I Didn’t Choose Out

My husband was the kind of unique that was gentle hearted with a twinkle of funness. I miss that with all my heart. I expect to think as highly about my next person and whatever makes him unique.

Grant was a star in this world that left us all far too soon, but I never cease to smile at the memories we made. I don’t ever want that previous joy to not be part of my life. Is that going to be okay with a new guy I choose? 

I don’t require my new guy to be Grant nor anything like him. But I do expect him to be great. I do expect him to be his own kind of amazing. I expect to look to my new guy with the new and improved me and love him and look up to him in new and improved ways. 

I didn’t choose out of my last relationship, but I am very consciously going to choose into my next one. It already exists as a higher love than I had before. Because, as I create the capacity to love again, I’m capable of more love now than I’ve ever been before.

My depth now is far greater. The thing about dating when you’ve lost a spouse is that you didn’t choose to leave them. Going into a new relationship is sometimes like there is a third person in your relationship.

The new partner can almost feel like they don’t have you to themselves. In reality there's not a third person in the relationship. At the same time, one of the things that I value and that’s always going to be important to me is that I love my dead husband. 

No matter who I am with or no matter what relationship I have in the future with a man, I’m always gonna love my husband. It’s one of the things I feel is hard for people to understand sometimes when you don’t choose out of a relationship.

Can a person that I engage in a relationship actually hold the space for that love to exist still while creating something new? Grant had a personality of efficiency, and that efficiency translated into his dating life before the king of random ever existed.

And one of the things he would do is what I like to call speed dating, Grant style. What he would do is he would personally call between 5 and 15 girls. He would be clear it was a group of us getting together.

He would invite maybe 2 or 3 other guys mostly, in my opinion, for comic relief.  At that date he would individually speak with all the girls and get to know all of them at the activity. This way he could kind of choose who he really wanted to ask out after.

This is how Grant did group dating. How do you think this technique would work for me now?