Dating : I Will Probably End Up Being Alone the Rest of My Life and I am Okay with That

My partner died in November 2018. In the seven months that he has been gone, I’ve been told by several people that I’m still young enough to find someone else. People, please, I am begging you, never ever tell a grieving person that they can find a replacement. The first time someone said it to me, I had to restrain myself from asking them if they’d tell a parent who had lost their child that they were still young enough to have another. In hindsight, I realize they probably would.

Look — -just don’t do it. Don’t try to say something you think is helpful or uplifting. If you feel compelled to say something, say you are sorry for their loss.

After nearly two decades with him adjusting to being single again has been a bumpy ride. I do assume at some point that I will date again. Maybe even a female:

What I can’t ever picture myself doing is getting into a relationship again. I’m far too much of a coward.

I said we were together almost 20 years, but the first 12 of those were intensely difficult.

We were both raised by emotionally abusive manipulative mothers. To say that we had issues would be an understatement. Many of our personal issues mirrored each other but trying to work through those with one another was sometimes a case of the blind leading the blind.

When you both have the same deficits there is not one strong partner to compensate. That made finding a good healthy balance difficult. It may have been easier if we had different personal issues because then his strengths may have been my weaknesses and vice versa. We could have complemented each other and compensated for the missing parts of each other. Instead, we were both trying to struggle through the trust and boundary issues that a shitty mother leaves you with.

Those years the relationship was very off and on. In the early part there was a time when we were apart for more than a year. That was the longest separation and after that the off periods were not more than two or three months at a time. We always found our way back to each other though.

I don’t know what switch flipped for the last 8 years we were together. Our mothers both died during our relationship, but those were less cathartic than one might expect. I suspect that maybe we just both decided that we had battled for so long to be together we should just accept it and get on with it. There were no more off times during those years.

Then cancer came knocking and dragged him away.

The last few days I’ve been contemplating having another relationship. Not with anyone in mind, just theoretically and I realized that I have no intention of ever going through that pain again. Those first 12 years were incredibly painful. I don’t want to do that again. The walls that went up in my childhood to protect my emotions never came down. I opened a drawbridge and let him in. Only him.

What I’m going through now, with him gone, is even worse than the years we were finding our way. I never want to feel this again. I loved him and I would not trade my time with him for anything. But I will never set myself up to grieve another partner and feel this way again.

I’m done.

Alone is just fine.