This might not be the longest post – I have not done THAT much dating as a widow.  I don’t have many crazy stories.

My best friend, on the other hand, has the funniest dating stories.  I told her to start her own blog just about that!

Obviously I was not expecting to be dating as a widow in my forties.

I thought I was all done with that when I was 25 and met Howie.  But obviously things don’t always go as planned.

About a year after Howie died a friend called me and asked if I was ready to date.  Honestly, I hadn’t even thought about it. I was very busy and maybe a little obsessed with my girls and trying to do everything I could to make sure they were as ok as possible. Dating hadn’t been on my mind but my friend said she had “the perfect guy” for me, and she had been trying to wait until she thought I might be ready. I agreed to give him my number as long as she explained my situation to him. He called me right away and was very nice on the phone. He said that he understood he was going to be my “guinea pig”. We made a date to meet for dinner.

We met and he seemed great. Nice looking, easy to talk to, and we had a very good first date. He texted me a couple of days later and asked me out again.

I know about someone whose husband passed away (years before Howie). She had been set up on a blind date about a year after he died, and that was it – they fell in love, got married, and lived happily ever after (as far as I know). So I thought “could this possibly happen to me also?”.

The answer was no. I dated that guy for about three months.  Nice guy but in the end not for me. But it was a very good first dating experience.

The next one was the widower. My friend’s sister set me up with him. Coincidentally and sadly his wife passed away literally three days before Howie did. Sounded like we could be the perfect match.  We also had a great first date. And a bunch of great dates after that. We obviously had so much in common and so much to talk about. We helped each other out a lot. We understood each other’s situations.

But again, not the guy for me.

I never did the online dating thing. It never appealed to me. It is partially because I don’t have the time for it.

I know I am not easy to date – I am truly a single mom. My girls are old enough to be left alone now, but a few years ago they were too young and it was important for me to be around for them. Another problem is that I don’t have every other weekend and/or nights during the week to myself for dating like most divorced women do. I’m not being bitter about it – it’s just a fact of my life.

I have always said that I would “never say never” about online dating as a widow, but I have not done it.

I dated a few other guys along the way.  Some nice, some not so much. Good dates and bad dates.  A few funny stories – but nothing too crazy – I guess I can consider myself lucky for that.

Then there was the guy I met accidentally on my own a few years ago. A story with a lot of ups and downs, but I’m not quite ready to talk about that yet…

Stacy Feintuch

Stacy was a stay-at-home mom/part-time preschool teacher whose life was turned upside down in 2011 when her husband passed away suddenly of a heart attack.  She is raising her two fabulous daughters, now ages 18 and 20, who are turning into wonderful young women.  In 2016, she started a blog about her experience as a young widow, The Widow Wears Pink. This led her to write for other publications including Huffington Post, Today.com, Scary Mommy, Grown & Flown, Kveller, Modern Loss, Thought Catalog, and many more. In 2018 she started Living the Second Act with fellow writer Mimi Golub. Today, Stacy and her daughters  are happily living their “new normal” while always keeping her husband’s spirit alive.