widower's journey it's available
00:52:23.700
on amazon.com also check out his website widowers support network.com where you find more information
00:52:29.060
more resources help you also a link to his facebook group should that interest you as well also check
00:52:33.780
out our show notes at aom.is slash widowers journey where you find links to resources including all the
00:52:38.980
stuff that we mentioned throughout the show so you can delve deeper into this topic
00:52:53.860
well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice
00:52:57.940
make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com and if you enjoy
00:53:01.380
the show you've gotten something out of it i'd appreciate if you give us a review on itunes or
00:53:04.660
stitcher it helps out a lot if you've done that already thank you please consider sharing the
00:53:08.420
show with a friend or family member you think we get something out of it as always thank you
00:53:11.940
for your continued support and until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly