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Widower Risk Factors – Part One
By Fred Colby on January 2, 2025
This is the first of two blogs on this topic. Part Two will deal with solutions to each of the following issues.
There are several major risk factors faced by Widowers during their first year of grieving. Any of these can lead to life-threatening mental and physical health issues. Many, if not most of us (including me), have or will experience them at some point in our grief journey.
These risk factors often feed off each other and will intensify or aggravate the others. Fixing one does not necessarily diminish the others. Just knowing that these issues are common to many of us can help you to gain confidence and begin to address them.
Here is a brief review of the most common risk factors we encounter:
1. Isolation: It is normal for anyone grieving the loss of a loved one to self-isolate at first while processing their grief. Women tend to have more close friends who will call, stop by, email and embrace their friend while supporting them. Men on the other hand are usually lucky if they can name 2 or 3 close friends, and these friends may be uncomfortable and ill-equipped to provide the same type of support for their friend.
2. Loneliness: While this can result from isolation, you can be in a crowded room and still be lonely. After losing your wife, the person who gets you and who can finish your sentences, you will feel lonely like you never have before. You can be at work and still feel that you are alone.
3. Loss of close friends: A frequent consequence of losing you wife is that your “couples’ friends” may no longer feel comfortable inviting you to their home either alone or even as part of a group. The same may be true of some family members and work mates.
4. Guilt: It is normal to have some guilt for real or imagined failings during your marriage or wife’s illness. These will chase you both day and night, leading to other risk factors such as self-condemnation settles in and distracts you from healing.
5. Regrets: It is also normal to have many regrets after losing a spouse. These differ from guilt in that regrets are more along the line of:
• I wish we had spent more time together.
• I should have worked less and spent more time at home.
• Why did we save all that money and not use it to enjoy life more?
These can pop up out of the blue, such as when you are on a trip and regretting that she could not accompany you.
6. Anxiety: Unlike regrets, anxiety is worrying about your future. What will I do? How do I survive? Will my friends and family desert me? Can I afford to maintain the lifestyle we became accustomed to? Will anyone love me again? There are an infinite number of questions you can dwell upon without getting any real answers, and they often contribute to the ongoing cycle of self-doubt and fear.
7. Anger: We often can sink into an ongoing cycle of being angry with everything including:
• doctors who could not save her, and the
• hospital for denying care, and the
• illness that tormented her until her passing, and even
• God for not saving her.
Dwelling on this anger can become obsessive and lead to striking out at others and may eventually drive them away from you. It also can interfere with your ability to heal and to remember all the good things about her.
8. Lack of Sleep: Dwelling on any or all of the above can lead to many sleepless nights. For an extended period, I was fortunate when I got two hours of sleep a night. This in turn aggravates all other problems and makes it even more difficult to pull out of this cycle of pain and grief.
9. Alcohol & Drugs: Too often we turn to alcohol or drugs in an attempt to self-medicate our way out of grief. However, often this only aggravates other symptoms, including the lack of sleep.
10. Hallucinations: The lack of sleep can lead to hallucinations. Your brain needs rest, and the lack of it can cause it to malfunction. Hallucinations, strange dreams, forgetfulness, misreading signals from others (especially women), and self-doubts can diminish your ability to make good decisions and lead to irreparable damage to your relationships.
11. Financial Insecurity: All too many of us will find ourselves in financial difficulties after losing a spouse. The causes can include medical bills, loss of income, inexperience with managing the bank accounts, claims of children or in-laws on your assets, or even natural disasters. This pressure can lead to stresses that aggravate other problems.
12. Physical health issues: All these issues are likely to impact your mental and physical health. Over 60% of us have a major medical issue crop up during the first year after becoming a widower. This can range from hernias, to prostate cancer, to dietary issues, and even heart problems.
13. Depression: The ultimate mental health issue we often experience is depression. Grieving is natural, depression is not. You do not have to accept depression as a part of your life. You can confront it and pull out of it. I think we all at some point feel that we might be falling into it. This is natural.
If you find yourself trapped in a repeating cycle of these issues, there are solutions.
Widower Risk Factors – Part Two (to be published in two weeks) will offer some perspectives on and suggested solutions to these issues.3
©2024 Fred Colby, All rights reserved.
