Im a Widow Ill Marry Again
The Urban Widow: 'I Realized I Didn't Want to Marry Once again'
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March sixteen, 1979
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Section A , Folio
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That attitude, expressed in a recent interview, is still not the norm, but it is also non unusual. Many widows no longer regard remarriage as a priority, and a surprising number accept not only accepted the render to single life, but accept chosen to remain in information technology.
"A certain liberty has come into my life," said Sally Pepper, one of the few widows interviewed who agreed to the use of her name. "I've found that I have the power to make decisions, and information technology's given me a whole new sense of self."
Mrs. Pepper was left a widow when she was in her 50's. In the ensuing seven years, she has acquired a new, smaller flat, a new prepare of friends, a new human relationship with her grown sons, and a steady boyfriend.
Her sons, she said, had urged her to showtime her new life.
"They were very encouraging, they would say 'you lot can do this, why don't you try that." she recalled. "They told me to expand my mind, acquire to exist lone, and I did."
She noted that, "for whatever the reasons," her friends had inverse.
"When my husband died," she said, "they invited me alone, simply after several times, you
The woman, in her mid‐40'southward, had been married 22 years when her husband died. Information technology had been a happy wedlock, with no stirring of revolt. She had never raised the bailiwick of a career exterior the habitation, and her husband had never encouraged it. The years went past pleasantly, with no more than a minimal twinge of regret, a faint stirring of curiosity at what might have been.
She is an attractive woman, in many ways more seductive looking now than she was as a college girl. In that location are exclamations of genuine surprise when new acquaintances discover that she has a daughter in graduate school. The girl, for some years, had been slightly impatient with what she called her mother's passivity.
"Don't yous want something more than out of life?" she would ask, and her mother would reply, quite honestly, that she didn't.
After a decent interval of mourning, friends began asking the woman to dinner, or to the club. There was e'er an extra man, the kind who used to be called eligible. The woman enjoyed their company, until they became serious.
"I realized that I didn't want to many once again," she said "It came as a daze to me because it wasn't that I was comparison everyone to my belatedly husband, and that none of them measured upwards, just that I only didn't want to exist tied to anyone. " experience something is missing. Somehow or other, the whole thing peters out, and by that time, you've met others and when you yourself plan a dinner party, your listen goes to single people y'all've met — widows, widowers, divorced couples, career people who have never been married."
"I'll never get married again," Mrs. Pepper said. "I like my life. I like my own apartment, I travel with my friend, we're invited to the same parties, we relish the aforementioned things, merely marriage wouldn't give me anything I demand. My sons find my friend charming and pleasant, and they're happy almost my life."
Several Factors Of import
Mrs. Pepper agreed with other widows, in various historic period groups, that the decision to remain unmarried was considerably eased by several factors.
One of the principal ones was residence in a large city, with the availability of choice in different social grbups and life styles. Economic independence was seen as another essential, as was the absence of young children.
"If you're worried about money, or a family groundwork for young children, there's certainly much more of an inclination to remarry," said a 39-twelvemonth-old adult female who was left a pocket-size fortune, and whose merely child has a life of her own.
The woman continued: "It'southward impossible to say that i won't get married over again, but hope I don't. The time now Is exactly low-cal for a single woman and I think remarriage for me would be a error. When you live in a big city, you tin lead just near any kind of life y'all wish, and so long as you are discreet."
She had found, she said. that her genuine liking for, and friendship with, women throughout her life, had been an immense plus after her husband'due south death.
"Women, whether they remain at home or they have a career, usually arrange a couple'due south social life," she said. "My women friends like me, only they too know me well enough to know that I'thou no threat to their marriage. I know other widows, specially bonny ones, who are virtually ostracized by one-time friends because they are seen every bit threats."
Several older widows, women in their 50'due south and 60's, said frankly that they had spent considerable time nursing their husbands before their decease, and that they didn't wish to go through such an experience again.
"It's still the usual blueprint to ally an older homo and with age the chances of illness increase," said one of them. "I don't desire to spend the rest of my life as a nurse. With my husband, it was quite different ‐we had been married 35 years, nosotros shared a lifetime of ex- periences and emotions, of happiness besides as pain. When he became ill, I wanted to look after him."
Remarriage Not a Priority
Although the interviews, all conducted with widows in New York, indicated that interest in remarriage had waned primarily in the 45and‐over age group, some younger women, particularly those without children and with careers, said that another marriage was non priority.
"I've reversed myself since my higher days," said an attractive widow in her early 30'due south, who kept on with her career throughout her matrimony, merely does have a 10-yr-old child.
"I always wanted to work, but I never idea of not getting married," she said. "If my husband had lived, I'yard sure our matrimony would have remained a skilful 1, but he died and things have changed. Maybe I'll remarry, just I'm certainly non looking for information technology, I have a lot of friends and I'm not agape of facing life as an individual, rather than every bit one-half of pair."
The widow with the pocket-size fortune might well accept summed up the thoughts of a number of those interviewed.
"Marriage is lovely," she said. "Just I've enjoyed but about as much every bit I can stand."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/1979/03/16/archives/the-urban-widow-i-realized-i-didnt-want-to-marry-again-several.html
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