Woman Wonders If She's Being 'Dramatic' By Being Creeped Out By Friend's Husband Asking Her Out Just Days After His Wife's Passing
At first, it seemed like he was asking for friendship, but then his motive became clear.
Ekateryna Zubal/Shutterstock.com; via Canva Pro The grief and shock of an untimely death can make us do strange things — especially when you've just lost your spouse.
But one recently widower dad's reaction to his wife's recent passing has left people in his life shocked, particularly his wife's dear friend.
In a post to the "r/TrueOffMyChest" subreddit, she described what went down and how it has left her deeply uncomfortable.
The dad came onto his late wife's friend just days after his wife's passing.
The woman writes in her Reddit post that her interaction with her friend's husband seemed strange right from the start.
She says he hit her up on his wife's Snapchat account to tell her to call him.
She was of course shocked by the news, and once she was done crying, he asked if they could be friends.
She of course agreed, but then things took a turn for the worst.
The dad said out of nowhere that he would wait until two months after his wife's death to begin dating.
She found his two-month dating rule strange in and of itself, but then he told her that they "can still hang out" despite the rule.
"Weird but ok," she wrote.
But then he began asking "what he should do with the kids so we can hang out together."
She writes that she started "getting weird vibes," so she ended the call.
The dad then created a special Snapchat account to contact her again and has been hounding her to get together with him.
The friend says the dad is "now nonstop messaging me asking when we can hang out," which she finds shocking.
"Your wife just f--king died dude!" she writes, adding, "I was friends with her for longer than you guys even knew each other."
Particularly given that he has two small kids who just lost their mother, she feels "the last thing [he] should be doing is asking about my dating life."
Of course, the dad is surely in extreme distress given the trauma he has just suffered, but the woman can't help but feel there's something off about this.
"Am I being dramatic or is this weird?," she asked her fellow Redditors.
Commenters on Reddit agreed that while the dad's behavior is understandable given his grief, she's right to feel uncomfortable with it.
Many wondered if, in addition to his grief, the dad might be panicking about having to raise his kids alone.
One user wrote, "gotta find a new wife to help take care of the kids... It's more common than you think."
Another person theorized, "he's trying to line someone up for 2 months from now when he feels it will be okay to date openly in front of his kids."
"He'll marry as quickly as he can," they added, "he can't handle his household alone."
One Redditor shared a similar experience from their own life.
"My dad did that. Mom was his first wife's kids' babysitter after she suddenly died," they wrote. "Met and married mom within a few months. He loved us all but yeah, needed someone to watch the kids."
And several referenced a recent TikTok, seen below, in which a man remarried just four months after his wife died in childbirth, and his new wife claimed their baby as her own.
But nearly everyone agreed that this situation was potentially disastrous regardless of the dad's grief and anxiety.
"The sad thing is there are some women who would run to him with eyes wide open, and ignore the glaring red flag of a man looking to replace his wife two months after she died," one person wrote.
Some were downright creeped out by the situation.
"This has future episode of 20/20 on ID written all over it," one person wrote, while another simply added, "please block the husband."
Another urged a kinder but firmer approach.
"You need to set very clear boundaries," they wrote. "He’s relying on you being too kind during his time of need to tell him to f--k off. You can still tell him to knock this s--t off with grace."
Experts agree that the recent widower dad's focus should be totally on his kids and that dating should wait.
In 2019, UK-based psychotherapist Toby Ingham told YourTango that many children's first instinct when their parent dies is to grieve in silence, and they urgently need to see their parents grieving too.
"Children tend to take their lead from their parents," he told us. "If [they] can let them see that [they] are sad, upset and struggling...it can help them."
Even more important, Ingham says, is that surviving parents "take advantage of opportunities to miss their [child's] parent together. It really helps with the grieving process."
And as for future plans — like, say, getting remarried, Ingham says "developing a new future without the parent" is important, but that parents should "take it one day at a time" to allow their children space to grieve their parent.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.