“I became a widow at 29 and what I discovered in my husband’s affairs left me speechless”

Grieving the loss of a loved one is an obstacle course, but it is sometimes fraught with obstacles that we did not expect. A woman has opened up about her struggles to understand her ex who named his new child after their deceased baby. Nathalie Marquay says she is not ready to meet someone. And this candidate Love is in the meadow revealed that he found himself a widower with two children at 35.

This young writer became one at only 29 years old, but she is not the “classic” widow according to her. Because her marriage was failing (they had married very young), and she made discoveries after his death that changed her sadness into anger. In the HuffPostRobyn Woodman looks back on her story, which took a surprising turn when she went through her husband’s belongings…

A not “classic” widow tells her story

Seven months after his death, Robyn is at a concert with her boyfriend when she meets the disgusted look of her husband’s best friend. For fear that he might hurt her, she doesn’t move. It takes a lot to disturb her these days, but the threatening look of her husband’s roommate, Tim, chills her. Drunk, he seems perplexed and angry. For him, she is a young widow having fun with another man. But the reality is quite different. The statute “It is complicated” on Facebook is far from even accounting for its situation.

She explains that she shouldn’t have said “Yes” to Max to marry her, that they had started couples therapy and that she had a feeling that they would not resist another “storm”. Oceanic metaphors come to mind when she thinks about her marriage. It must be said that her husband died in a scuba diving accident, when he was one of the most respected professionals in the profession, at only 30 years old. She feels “trained” underwater, people floating around her… She tries to keep herself busy because the danger is in “theat break” of the day. But if she shares this feeling with the other widows, she is part of another, less “attractive” club...

Grief “complicated” by the discovery of secrets

Because when a marriage comes to an end, whether because of divorce or death, “secrets resurface”. In his case, it only took him six weeks to discover them. Until then, she felt ashamed and sad for having doubted their marriage. She had even wondered if their marital problems had distracted him underwater. And she felt guilty that she was almost relieved to escape a terrible divorce. Then she learned that Max was cheating on her “from the moment we first said hello to each other”. Even after their marriage, he continued: “he continued his prolific love life. All this without my knowledge”. It was a friend who taught him, after asking him: “What if I found out something bad about Max. Like, really bad. Would you like to know?”.

She dug through his phone, saw his photos, his emails, and pieced together his timing and “the orchestration of a social life” which she was not aware of. His mourning becomes “complicated”, in the words of his therapist: “The chasm between the grieving experience I was having and the grieving experience most people thought I was having was vast.”. She fed her anger with every detail discovered, every new woman. But the adage is that one should not speak ill of the dead, erasing the imperfections of the deceased and the feelings of those who remain. Humiliated at having been deceived and out of respect for Max’s family, she only talks about it to those close to her. Her husband remained on his pedestal but “if it worked for them, it came at a price for me”. She began to feel intense nausea and vomit a lot, the truth lingering in the back of her throat.

The difficult status of a widow

But when she sees Tim judging her, she decides to change things. Whether he knew about her friend’s infidelities and didn’t care or whether he ignored them, she preferred to leave and received support from her boyfriend, who knew nothing of the situation but stood up. After this evening, she is not comfortable with the idea of ​​going out for several months. “It’s as if the right to happiness [d’une veuve] was dead with our spouses, and if we try to resurrect him too soon, we are stigmatized”, summarizes Robyn. She ended up gathering her courage, breathing deeply when she was anxious, to go out again.

Now aged 42, she looks back on the young woman she was without judgment.I was doing my best”. She even realizes what she faced, the internal and external pressures. “I have a lot of love and forgiveness for my younger self, and a lot of gratitude; without her I wouldn’t be where I am todayhappily remarried and (above all) freed from oceanic metaphors”. An atypical journey and a unique vision of the status of a widow.

Editor for Aufeminin since 2022, Charlotte is passionate about cinema, French and international, and a fortune reader. Curious about everything, she talks as much about personalities as…