Perhaps Love is...

Today I visited a blog of a reader who was going through the same stuff as I am - only her husband is still alive but left her for another woman. She had moved on and is happy with her new found love.

After reading it, I was also encouraged to talk about my own romantic predicament in the hope that maybe it will inspire other widow like me.

YES, I have found another love, while still loving my late husband. So how can these two lovers reside together in my heart? Is loving again worth the effort of having to adjust to another person? And is widowhood the proper time to fall in love again?

My ongoing relationship and bond to Ken and his family is a central aspect in my life. I don't want to lose them. Now, I have to cope not merely with the new situation of loving two men at the same time, but also with the shift in the way I have loved Ken. I am torn between a physical companion who provides active support and love to one who is no longer alive and cannot be active in my life.

I will always love and miss my Ken. It's really hard to understand sometimes how I can go from tears for him into smiling and thinking of my new guy. There's an odd divide. I love both of them, one here and one gone. It seems that we are blessed with a heart that is very flexible and can accommodate various people at the same time.

However, this new love is different.

I knew things would be different because he is not Ken. But I didn't know that love would feel different.

And so as we became more serious and had deeper feelings for one another, I started to worry. A lot.

I questioned myself and my feelings because this did not feel the same. I wasn't experiencing the feelings that I had 3 years ago. I wasn't feeling that I was falling more in love with him each day. I wasn't feeling that my heart would burst from how much love I had for him. I didn't wake up each morning almost counting the hours until we talk online. So I wondered if I truly loved him.

I stressed a lot over this, not wanting to give up on the relationship, but wondering if I was being fair to him if this truly wasn't love. It's hard to express how much pain I was in. He loved me a lot, but although I was not sure that it was love for me, I am not willing to stop seeing him. I thought I was being selfish. Or worse... maybe I was settling.

And then I began to realize that the way I was loving this second time was "normal". And that I had to let go of my expectations. How could this love feel the same as my love for my dead husband? I was a stranger in town when I met Ken and he made me feel comfortable. We did not worry about money. He was retired. We had time. We had freedom. We had only each other. And we had a long future ahead of us, or so I thought. Four years later, I have a dead husband. I have to make practical decisions on my own. I have a scarred heart. I felt alone.

Love after love will not feel the same. But that doesn't mean that it's not love.