“My gf [32F] wants me [35M] of 6 months wants me to take pictures of my deceased wife off of the wall.”
Backstory is I married my wife when I was 24 years old. She was diagnosed with stomach cancer when I was 29 and she was 31 and it was a life changing experience for me. About 6 months before that diagnosis we were considering divorce but after she was diagnosed things took a rapid 180.
We forgot all about the divorce, we tried to enjoy each others company and the more and more sick she got the more and more I did for her, some things which were things I never thought I could do like changing her bedpan and dirty sheets and keeping her at home for her to pass here peacefully.
It changed me as a human being and as much as I hate the experience I know that it turned me into a better person. I have become much more kind and patient since all of these things happen. I stopped being completely shallow and if I am being perfectly honest even my views on women changed because I wasn’t a good man back then and was emotionally very immature and selfish.
I still am not perfect but I do believe I treat people better than I ever did before and I don’t know why it took something that drastic to make me become a better person but I did.
Everything after she passed was a blur and I suffered miserably remembering some of the awful things I did and said to her, it was a typical grief process which I managed to find my way through even if I do still have some regrets and I do think about her a lot.
So skipping forward to about 9 months ago, a lady I used to work with started helping me with my son for a few hours a week. She needed some extra money and knew I was a single dad and she knew what happen with my wife because we worked together while all of these things happened.
I think she had intended to pursue me very soon afterwards and I wasn’t totally reluctant because I did start to develop feelings for her too, and we eased into a relationship which was very comfortable for me. I have been nicer to her than I ever was with my wife and a few months after she started helping me with my son we decided we’d like to be more than just friends.
I was completely okay with this but was always really honest about my feelings for my wife and the fact that I dont think I’ll ever want to remove her from my life or my son’s life. We moved in together about a month ago and she moved into my house, this house that my wife and I shared long before she ever came into the picture. My girlfriend has been wonderful to my son, she has been patient with me too.
She’s the first woman I’ve slept with since my wife died and the first woman I’ve wanted to be in a relationship with and as a single father I don’t really have the energy or desire to date around. She’s truly the only woman who has interested me enough to want to be in a relationship with her.
A few days ago I came home and the pictures of my wife that were on the mantle were not on it anymore and I asked her why she took them down. She said she bought some new art that she wanted to put there and I told her it wasn’t okay.
She got really upset with me and told me that I need to get out of this funk and that it’s been so long and since I was planning on divorcing my wife anyway it isn’t like there was anything to grasp onto anymore.
Then she said it bothered her that she moved into my house and that I won’t let her decorate or change it around at all and that’s not really true I just haven’t gotten around to thinking about completely changing my house around for her.
I don’t know what advice I’m seeking I guess I just want to know if it’s really that inappropriate to have pictures of my wife up when I have a new girlfriend. This is a first for me and I haven’t lived with anyone else or known how it works.
The pictures are all over the house in the living room, there are some on the refrigerator, there’s one in the dining room from our wedding day, my son has them in his room and I had some in my room but I put them away in a drawer after that because I can understand how it might be strange for her to be intimate in front of those pictures.
I don’t want to use my son as an excuse for holding onto my wife, but I do think we should keep the pictures up for him too and she understands that but says we could just keep them in his room. I am not sure if I’m out of line telling her no way will I take the pictures down because there will always be a part of me that loves my wife.
I didn’t word it like that to her but it feels like a silly thing to argue over and I don’t want to continue arguing over it. I am not trying to be insensitive to her feelings but I think she’s taking it too far by taking them down herself.
tl;dr: My girlfriend who I live with is upset that I have pictures of my deceased wife up around the house and wants me to take them down and I don’t know how to handle the issue.
This is what people had to say to OP:
_sharkattack said:
How old is your son? It’s really fast to be moving in with this lady after only 6 months together. For your son’s stability sake, you should be waiting at leaat that to introduce her as a gf, never mind be living together. And now she’s taken down pictures of your late wife without asking? This relationship sounds unhealthily rushed, and I hope your son doesn’t suffer as a result.
bugsdoingthings said:
That was hugely inappropriate of your GF. If she wanted the pictures to come down, she should have had a face to face conversation with you. You know, it’s a tough situation to navigate and if she was worried about her place in your life vs. your deceased wife, those are normal feelings to have.
But the way she handled it, just taking the pictures down without even talking to you about it, was hugely disrespectful and out of bounds. Grief doesn’t have a timetable. While yes, it’s generally a good idea to move forward with your life as best you can, other people don’t have the right to rush you along that process.
From your GF’s perspective, I do think it’s fair for her to wonder things like if she’s going to be playing second fiddle for the entirety of your relationship. But the way to address those concerns is to TALK, to communicate. If she’s unilaterally decreeing that You Must Be Over It Now, that is a big red flag.
And [deleted] said:
If this was just about you, maybe I could understand her position. But this is your son’s home too. There should be pictures of his mother there, since that will be the only place he’ll see them.
The next day, OP shared this update:
Because a lot of people have asked: no I didn’t get the pictures back and I don’t think I will. My sister in law has my wife’s dark room equipment and we want to make it a point to set it up and learn how to process some old negatives and I also have access to all of the negatives from the pictures my now-ex-girlfriend took. I can have them blown up again and even if they aren’t the originals I at least will have them.
I am going to try and keep this short. Last night really didn’t go well at all for any parties involved. My girlfriend got back and was very hostile towards me after I had asked her countless times what she did with the pictures. She interrogated me as to why I have the pictures in the first place accused me of doing dirty stuff with them (seriously that’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.)
She said I am being insensitive to her needs, I’m not meeting her needs, I treat her just as bad as I did my wife and that the pictures need to come down because she’s not comfortable with the fact that I look at them and have NSFW thoughts. Whoa.
No I wouldn’t do that with the pictures on the mantle, I do have some intimate photos of my wife stored away in my safe but haven’t touched them in years and the ones on the mantle are not something I’d even consider thinking about in that way.
I tried to compromise and offered her even another wall in the house if she would just put the pictures back and then offered to keep them in my safe where she doesn’t have to look at them (which I wouldn’t have really done most likely, but I wanted to see if she’d tell me where they were if I offered that.)
I’ve always been EXTREMELY honest about my feelings towards my wife and the fact that she will NEVER leave my life that when I married her I vowed to love her forever including in death, and she needs to accept it or get out.
I offered to buy her a hotel room for the night because I needed time to myself which she flipped out about and then said she was going to her friend’s house.
She texted me throughout the night telling me about what an awful human being I am so after she went to her friend’s house I invited over my sister’s wife who I haven’t talked to much lately because my girlfriend has been jealous of her in the past and I didn’t want to cause issues so I backed off.
My wife’s sister is very special to both my son and I. There’s NEVER been anything romantic between us. We’ve been platonic friends for a long time and if anything I view her as my own sister. When I was married we didn’t like each other at all because she was my wife’s best friend and they talked about everything including our marital issues.
After my wife died however she and I became best friends and I have no shame in this. She is a great role model to my son, my son loves her and in ways it’s like the two of them combined are this piece of my wife that I miss so much.
She looks a lot like my wife, so yes she is very beautiful which I think is part of why my girlfriend became jealous and part of why I understood why she didn’t want us to have a close relationship.
So I listened to her there and I still talked to her enough just to keep her in my son’s life but we stopped watching movies together or getting dinner or playing video games or doing any of the things that friends usually do together. So when she came over we decided to have a bottle of wine, turn on a movie, basically we did what we always did in the past.
We talked about my wife and what she’d be like now, what she’d think of all the cellphone cameras (wife loved photography), what she’d think of my girlfriend had we gone through the divorce and she was alive, what kind of mother she’d be to our son and what she’d think about his interest in robotics, we talked about giving him one of her old cameras.
Then inevitably we talked about my girlfriend and she did bring up a lot of great points that I was truly just blinded to. We came to the conclusion together that my girlfriend was being manipulative with the tactics she used to move in with me, that hiding the pictures should always be a deal breaker, that her isolating me from my wife’s family may have been emotional mistreatment, etc.
Just a lot of things I hadn’t really considered before.
My (now-ex) girlfriend came home around 5 in the morning. My wife’s sister slept in my son’s room with him (where she always sleeps) because we had been drinking last night and it wouldn’t be appropriate for her to drive. So my girlfriend literally flips out about my wife’s sister’s car being out front.
She started telling my wife’s sister she is a slut and that she knew I’d be cheating on her the second she walked out the door. I know it looks bad, but FFS my wife’s sister is practically a sister to me, and is my son’s aunt and I’m not completely unethical, to me it would be no different than having my own sister spend the night.
And at this point I was considering breaking up with her anyway so it didn’t really matter to me what she thought of the situation. Finally my wife’s sister went off on my girlfriend and my girlfriend got crazy and told me I need to choose right now between my wife’s sister and her.
I told her that I wasn’t playing the ultimatum game and told her that I wasn’t choosing my wife’s sister but I WAS kicking her out and not keeping her in my life.
My girlfriend went out to the patio and played with her phone. My sister in law left and took my son with her to get him somewhere safer. I went outside to tell her I’d be giving her cash and buying her a moving truck to get her to wherever she needs to go but she is not welcome in my house. She got really upset with me.
Some things I’ve learned (and bear with me because I know it’s hard to relate to or understand unless you, yourself are actually a widow.) One, I AM in fact ready to date once I’m past this ordeal.
It has been 5 years – I am ready for that and I think my son is as well even if I take it way slower next time and don’t start inviting women to live with me, I do believe I might be able to find a nice woman who accepts my wife’s role in both mine and my son’s lives based on the responses in the previous thread from other women.
Two, my sister in law believes I’m prone to just put up with more shit from people because of what I went through with my wife and being fearful of losing people or re-living that nightmare. Three: I feel terrible to have put my son through this but I’m confident about talking to him and explaining why and apologizing to him.
He’s a smart boy and I don’t want to remove people from his life but it’s not okay to let people hurt or take advantage of you. I think he will understand that. And I’ll be explaining that sometimes people appear very nice but they aren’t actually nice. This woman came into our lives and tried to take the place of his mother. No woman will ever replace his mother.
tl;dr: I broke up with my girlfriend and told her to move out because she stole pictures of my late wife and hid them from me.
