The Rush to Feel Better

I’ve written before about remarrying too quickly after Robert died. A childhood sweetheart who felt familiar; a marriage that lasted a short time before it fell apart. I’ve told that story, and I’ve said before that grief lied to me about what I needed. I still believe that.

There’s another layer to it that I haven’t talked about much. Over time, both in my own life and in conversations with other widows, I’ve noticed something uncomfortable: people seem to have very different expectations about how quickly men and women are supposed to move forward.

When I remarried eight months after Robert died, people noticed. Some were worried, some were shocked, and some pulled away entirely. I lost friends and alienated parts of Robert’s family. My own family stayed close, mostly because they could see how desperate I was to stop hurting.

That marriage didn’t work. I take responsibility for that. I wasn’t ready or healed; I was trying to solve grief with companionship, and that isn’t how grief works.

At the time, it made sense to me. I was raising a five-year-old who had just lost her father. I was exhausted and overwhelmed. I thought if I could give her a stable male presence quickly, maybe the damage wouldn’t run so deep; maybe we could both feel steadier.

Looking back, I can see what I was really doing. I wasn’t moving forward so much as trying to outrun the pain. I wanted the ache to quiet down. I wanted the fear to ease. I wanted someone to stand between me and the loneliness.

None of that makes me proud. But it does make me honest.

Over the years, I’ve noticed how differently remarriage is received depending on who is doing it. Widowers who remarry quickly are often met with understanding. People say they miss being married; that they loved deeply; that companionship makes sense for them.

When women do the same thing, the reaction is often sharper. The timeline becomes something to explain or defend. I don’t think most people mean harm by this - I think it reveals how uncomfortable we are with grief that doesn’t follow expectations.

The deeper issue has nothing to do with gender. Quick remarriage isn’t about strength or weakness; it isn’t about loyalty or betrayal. It’s often about wanting the pain to stop.

Grief has a way of narrowing your vision. It convinces you that relief is the same thing as healing. That having someone beside you will make the emptiness easier to carry. That if you can just stabilize the outside of your life, the inside will catch up.

In my case, it didn’t. I brought someone into a space that was still raw and bleeding. I expected him to provide safety and steadiness I hadn’t yet learned how to give myself. That wasn’t fair to him, and it wasn’t fair to my daughters, who had to watch another relationship end.

I don’t tell this story to warn anyone or to draw lines around what’s acceptable. I tell it because I wish I had understood my own motivation better at the time. I wasn’t choosing love, I was choosing relief.

There’s a difference.

If you’re grieving and thinking about dating or remarrying, I’m not here to tell you what to do or when to do it. Grief doesn’t follow timelines, and neither does love, but it can help to pause and ask yourself what you’re reaching for.

In my case, I wasn’t ready for a new life. I was trying to quiet the one that hurt.

That realization came later, with time and perspective. It didn’t undo the choices I made, but it did help me understand them with more compassion, for myself, and for others who make similar decisions while they’re hurting.

Grief distorts judgment. It narrows your focus to whatever promises relief in the moment. Understanding that now doesn’t change what I did then, but it helps me look back on that time without beating myself up.

I think that’s what often gets missed when people judge how quickly someone moves forward. The focus stays on the timeline, or on what it looks like from the outside, instead of on what’s driving the choice underneath. We read meaning into speed and assume it says something about love, loyalty, or character, when more often it says something about how much someone is hurting.

It took me years to forgive myself for that detour because I kept measuring it against what it looked like to other people instead of what it came from. Time gave me enough distance to see it more clearly, and enough grace to stop punishing myself for trying to survive a season that nearly broke me.

If you find yourself looking back at choices you made while you were hurting, try to remember the version of you who made them. She wasn’t reckless or disloyal or weak, she was overwhelmed and doing whatever she could to just keep going.

Survival doesn’t always look wise in hindsight, but it is still survival. Sometimes the kindest thing you can do for yourself is to stop demanding that your past self should have known what only time could teach.

With Grace for the Mess,

~Stef