Loving Without Erasing

I call David the love of my life. Saying it out loud can stir up the uneasy feeling that I’m erasing someone who mattered deeply. Robert was my husband. The father of my daughter. The man I lost in 2002. And now, twenty-three years later, I'm married to someone else and using words like "the love of my life" to describe him.

The guilt shows up in strange moments. When I'm writing about David, sometimes when I post a photo of us together, or when I think about what Robert's family might think if they heard me say it. They were devastated when I remarried eight months after Robert died. I don't blame them. I was devastated too, and I made that decision out of panic, not healing. That marriage to Joe lasted barely more than a year. It was a disaster born out of grief and the desperate belief that I needed someone to fill the hole Robert left with someone I thought was safe.

I didn't meet David until 2019, seventeen years after Robert died. Seventeen years of raising my daughter alone, rebuilding my life, learning who I was as a single person. I had tried dating a few times over the years, but nothing serious. Most of the men I met on dating sites were "players" or just looking for something casual. I wasn't interested.

My sister Kami finally convinced me to give the online world one more try. She said, "Just put yourself out there one more time. See what happens." So I did. I updated my profile, included a random detail about my hobby of designing house plans using drafting software (who puts that on a dating profile?), and waited.

David's profile caught my eye. He had a kind face. Relaxed, real. I messaged him.

He responded almost immediately. He was intrigued by the house plans. We talked for weeks before we ever met in person. When we did, I knew. He was different. Steady. Loyal. Safe.

We married in 2020, and he is, without question, the love of my life.

I know how that sounds. I know the guilt that comes with it. But I also know it's true.

Loving David doesn't erase Robert. It doesn't diminish what Robert and I had or what he meant to me. But the relationship I have with David is different in every possible way. Robert and I were young. We had children. We fought about money and schedules and whose turn it was to get up with the baby. We loved each other, but we were also navigating the chaos of building a life together in our thirties. It was hard in the way early marriage is hard.

David and I met in our fifties. Our kids are grown. We have nothing to fight about. We like the same things. We have the same temperament. We fit in a way I didn't know two people could fit. He thanks me every day for marrying him. Every single day. He makes me feel safe in a way I've never felt before.

And he understands grief in a way most people don't.

David was married once before - in the late 80's. His wife left him after four short years. It wasn't his choice, but he had made a vow to her when they married, and he intended to keep that vow regardless of what she did. So he didn't date. He remained single for thirty years, devoted to a marriage that no longer existed, until she passed away. Only then did he allow himself to move forward.

That kind of loyalty runs deep in him. It's why he's not threatened by my grief. It's why he doesn't flinch when I write about Robert or talk about him or tear up on Christmas morning. He gets it. Not because he's been widowed, but because he understands what it means to love someone and honor that love even after it's gone.

We have a routine now. While we're watching TV, I'll write. I work on my humor blog, my grief blog, the StoryWorth stories for my daughter. I'm half-watching, half-writing, and David will glance over and ask, "Are you grieving today?" It's a joke, but it's also his way of checking in. He knows that some days I'm writing funny stories about DIY disasters, and some days I'm writing about Robert. He's fine with both.

That's what makes him the love of my life. Not because he's better than Robert or because what we have is more important. But because he loves me as I am now. Whole, healed, carrying grief I'll never fully let go of. He doesn't ask me to choose between honoring my past and building a future with him. He just makes room for both.

The grief still shows up. It always will. Just recently, my daughter Emmy announced she's pregnant. It was Christmas Day. Her first baby. Robert's first grandchild. And he's not here to see it. That hurt in a way I wasn't prepared for, even twenty-three years later. I don't miss Robert for myself as much as I miss him for her. For the moments he would have loved. For the grandfather he would have been.

That's the difference between loving someone in my thirties and loving someone in my fifties. At thirty-six, I was surviving. I was raising kids and managing a household and trying to keep my head above water. I loved Robert, but we were also just trying to make it through the day most of the time.

With David, I'm not surviving, I'm living. I healed first. I became whole first. And then I found someone who loves the person I became after all those years of putting myself back together.

If you're grieving and wondering if you'll ever love again, I can't promise you will. Some people don't, and that's okay too. But I can tell you this: if love does come again, it won't be the same. It will be different. Not better, not worse, just different.

Your heart doesn't have room limits. It expands; it makes space. You don't love the new person instead of the one you lost. You love them alongside. Neither one erases the other.

I loved Robert at thirty. I love David at fifty-something. Those are two different versions of me, loving two different men, in two completely different seasons of life. Robert shaped who I became. David loves who I am.

And if Robert's family hears me call David the love of my life and it hurts them, I understand. I really do. I hurt them once before by remarrying too quickly, by trying to fill a hole that couldn't be filled that way. I can't take that back. But I can live honestly now. I can honor what Robert and I had while also celebrating what David and I have.

I don't know if there's a perfect way to do this. I don't know if there's a way to love again without guilt or without worrying what people will think. What I do know is that after seventeen years alone, I found someone who makes me feel safe, who honors my grief, and who doesn't ask me to choose.

That's worth calling the love of my life.

If you're still in the thick of grief or if the idea of loving someone else feels impossible or wrong or terrifying, of course that's okay. You don't have to be ready. You might never be ready, and that's okay too. But if love does find you again, don't let guilt keep you from it. Don't let fear of what people will think stop you from being loved well.

The guilt might never fully go away. I still feel it sometimes when I call David the love of my life. But I've learned that guilt and love can exist in the same space. You can honor what you had and embrace what you have now without choosing between them.

With grace for the mess,

~Stef