After the death of a spouse, how long did people wait to get remarried?

RubaDub

I was on the phone with a long-time friend from my original congregation north of New York City and she told me that the 'shit hit the fan' when a brother (long-time elder I know well) got remarried about 6 weeks after his wife died.

He was about 60 and his new wife (a pioneer that I also know) was about 50 and had never been married.

It became a huge issue when the CO came. Due to all the talk and chatter in the congregation, he even included in one of his talks without naming names, that marriage is something sacred and that when and how people get married is a personal matter as long as it conforms to bible standards.

Anyway, it shut everybody up.

Any similar experiences in your current/former congregations?

Rub a Dub

Giordano

In a general sense one of two things can happen. A beloved mate passes away. It's a very difficult thing to get through. The greater the marriage the greater the loss. Dealing with that loss may take years and many people refuse to remarry.

On the other hand you can't stand the loss of your companion. You miss their company, the silly stuff, the laughter. You miss not having that person in your life. At some point you reach out and try to find companionship.

In the JW world, dating, spending quality time with a person alone can be difficult under the watchful eyes of the Elders and the congregation. The person this brother married may have been someone that he and his wife had known and liked for any number of years.

road to nowhere

Marriage can be a survival strategy, filling needs for both parties. An ailing mate can put a strain on the love ( I know). There may have been an attraction that was already there.

But learning about the ingrained ha its of someone else would be a challenge. Was this brother a hard nose? The 50 yo virgin speaks for itself

Tameria2001

That is one thing I don't miss - all the dam chatterboxes who don't know when to shut up and to keep their thoughts to themselves. Something very similar happened to my husband when we were engaged. At the time no one from his congregation with the exception of a couple of people knew who I was. It was so bad with the gossip that he was taken before a couple of his elders to ask if he was dating a "worldly" girl. Once he explained who I was and how we met, let's just say there was a few old nosey biddy bodies who found themselves in the hotseat.

a watcher

I knew an elder who remarried quickly after his wife died, but he had a young child who desperately needed a mother. He married a single sister who also had a young child, so it was a logical thing to do. They are still married after several decades.

joe134cd

6 weeks dose seem a bit of a short grieving process. One dose have wonder if something was perhaps going on before the former wife passed away. I feel it’s a bit disrespectful to the deceased.

FedUpJW

I knew a couple that "kindly" took in another young guy and provided him a place to live. The husband was killed in a logging accident and the wife married the live in boarder less then one month later. Of course I suspect they were mattress dancing before the husband was ever killed.

Pete Zahut

There was a young couple in a local congregation in our area and the father of the young wife, married the single mother of the young husband, a few months after his wife passed away. The young couple were very upset not only because the parents didn't wait a "respectable" amount of time, but this marriage, made them stepbrother and stepsister. The daughter was especially upset because she felt her father showed disrespect for the memory of her mother and it made it seem as if the older couple had something going on previously.

Loneliness is not fun to deal with but they say one should go through a complete grieving process before making any big decisions and marriage is one of them. To be sure that grief isn't influencing your common sense, the rule of thumb is to give yourself one months grieving time for every year that you were involved with the thing that you lost. ( ie wait 24 months after losing a spouse of 24 years of marriage)

2 years would be a long time to wait to remarry if you were suffering from loneliness, especially since dating for 2 years in the JW world, is so restricted.

Biahi

We had an elder in our hall with 3 kids, 2 grown, one in high school. His wife died of cancer. Within 6 months or so, he remarried, a young, single sister, very pretty, the same age as his kids (early twenties). He was loaded, I think that’s why she married someone old enough to be her father. I believe they are still married, he’s in his eighties.

LongHairGal

RUB A DUB:

There was always a lot of gossip that went on when older people were getting married - whether somebody had recently died or they just wanted to be together.

Some judgmental types wouldn’t attend a wedding because of “uneven yoking” or some other factor they felt fell short of theocratic. 🙄

I swear the Witnesses must think they are a panel of experts who have the right to judge!..I could see if it was a sixteen year old girl and a seventeen year old boy.. But, no, these were older people.

I’m not referring to atrocious stories where a man conspired to get rid of his unattractive wife. The Witness recipe was: ..man commits fornication, gets DFd and then Presto! comes back with the new Mrs. who is younger and prettier than the first wife.

Other than this, I never thought it was anybody’s business when two adults wanted to be together.

After the death of a spouse, how long did people wait to get remarried?

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