Originally published June 12, 2026 for our weekly Issue of Mindful Intelligence Advisor. Subscribe to get weekly issues.
By Bill Collier, Publisher
This Final Thought is both for the widow and widower struggling with what they might want to do next, as well as for the friends and family of those widows and widowers. We all have different paths, wants, needs, experiences that will calibrate us differently in response to losing our spouse. Those different calibrations are not more or less righteous in their differences.
This is my journey, so far, into widowerhood. – Bill Collier
I’m noticing people who have lost a spouse around or after the time I lost Dora, and most are dating, remarried, or looking. It seems a common feeling is that they miss their spouse, specifically, but someone to share their life with, generally. Many seem to feel a need to rectify this and find love again.
I think maybe that’s a natural feeling.
For me, grieving Dora started years before she died. By the mid-2020s, the Dora I loved was mentally very limited and by the late 2020s she was medically deranged. She would see people who weren’t there and act out in ways she wouldn’t have had she been in her right mind.
This was during the pandemic, so we didn’t get a real diagnosis until March 1, 2021, which was this: late development of early onset Alzheimer’s, which likely began to take effect, to the point Dora couldn’t work, in August 2015, when she appeared to have a stroke.
I say all that to say that for several years I was with Dora, but she was only with me on a limited basis. We could not truly live as husband and wife. So, I was feeling grief but had to focus on her care. My own grief mostly got set aside.
I learned to care for things she used to handle, whether I did them myself or paid for others to do them. While I am still struggling in my effort to replace her work with my own, I keep getting a little better every month, but I have a long way to go to achieve her level of excellence.
I lived daily a semi-solo life. I used to call it a sort of gray widowerhood, because in most aspects I was already a widower. But I couldn’t “move forward” and even think of being with someone else. So, I used special techniques I learned many decades ago, where I trained my brain, using association, to not be attracted to women in general.
I did this intentionally. While it was not easy, I eventually got to where I am now. I can see a woman’s beauty just as I might see a flower or a sunset, but rarely is there ANY sexual stimulation.
I am happy in my own skin. I enjoy my own company. I do feel the very real presence of God in my heart giving me peace and comfort. I genuinely do not normally feel alone, although I have moments, and I still yearn for Dora. It feels like a homesick feeling.
But I just don’t feel, currently, a general need for companionship. I have people, I have my dog, and, most importantly, I have Jesus Christ.
Dora and I used to say that it would be unhealthy for either of us to say, “I could not live without you“, because Jesus Christ is enough for each of us, and for us together.
I now know she was afraid of losing me before she died. I have diaries I’ve not fully gone through because it still feels like a violation of her privacy. Yet I know I need to go through them, and I know she would want me to.
Through her diaries, I expect to find lessons and early signs that can help with early detection and caring for a person with Alzheimer’s. I believe I have already found early signs of Alzheimer’s in her frustrations with memory that could help others get the early help my wife never received.
From what I have read, she was both afraid of having to live without me and worried about me making it without her.
(Well, Dora, I’m pushing forward and sharing your story, per you wishes, and my journey in all of this, also per your wishes. Jesus Christ is still enough for me, even without you, but that doesn’t mean my heart has stopped being homesick for the home you and I made as US.)
For now, I remain open to every possible outcome ordained by God; but for me the key is that, as with the marriage I lost first to Alzheimer’s and permanently through Dora’s passing, that this marriage be ordained by God and not merely by my desires alone.
Now, I’m not saying this is the only approach, nor that wanting to find someone because you are alone is a bad thing. However, for me, I would need to know in my spirit that if I were to engage in romance it is because God ordained it.
I am thankful that I do not seem to feel as lonely as I see many other widows and widowers have become, and I feel for them, and support their choices to seek or find love again.
I am different than them, but not qualitatively or righteously. Sometimes my choice to not actively pursue remarriage is viewed by others, even widowers and widows, as a judgment against those that make that choice.
I miss Dora to the point of aching, though I do not let that become my governor. I pursue many interests and many relationships with family and friends, but I do NOT feel lonely for female companionship.
I do not pray, “God please give me a second marriage.” If that is your hope that prayer is appropriate for you.
My prayer is, “God, lead me and give me courage and wisdom to walk the path you set before me, regardless of where it leads or how it goes, whether to remain a solo traveler or to be with someone chosen by you, but let my love for YOU inspire me rather than my own desire.”
Again, this isn’t a prescription for everyone nor a judgement on anyone who takes a different approach. To find a husband or wife is a good thing, even after you have become a widow or widower, and no one should second-guess you (outside of uncommon exceptional circumstances).
I think there are pitfalls and dangers associated with such loss. But aside from that, I think the fact many widows and widowers I have met seem to want another love or have found another love, shows that it’s natural to want that; and yet a significant minority have remained solo travelers like me for the rest of their lives.
I just met a guy whose father lost his wife, this man’s mom, after a 3-month battle with cancer. He has remained single for 14 years and has never felt the desire to find love again.
For him his marriage was already perfection in his heart, and he has had his fill of love, in a good way. Maybe things will change for him, and maybe they might yet change for me.
I’m only 19 months in but I identity more with that guy than the ones who remarry. Unlike him, I am OPEN to whatever may come. I’m not by any means opposed to such possibilities. But I’m also content where I am and would be for the rest of my life if being solo is God’s path for me.
I cannot and will not call myself single. I am factually “single,” but it feels wrong, like it erases 33 years of marriage. But I’m not married either. I’m a solo widower and I’m content with that, despite the pain of grief that sometimes gets the better of me.
I haven’t changed my Facebook status to single because I don’t want to be approached. I put my ring back on because I was approached by women, and it didn’t feel right to me.
Maybe that will change one day. Like I said, I am open to that possibility. I remember before I was married all I wanted was to find someone and get married, and I enjoyed the journey of “looking“, though God in His humor arranged my marriage supernaturally.
The person He chose was Dora, and she was NOT on my radar. She was way out of my league anyway, so I never entertained romantic thoughts about her.
I remember it was fun and exciting to meet women and think, “could she be the one?” Everyone enjoys the hunt!
But while I remember that with fondness, I do not feel those things at all now. Perhaps 33 years of marriage and the difficult and long “goodbye” have affected me in this way. Having made a strong habit of not allowing myself to indulge in such desires or feelings, they have become dull, rarely surfacing now. Though I cannot say I’m without such desires, they’re just very brief and very infrequent.
Proverbs talks about David who said, “I have made a pact with my heart not to look on a maiden (unmarried adult woman) with lust.”
This is a formula to me, the idea that I can train my heart and mind not to look on a woman with lust. When I see a beautiful woman now, it is like a sunset or a beautiful classic 53’ Buick Riveria convertible, not a potential lover!
I feel kind of liberated because being free of such feelings allows me to interact with women I know and meet without an agenda other than the matter plainly before us. I have met only a few women who I would say I have some attraction to in the abstract, but the desire to be alone is stronger than those desires.
Dora and I used to make sure our “needs” were met for intimacy, but at some point she became non compos mentis, and thus unable to give consent. This was a difficult moment, because my desire did not die with that loss of consent.
I had to restrain myself, which meant suppressing this need and making it a want until it became little more than occasional background noise.
When you train your brain not to allow your desire for your wife to have salience, it has an even more profound effect on how you view women that are not your wife. As of this writing, my desire for my wife is still there, though in the background of my being. My desire for other women has receded even more.
I wonder how people who have lost their spouse to early onset Alzheimer’s feel about these things after finally becoming a full-fledged widow or widower. I suspect some who have had a deep and wonderful marriage before Alzheimer’s may feel more like I do, and some may yet have faith they can experience that same type of deep and wonderful marriage again.
For me, I pray that whatever follows in my life is the manifestation of God’s sovereignty over my life. Let it be that guide that determines if I will be with someone or remain celibate, “married” to God alone.
God’s presence within me is enough. Sexual feelings just don’t enter my thoughts like they used to, and the few times they do it is easy for me at this point to dismiss them. It is not out of a sense of guilt; it is simply that the fruit of my former intentional habit of being has now become my natural habit of being.
It is perfectly good to have and pursue desire, righteously. But for me, I find no satisfaction in such pursuits. For now.
Unless and until God intervenes, I will continue to pursue the solo-widower life.
For the Christian, there is no mandate from God on what to do after your spouse dies, so there is no reason to judge the one who chooses to remarry OR the one who doesn’t.
As a solo widower I get plenty of “encouragement” from people (mostly the ones who do not have a close fellowship with me) to get out there and get married because, to them, it would be “good for you.”
I hope what you take away from this is that, as a widow or widower, embrace your individual path, come what may from your friends and family around you, some of which might want to shame you for remarrying, and some that want to shame you for NOT remarrying.
And for the friends and family of widows and widowers, give us the space to find our way mostly ourselves, with input and council, but not judgment.
