How Can You Be Jealous of a Dead Man?

Hi loves,

Sometimes I come across something online that lingers with me long after I’ve scrolled past. Recently on Threads, I read a man’s post about dating a widow. She told him that when she passes away, she wants to be buried with her late husband. His reaction? He ended the relationship, saying he felt like staying with her would make him a “simp,” because in his eyes, she wasn’t “over” her husband.

As a widow myself, I don’t see it that way at all.

When you commit your life to someone, when you stand before them and the world and vow to walk together—through joy, through struggle, through everything in between—that connection doesn’t dissolve with death. Losing a spouse doesn’t erase the love, the memories, or the life that was built. For many of us, choosing to be buried with our partner is not about clinging to the past—it’s about preserving the bond that defined so much of who we are.

That doesn’t mean we’re incapable of moving forward or opening ourselves to love again. It doesn’t mean we’re trapped in grief, or that healing hasn’t begun. It simply means that love and grief are companions we carry for the rest of our days.

For me, I still carry my husband with me every single day—in my spirit, in my decisions, in the way I love my children and grandchildren, in the way I move through the world. If he is that present with me in life, why wouldn’t I want to remain connected with him in the afterlife? Wanting that eternal connection doesn’t diminish my ability to love in the here and now—it simply honors the depth of the love I already had.

And truthfully, how can you be jealous of a dead man? It’s odd. Any man who comes into my life now must understand that he has big shoes to fill—not because he is competing with a ghost, but because I know what it is to be loved fully, without reservation. I know that care can be reciprocated, that devotion can be steady, and that pain is not synonymous with love. I carry that knowing forward.

If I’m honest, when I picture my own passing, I imagine being cremated and placed with my husband. That feels right to me, because he was my home, my forever. But does that mean I cannot welcome new love into my life here and now? Absolutely not. Healing and loving are not mutually exclusive.

I think what’s often misunderstood is the idea that widows and widowers must somehow “get over” the person they lost in order to be truly available to someone else. That’s not how grief works. We don’t “get over” our person. We integrate the loss into who we are, we learn to live with it, and sometimes we even build new love alongside it. Both can exist. Both are real.

So when I read stories like this, I wonder if the discomfort comes less from the widow’s truth and more from society’s inability to accept that love doesn’t fit neatly into categories of past and present. We want to believe that moving forward requires erasing what came before. But for those of us who have lived through this kind of loss, we know that’s not true.

We don’t forget. We don’t stop loving. And that doesn’t make us broken or unavailable—it makes us human.

💭 What do you think?

Can love for someone we lost and love for someone new exist side by side? Do you believe connection with our person ends at death—or does it live on in ways we carry, honor, and even choose for eternity?

Thank you for reading and holding space with me. If this resonated, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments—I’d love to hear how you hold love and loss in your own life.

With love,

Jennifer ✨