BW 046: Seven Myths about Dating as a Widow

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Today in episode 46 of the Brave Widow Show, we are going to do some myth busting. I've got seven myths about dating that I want to cover. I get asked tons of questions about dating, when is too soon? What are the safety tips that are out there for dating apps? Meeting someone in person? Listen to episode 46 as we dive in more to these questions!

For free resources and to get on the Brave Widow email list to stay up to date on what is happening within the community go to Brave Widow Resources.

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The Brave Widow Community is a place where you can connect with other widows, find hope and healing, and begin to dream again for the future.  Learn more at bravewidow.com.  

Hey guys, I’m Emily Jones

I was widowed at age 37, one month shy of our 20 year wedding anniversary.  Nathan and I have four beautiful children together.  My world was turned completely upside down when I lost him.  With faith, community, and wisdom from others, I’ve been able to find hope, joy, and dream again for the future.  I want to help others do the same, too!

FOLLOW me on SOCIAL:

Twitter | @brave_widow

Instagram | @brave_widow

Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/bravewidow

YouTube | @bravewidow

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Transcription:

hey, welcome to episode number 46 of The Brave Widow Show. Today we're gonna do some myth busting, and I've got seven myths about dating. That I wanna cover with you today. I have a whole series of things planned for people who are interested in dating. I get asked tons of questions about dating, when is too soon?

What are the safety tips that are out there for dating apps? Not using dating apps, meeting someone in person, all sorts of content in the future that we're going to be covering. But I thought I'd start here with the top things that I hear people say or that I get questions about. But before I dive in, I wanna remind you that I have free resources.

I run the [email protected] slash free. And I also have some free live events that are coming up that you may wanna be a part of, and the way you get to hear about that is by signing up and being on the email list or watching the social media and seeing when the next ones are coming up.

But I've been doing several live events [00:01:00] recently, and it's been a lot of fun. I enjoy the feedback. I enjoy interacting with people, seeing the chat messages come through, seeing the emails come through, and really feeling like I'm being able to make a positive impact and difference for people, even if it's just educational or even if it's one thing that inspires you.

 I have some live events I'm doing each month and the best way to hear about that is being on the email list. And the way you can sign up for that is again, is going to brave widow.com/free, f r e e. And I would love to see you on our next live event. All right, so today we're talking about. Dating myths, and I love myths and opinions because there's so many different ones out there and there's so many misconceptions and things that you know, I'll be honest, I've learned as part of my journey, and I would not have understood nearly as well some of these concepts unless I'd [00:02:00] been widowed myself or unless I had gone through.

Some of these same situations and processes. So this is, hopefully educational and enlightening for you. Or maybe you wanna share it with some family and friends that are opinionated or that really just don't understand, your mindset or how you could even think about dating again. So that's another question that comes up often.

So let's dive right in. The first one. Myth number one is that moving on means forgetting your late spouse or is a betrayal to them. So often people will say, well, wow, that person moved on fast. Like, how could she have loved her husband? And then months later, or just a couple years later, she's just totally moved on and forgot that he even existed.

Well, for those of us who are widowed, we know that is impossible. I mean, I was married to Nathan over half my life at the time. We got married when I was 18. We were married one month shy of 20 years, so over half of [00:03:00] my life was spent being married to Nathan, especially the parts of my life that I remember the most.

There's no way that I could forget him or stop loving him or not care about him when I'm thinking about potentially dating someone else. One of the biggest concepts and misconceptions that I've cleared up and learned about this whole crazy grief and healing process is that grief is a concept of and not, or.

That's really hard at times for us to wrap our minds around, like, how can we be happy and sad at the same time? If you came to the live event that we had on how to get unstuck from grief, I talk about this a lot in that presentation of how can I, on one hand, Understand that my spouse is not coming back.

I have to accept this new reality. I am having to rebuild this new life. But then I can also simultaneously have a moment or a thought of how is this possible? Am I just in a bad [00:04:00] dream? What do you mean they're not coming back? What? What do you mean I'm not gonna see them again here on earth? I can have both of those concepts in my mind at the same time.

So dating again, or thinking about dating again, does not at all have anything to do with the love you had for your late spouse or the how you cared about your late spouse and one of the best analogies that I can. Articulate for this concept is for those of you that have more than one children, more than one child, more than one children child.

More than more than one kid, okay? You got more than one kid. When you only have one child. You have a really hard time thinking about having another one and thinking that you could love another child as much as you love the first child. And it's really hard to wrap your mind around, and I even remember talking to Nathan about this.

He's like, I don't know. We had our first kid. I can't really imagine that I would ever be able to love another one. As much as I love this first one, like he's got all my love and attention. But then the moment that second [00:05:00] child arrives, or in my case the third one, and then the fourth one, something strange happens.

It's like your heart expands and the the capability you have to love another person, to accept another person to care for them is only magnified. I don't have to love my first child less. To love my second child or my third one or my fourth one. By the time you get to four or five maybe, you wouldn't have any love left for the first one if that was the case, or you wouldn't like 'em very much necessarily.

But that's not really the way that this works at all. Your heart grows, it expands, it makes space for another person. And so while. If you've not been widowed, it's really hard to understand the same concept. It's very similar in the aspect of the love you have for the person that you are married to.

Remains. It exists. It's unchanged. It's not lessened at all. But as you think about inviting another person into your life and then you find [00:06:00] someone and you start to love them, your heart expands and grows and makes room for that new person. But it doesn't do that by taking it away from another person.

So moving on or dating has nothing to do with forgetting your late spouse and certainly is not a betrayal.

Alright. Myth number two, widows should wait a specific amount of time before dating again. And this is another one that I always chuckle when I see the opinions. Some people say it's six months.

Some people say a year. Some people say two years. Some people say widows should never date again. I've had people tell me that widows should not be remarried. You get married one time and oh, that's it. That was your, that was your one chance at love. So, if that were the case, If I live to be 90, I would have 50 years ahead of me, all alone, which sounds a bit depressing.

Some people don't wanna date again, they don't wanna get remarried, and there's nothing wrong with that at all. But unfortunately, there's not a universal crystal clear timeline on when you should start dating again. What I will say [00:07:00] however, is I did start. Testing out, dating early on in my grief journey, and it wasn't again, anything to do with the fact that I didn't love Nathan.

I didn't miss him. I didn't, care about him anymore. It was pure loneliness. It was the fact that for over half of my life, I had a partner. I had someone that I would text. Everything too. Like, oh, hey, I'm picking this up for lunch. Hey, can you get the groceries? S not on your way home. Hey, let's go watch this movie.

Let's do this together. Let's do that together. I mean, you just had that person you did life with and suddenly overnight, all of that has just evaporated, and it's very lonely when you've built so much of your life with a person to be thrust into a position where now, All of that is on your shoulders, all of the responsibilities, all the day-to-day activities.

Plus now you have lost your thinking partner and the person you would exchange ideas with and think things through. It creates [00:08:00] just a significant and severe loneliness. I mean, your spouse knows you better. Most likely your spouse knows you better than any other person on this planet, and now that person is gone.

So you start to try to form new relationships to somewhat make up the gap. But let's be honest, it creates a loneliness that really only one person in your life truly could feel. Apart from God, of course, from the loneliness degree. So as I started dating earlier on and as I talked to other widows, when you're looking for someone out of loneliness and you're looking for someone to not replace that person because there's no way they could replace your spouse, but to help supplement the feeling of loneliness and the feeling of companionship and doing life together, you're much more prone to be more accepting of things.

Then you would be, when you're more clear-minded than you would be when you really create a well-rounded life and you wanna add someone to it. So I had some bumps along the way as [00:09:00] I dated some kind of early on in the journey, and as I've talked to other people who have as well, and I finally just decided that I really wanted to get to a point where I could.

Be excited about the future. I could create a life that even if I never remarried, if I never dated again, I would be excited about. I would be looking forward to, and then I wanted to look for somebody to date and to be in a relationship with and to maybe eventually remarry. And that decision was really hard at the time because at the time I didn't know how that was gonna happen.

At the time, I didn't have anything to look forward to in the future. My future plans were gone. My. Future goals I had had before I no longer really cared about. I was no longer excited about, I was still struggling with going to kids' events or experiencing major milestones and not having my person there, not having someone sitting beside me, not having their dad be a witness to that in person.

And so it was really [00:10:00] hard to make that decision to say, you know what? I'm really gonna wait, and I'm going to get to a point where I'm happy with my life. I'm not trying to feel a whole, I'm not trying to feel loneliness, but I have a robust, well-rounded, exciting life, and I eventually may want to add someone to that who can make it even more amazing and even more enjoyable.

So there were a lot of things there that I did to. Complete this, and that may be a whole nother podcast in itself, but there are things that you can do to start rebuilding your life and to test out interests and hobbies and groups and friends and, traveling. And there, there are so many things that you can do to start rebuilding your future life to see if you even want to create that kind of a life.

Did I still wanna live in the country? Did I wanna move to the city? Do I wanna travel a lot or do I want farm animals? There were things that I really wanted to figure out for myself, and it was hard [00:11:00] because there were decisions of, I decided to build a house and there were lots of times that I thought to myself, well, do I wait until I find someone else and let them help make the decisions?

So. I found myself more and more asking myself that question, do I wait for someone else? Well, what if they don't want this? What if they don't like this paint? What if they don't like this flooring? But I finally had to decide that I was gonna rebuild the life for me, my kids, my immediate family of what I wanted that to look like.

And. As I find the right person, most likely they're gonna be that puzzle piece that just compliments our family really well. So there is no specific amount of time before dating again. However, I would strongly recommend that you get through a lot of that brain fog. You get through a lot of that volatility.

You get to a point. Where you are rebuilding your life. You're excited. You're happy, you're experiencing joy, and you're ready to add someone to your life. You're not trying to date someone to supplement what's missing or to fill an emptiness or [00:12:00] avoid or a sense of loneliness. You're not depending on them.

To fill that role. You're looking at them with excitement to see just how amazing of a future that you could have together. Now we know there are some complications to dating, especially within the first year. So while there's no perfect timeline, I do wanna call out the first six months to a year, because that first year has all of your firsts, right?

It's the first Christmas without your person. It's the first Thanksgiving, it's the first birthdays. It's the first anniversaries, it's the first major milestones. And so what happens at times is people use dating as a distraction from grief and from healing. They use it as a way to, help them through some of those firsts, which is fine, but it also brings with it a certain wild volatility.

So as you're experiencing those firsts, and for some people the second year, Which feels not harder, but a little more real now that we've gotten through that first year, the second [00:13:00] year for people, sometimes is very difficult because now it, it seems more real and less like you're just surviving and you're in that survival mode.

So again, while there's no specific timeline for dating, keep in mind the first six months to a year how volatile those firsts can be and evaluate whether or not you're dating. To feel a void versus dating to expand your life and out of a mindset of abundance. Myth number three, widows should only date other widows because they understand their experience.

And I see this a lot where people are telling me or posting in Facebook groups that you know, they're done with the dating world and they're done with people that don't understand and they only wanna date other widows. Because that person gets their grief and they understand them and they're gonna be accepting of the fact that they still have pictures and that they still talk about their person and they still have them as part of their life.

And for me, I did have that thought a few times, but it also felt a little intimidating to me, [00:14:00] which. Might seem hypocritical, but it was intimidating to me to think about dating someone that was grieving a person that they loved and lost, even though I know it's not a competition. I know I. That they can love and accept someone else while also grieving and honoring and cherishing the love that they had for their late spouse.

It still, to me, was something that I didn't necessarily proactively look for in the dating experience and my experience and several others as well that I've interacted with is that while at times. Having that shared experience is helpful and can form a strong connection. Anyone that you date that wants to understand you, that cares about you, that wants to accept you and be part of your life, is going to be able to accept the fact that you're a widow and that your life is very different than someone that's divorced.

I remember talking to a friend and when I was talking about dating [00:15:00] again, they were like, wow, you really think you're gonna find somebody who's not been widowed, who wants to marry a widow with four kids, and this land that has to be managed and all these other things that, all these activities and things that are going on in your life, like, that's a lot for someone to take on.

And at first it was a little discouraging because they're right. It does sound like a lot to take on. I remember responding and saying, no, I'm not really worried about it. Like the person I find they're just gonna fit in like a natural puzzle piece. It's just gonna be something that they just kind of roll with and maybe they have questions.

I, I hope they have questions and they want to understand and that we can have open communication about it. But I don't plan to make it a big, huge deal, and I don't want my person to make it a big, huge deal either. I want them to be able to be there and support me and encourage me when needed, and I wanna be able to be there to help support and encourage and be there for them when they need me.

Because, let's be honest, I just turned 40. Okay? [00:16:00] So I'm dating people that are in their thirties and forties. I wasn't really interested. In necessarily being with someone that hadn't had kids and been through all this. So a lot of people that I talked to or considered potentially dating, they've been through some stuff, right?

They've been divorced. They have, maybe they also were widowed. I talked to a couple other widowers, maybe they hadn't ever been married or had kids before, but everyone has come. Through or overcome some sort of trauma or event in their life that has caused them to now be looking for someone to date in their forties or whatever ever age, age range that we're looking for.

So, just as I wanna be able to help support them and be understanding of them and their situation, I figured that'd be understanding of me. And there are a lot of great people out there. Who will be understanding, and to me this comes down to do they care about you? Do they wanna understand you and support you?

Because whether [00:17:00] they're, they've been widowed or not, if they don't wanna understand you, they don't wanna be there to support you. Maybe they're not the right person for you. All right. Myth number four. You have to hide your grief while dating. Well, I don't know why you would do this necessarily. Hide your grief while dating.

I mean, I do think that there's a balance of just being in a volatile state where you're often triggered by sadness or overwhelmed with grief. You have a really hard time functioning. I don't know though that. When you're at that point, that's really the right time to be dating. On the other hand, there are times as I've dated and I'm in a relationship with someone now where I'm just hit with a wave of sadness or I have this.

Whole concoction of emotions that comes together. It's this sadness of, oh, I, I miss that person. I miss the interaction that we have, but also I'm so glad and grateful for the relationship that I have today and the direction that my life is moving in. And [00:18:00] so it's this combination, almost like a thunderstorm of.

Things coming together and colliding of almost opposing emotions at times that causes some of that emotional reaction. So those kinds of things. Absolutely. I don't feel like I, you should have to hide or I should have to hide. Or the fact that, if, if when my kids get married or they graduate or they have.

Drive for the first time. They have some of those big events that I won't feel a tinge of sadness because their dad isn't there to walk my daughter down the aisle or he isn't there to teach my son how to drive. I don't necessarily feel that you should have to hide that from the person that you're dating.

But if you find yourself just struggling to pull yourself outta sadness and despair, and it's every day or every other day, and you're just really struggling to function, I don't know that that's a great mindset and place for you to be, to try to start dating someone else. Me personally, I would not do that.

I would work in what I [00:19:00] did do. Eventually when I learned is to heal myself to work and have a good support group, to talk to other people, to learn about the healing process because as we know, time does not magically heal all wounds. If you wanna heal, you have to do the work. You have to put in the work and seek out the help to heal.

All right, myth number five. Widows should settle for less. Out of gratitude for a second chance at love, and this sounds really terrible to say it. I don't agree with this. Obviously it's a myth on here that we're trying to bust, but a lot of people believe that. A lot of people believe that no one's gonna love them as much as their person loved them.

No one's going to worship the ground they walk on. No one's going to just mesh and interact and jive really well with them, and it's not ever gonna be as good as the first relationship they had. They know the, the trap I would get into is I would. Tell myself, well, no one's perfect, right? Like we all have, even though I might think I'm close to perfect[00:20:00] at times, like I'm amazing as a human being.

I know I'm not perfect by far. I'm not perfect. No one else is perfect either, and there's gonna be flaws that you have to overlook. But the danger in that, even though that is true, that we all have flaws that we work around at the same time, that doesn't mean that you should settle. It doesn't mean that you should ignore what we call red flags.

Now, it doesn't mean that you should sacrifice or think that you're settling into a lesser relationship than what you had before. And in all honesty, if the person that you're dating thought that you were settling or thought that this was maybe 60% of the relationship you had before, they probably wouldn't wanna be in that relationship with you.

They don't want this to feel like it's a lesser than situation, than the relationship you had with your first person. And so, one of the things that I would do that I really worked hard on to find the amazing person that I'm. A relationship with today [00:21:00] is I, first of all, I turned it over in complete surrender to God and I said, I know that there are certain things that I want and that I will see as signs that this is the right person for me, especially at this time.

But there are a lot of things that I'm just gonna leave open. Things that people get hyper-focused on, like how tall they are, how you know, what color hair they have, what kind of job they have, what kind of personality type they have. There are a lot of things that people really get hung up on that at the end of the day are, you can work around, they're superficial in some ways.

They are. Maybe we end up need to end up being with someone that wouldn't be our quote unquote type, or wouldn't be what in our mind we thought was the person that we're supposed to be with. So although I had things that were important to me, like. I have four kids. It's important. This person is a family person that they like being around kids.

They like doing family events. I wanted someone who enjoyed traveling. That's one of my favorite things to do, is to travel and [00:22:00] explore and try out new things. And I don't wanna be in the grind of, I wake up, I go to work, I come home, I eat dinner, go to bed, wake up, go to work. Like that repetitive cycle of.

Floating through life. I want someone who wants to learn and grow and do new things, and who wants to develop who they are and who our relationship is. Those are all the qualities of things that I wanted in my next person, and I just surrendered it to God and said, way better than me.

Who would be a good fit for me? And these are the things that are important. These are important qualities to me, of what I find in someone. But as far as height and appearance and finances and job type and all of these other things, that's kind of superficial to me and not something that I'm going to worry about or focus on until I really get to know that person.

And. I've just been incredibly blessed at the person who has come into my life [00:23:00] and just how easy and natural it has been. It would be intimidating to talk to the in-laws whose son died about dating their daughter-in-law, and he's been able to do that seamlessly. It would be intimidating to think about.

Taking on four kids or interacting with four kids and what all that looks like and everything has just been very seamless. It's not gonna be perfect for everyone. It's not perfect for me. It's not gonna be seamless for everyone, but you shouldn't feel like you're gonna settle or that you're gonna accept things you wouldn't have accepted in the past or that someone isn't gonna love you and care about you the way that your spouse did.

I've been very clear and I, my mother-in-law teasing me all the time because, as I started meeting new people, she would say, oh, are you gonna text so and so again? Or Are you gonna reach out to this person? And I would say, Nope, I am not chasing anyone down. I will respond, I'll be enthusiastic. I will show interest, but I want somebody who has me in their [00:24:00] sights and they're just dead set on me, and they're persistent and they're consistent, and I never have to question, are they interested?

Are they not interested? I really wanted someone who was just. Excited to be with me and felt like I was the person that they wanted to be with, or at least I had a lot of potential of being that person and they were laser focused on coming after me in a good way, and that is what I have found. I refused to settle for a lot of other people.

I could have potentially. Ended up with or started dating or being in a relationship with versus finding someone that just thinks every little quirky, weird, silly thing I do is adorable and appreciates me for who I am. So as you're thinking about dating again and being in a relationship again, you don't have to settle for less.

You're not lesser of a person because you're widowed. You're not damaged goods, you're not. Someone who isn't worthy [00:25:00] of a great relationship, and this isn't the life you thought you would have. This isn't the love that you maybe thought that you would have or experience. But that doesn't mean you can't still create a really great and beautiful future for yourself.

And there's so many reasons why you as a widow are an amazing person to date. I mean, think about it. You have. No longer been naive to death and how fragile life is you are going to value and appreciate every moment, every text, every interaction, every picture, every video. You think about life so differently, and maybe things that bugged the crap outta you before, maybe things that got on your nerves don't bother you anymore.

Maybe you're not worried about the superficial things anymore, and you're not worried about the color of the paint in your house, and you're not worried about, when he leaves his shoes all over the place and you're not worried about the thing he does, that drives you nuts because that was a sign that he was present in your life and he was [00:26:00] there.

And so all of those things that tend to cause friction in relationships. It may be easy to alleviate a lot of that and to create a much stronger and powerful connection because you know what it means to love someone and then they're no longer there. So inherently you can have a greater appreciation for someone than someone who's not been in that situation.

I've told the person. That I'm in a relationship with and I've told several people, if I do get remarried again in the future, I'm gonna be 10 times the wife I was before. And not that I was a bad wife, I feel like I did a pretty good job and that I gave it a lot of what I had in me. But I see things so much differently now, and I prioritize and value the little interactions and the day-to-day so much more.

Than I did before. I'm less selfish and self-centered of a person, even though I don't think I was a selfish person before. And I did a lot for Nathan [00:27:00] and for our relationship, I feel exponentially, so much more generous. Other people focused and focused on what's gonna matter at the end of the day, which is not a lot of times all the little stuff that we get caught up in.

So as a widow, I. Don't settle, don't view yourself as unworthy or less than or not good enough. You have so many amazing qualities now and so much experience and ability to have wisdom and insight than you ever did before as someone who hasn't gone through that. So value that. All right, myth number six.

It's best to keep your widow status a secret while dating. No, I mean, I don't. No, look, here's what I, what I would tell you. I've been on several different dating apps and I've had my profile lots of different ways, and I've learned, what's worked well for me and what I'm looking for versus what has not worked out so well.

And I will say I did take the fact that I'm a widow off of my profile. However, as you get into those initial conversations [00:28:00] about, oh, why are you looking, why are, not, why are you single? But you know what, Tell me a little bit about yourself. I always worked in the fact that I'm a widow.

As part of that conversation, when I had the widowed status on my profile, or when I made a big deal about it in my bio, then I would either get number one. Well, you get some people that are just not even looking at your profile, and they just totally ignore the fact that you're widowed. You get, secondly, a lot of people who wanna scam you, Or who think that they can take advantage of you because you're widowed and you're hurting or you're lonely.

Or maybe they think you've got a lot of life insurance, money, whatever. It's, but they think they can take advantage of the fact that you're a widow. So ultimately, then thirdly, you get people that. Get really intimidated, especially if you put much emphasis on it in your bio. They get intimidated by the fact that you're a widow and they don't really know how to handle that, or they don't really necessarily wanna deal with that, which isn't a bad thing to weeded people out.

But for me, what I [00:29:00] learned, what worked best for me and the relationship that I was looking for, is I did not put it on my bio however, As we had the initial exchange of messages and conversations, I did work that in and I didn't make it this big deal. I didn't say, oh, I'm a widow. It was the most heart-wrenching time of my life, and I cry every other day and I'll, I don't know if I'll ever find another love again.

I mean, I. You wanna be honest with people, but at the same time, when you're initially getting to know someone, you want them to feel like you are ready to date again. You do have a good mindset about it, and yes, that was an experience that you had and it has impacted you. It's affected who you are and probably in a lot of ways changed who you are.

But it doesn't have to be this big awkward hurdle that you jump over. So keep it a secret. No. Maybe not post it on the bio or make it like a big billboard thing before they even have a chance to get to know you. All right. The last myth that we're gonna bust here today is that [00:30:00] widows can't experience the same level of love again.

And I think we covered this quite a bit in myth number five, but. This really is not true, and this is something that we tell ourselves, which I think is dangerous because our subconscious minds can be programmed. Whatever you tell yourself over and over and over, your mind will start to believe, so that's why you hear a lot of people talk about affirmations.

You hear a lot of people talk about manifesting. Your destiny manifesting what you want for the future because what you focus on and what you tell yourself over and over and over are things that you start to believe. So if I believe that I will never experience the same amount of love or the same great relationship I had before, then it's almost a self-fulfilling prophecy because I keep telling myself over and over.

And so what I will do is I would. Overlook a red flag, or I would let somebody blow me off or not respond to my texts ever, or I would start to chase someone else because I would tell [00:31:00] myself, it's not a great relationship. It's not as good as what I had before, but I'm never gonna have that same level of love again.

I'm never gonna have that kind of relationship again.

And that's simply just not the case. However, if I tell myself I can have a great relationship, again, it's not gonna look the same. It's not gonna be the same person. I'm not the same person. I don't even know if I would date Nathan, if he, if he, if his soulmate twin existed on Earth. I don't, that's not the person I'm looking for 'cause I don't feel like I'm the same person I was before and certainly not the same person I was when I was 18 and fell in love with him the first time.

So,

but, That doesn't mean I can't have an amazing relationship. It doesn't mean that I can't be with someone who just loves everything about me and loves being with me and wants to travel with me, and wants to spend time with me and wants to do some of the same things, and just adores who I am as a person and cherishes me and vice versa, that I can't feel those things for someone else.

That simply [00:32:00] isn't true, and it doesn't. Diminish what I had before. It's not, it's just you can't compare them because it's not really the same. But that doesn't mean that it has to be a lesser experience or that you can never experience that same level of love again. One of the things I often ask myself as I was going through grief and.

On this journey of healing is will I ever be able to experience joy without this cloud of sadness overshadowing everything else? Will I ever be able to laugh again or to feel like I can plan for the future? I can have dreams, I can be excited about it without my heart twisting with sadness that my person isn't there.

And. It felt like a really long time for me to get to a point where I felt like, yes, I can experience joy. I have made plans for the future. I have created a life that I love and I'm excited about. And when I think about Nathan and I think about my past, it's no longer Cloud of sadness. It no longer [00:33:00] steals away from my joy and excitement and my plans for the future.

Instead, it's a feeling of gratitude. It's a feeling of, I'm so excited to talk about with this with you in heaven one day. It's a feeling of I'm so grateful for the love that we had and. The way that we grew together so that I could become the person I am today and I could accomplish these things and I could focus on these things in the future.

But it's a feeling of gratitude much more than it is a feeling of despair and sadness. So it is possible to have that again, and I believe it is possible for people to experience the same love, the same relationship, the same. Satisfaction, enjoyment and abundance that you had in your first relationship.

All right. Those were the seven myths of dating that we busted today. And as a reminder, We're gonna be doing some live events and one of them is going to be on dating and evaluating whether or not you're ready to date and giving you some [00:34:00] dating safety tips and navigating the apps and all of that good stuff.

I've got a lot of good stuff that's coming up for you. The best way for you to find out when that's gonna be and to learn more. By being on my email list, and the best way to get on that is to go to brave widow.com/free, fre e, and you will be notified whenever I have another live event or whenever we publish a course to the community.

Whenever we're getting more information out there. The people on my email list, you are always the first to know, and I'm always so excited to share that with you because many of you respond and you. Get excited with me and you ask great questions and gimme good ideas of things that will help other people.

So I love interacting with each of you, whether or not you're in the community, although I'd love for you to be there. Just love seeing your responses and your emails and messages that come through.

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Emily Jones: Hey guys. Thank you so much for listening to the [00:35:00] Brave Widow Podcast. I would love to help you take your next step, whether that's healing your heart, finding hope, or achieving your dreams for the future.

Emily Jones: Do you need a safe space to connect with other like-minded widows? Do you wish you had how-tos for getting through the next steps in your journey, organizing your life or moving through grief? What about live calls where you get answers to your burning questions? The Brave Widow Membership Community is just what you need.

Emily Jones: Inside you'll find courses to help guide you, a community of other widows to connect with, live coaching and q and a calls, and small group coaching where you can work on what matters most to you. Learn how to heal your heart, find hope, reclaim joy, and dream again for the future. It is possible. Head on over to brave widow.com to learn more.