Relationships
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Re: Widowed and Confused
I think right now it's too soon for both of you. He's there because he's a good best friend to your husband and is looking out for you to make sure you are ok. Even if he has feelings for you he isn't going to act upon them because he feels like doing that would be betraying his friendship to your husband.
My advice is that right now you need to focus on you. You may want to consider going into counseling or at the least go to alanon to help deal with the issues of how your husband treated you. You need to do things to make yourself happy & rebuild a relationship with yourself and a new normal for you and your kids. I know they don't live with you anymore, but it's time to reconnect with them and build a new type of relationship with them. Take time to explore this new life & new freedom you have. The freedom being a life without living with an abusive alcoholic. Make a list of things you always wanted to do but couldn't or wouldn't do because of your husband. Write down things no matter how small or big they are from reading books on a regular basis, going to an art class or traveling to specific location.
So in the meantime, enjoy & appreciate the friendship you have with him. When you start exploring new things, if you want, invite him along occasionally, but make sure you do some things by yourself. The important thing now is to create a new & happy life for yourself. Once you are in a better place emotionally & more time has gone by, he may be willing to explore his feelings more for you. And heck, if he doesn't, you are out enjoying your life, and you never know who else you may meet along the way.
My life motto while I was single was live life doing things that made me happy. If I met someone while I was doing something I enjoyed, great, we have that thing in common. If I don't meet anyone, that's okay because I'm doing things that make me happy. I made some really good friends doing this. And I did meet my husband while doing one of the activities that make me happy.
Having this guy as a platonic friend, though, is a great idea.
I very strongly suggest counseling for yourself -- this is a pressure cooker that you were in; it isn"t good for you to not have somebody to talk to where you can offload how you feel --- you need to heal from a bad marriage.
Staying away from situations where you drink a bit too much is a good idea. Alcohol is a truth serum....plus you do not want to scare the guy off as a friend --- signs and signals? You may be interpreting them wrong.
Keep this gent int he mix for things like a movie night, somebody to talk to, for when you're invited somewhere and you'd like to have an "autodate" to attend with you.
moving from a bad marriage, then a death, and into a new relationship this quickly..... no, no, no, no, no.
There are a HOST of reasons why you need to spend time on YOU and YOU alone. You need counseling. You've got to deal w/ the abuse issues and with the decisions you made w/in your marriage, you need to deal with his death. And, again, you need to deal with YOU.
Now is not the time to get involved with this guy.
I'd tell him "thank you " for all his help but that right now, you need some space and time. Admit that you're confused. Admit that you may have spoken out of turn. And as such, you need to focus on you and you need ot not have him around so that you can focus on yourself.
If the feelings for your friend continue and are sincere, then time will not change that - and it will give you both a time to grieve your loss. S-L-O-W is the encouragement I would give you! By the way, a year and a half later... I married my church friend. I am praying for you as you go through this time.
Redsheart_7