Which Is The Worst, Death or Divorce of your Spouse? In my case it was neither. Neither the death of my first wife or the divorce of my second produced any positive or negative financial consequences but did trigger Emotional Responses which are ongoing. I miss them both
I would think that death would be worse. If you get a divorce, the love must be gone. That wouldn't be true about death.
You don't believe then that a couple can still be in love with one another and still have aAmical (friendly) divorce.
Well, I've one been through only one of those, so I'll have to say "death". At least in a divorce you have time to see it coming. At 7:05 p.m., I was a wife; 10 harrowing minutes later, I was a widow. As the old commercial used to said, "Life comes at you fast." It also goes away even faster.
I surely don't anticipate it happening, but if my wife were going to leave me, I would certainly rather she do so alive than dead.
So far I have only experienced the divorce of a spouse...not the death of one. I can say though that in divorce you go through many of the same stages of grief that you do when someone dies. A marriage dying still brings pain, grief, and mourning...and it is worse if only one person really wants that divorce. So divorce is like death for many people...and some never get over the death of their marriage. And @Lon Tanner I actually understand that a couple can have a peaceful divorce and remain friends. My best friend has this with her ex. The story here was my best friend thought she never wanted to marry...but she likes to try everything...so she decided to try marriage too when she found a man who she really cared about and who she was very compatible with. My friend felt to confined though in a marriage and her spouse was really still in love with his first wife (no my friend did not cause his divorce from his first wife). So anyway, they both admitted their marriage was nice but not what they wanted to do together for the rest of their lives. They divorced on good terms and later he ended up marrying his ex again and my best friend has a great friendship with both of them to this day.
I would totally imagine death is way worse than divorce. I've been divorced and yes it was painful, although I was the one to instigate the procedure...but death is final and very often sudden and unprepared for...
I know what you mean. I was full-time caretaker to my wife of 42 years for about a year. Even though you know it is coming it still hits you like a ton of bricks. The same thing happened to me at the hospice facility in Auburndale Florida. One minute I was a husband and the next I was a single widower.
Happened the same way for me.... Ive never been divorced so don't know how that feels but I would rather lose someone that way than permanently through death.