Grief is not an easy path to walk. Some guidelines and loose expectations exist, but each person goes through an individual journey. Unless you’ve been through it, the ways you heal yourself from the loss might not make much sense.
One woman suffered a tremendous loss. Her husband and son died, and she was left to pick up the pieces. It’s been years since they died and there’s someone new in her life. But this new person doesn’t understand the ways she honors these important people who are no longer in her life.
The original poster is struggling with keeping the memory of her husband and son close and not upsetting the new person in her life.
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She took to Reddit to explain what is going on in the hopes people could advise her.
Posting to Reddit’s AITA community, OP shared what had been happening in her life that’s causing conflict.
“I was a widow for 3 years before I met my fiancé (Julius),” she wrote. “I lost my husband and 4 year old son on a boating accident.”
Understandably, losing them was a real struggle.
“When I got back on my feet after losing them, I had their names tattooed on my chest,” OP wrote. “Nothing grand, it's just their names in cursive and two hearts.”
It’s been years since her husband and son died, and since then, she’s met Julius.
“When I met Julius I told him about my past,” OP explained. “Including my depression and how I had to move back to my parents' and depended on them for years.”
She appreciated that Julius “was very understanding” and their relationship grew from there. “After over a year of dating, he proposed.”
Recently, her fiancé asked her a question that caught her off guard.
“Yesterday, while I was getting out of the shower, Julius asked me when I plan to have my tattoo removed,” she shared. “He said he knows someone who's really good and he could give us a discount.”
Before this, OP shared that her fiancé didn’t seem bothered by the tattoo. In fact, “this was the first time he mentioned something like this to me so I wasn't sure how to respond.”
OP was honest and told Julius she had 'no plans' to remove the tattoo.
But her fiancé didn’t let it go. “Later that day, during dinner he asked me again and I told him the same thing.”
He wasn’t happy about that. “He said we're about to get married and it's time for me to move on,” OP recalled.
“I told him I have already moved on,” she tried to explain, given she’s agreed to get married and is happy about their future.
But that’s not how her fiancé saw things.
“He said it's hardly moving on when I still have their names on my chest, that he can see every time we're intimate,” OP shared. “He said it makes him uncomfortable and insecure of my love for him because it looks like I can't let go of my past.”
Now the two seem to be stuck in their conflict.
“He's been giving me the cold shoulder since. I told my mom about what happened and she told me she understands how Julius feels,” OP wrote.
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That’s when she turned things over to Reddit asking for advice.
“It takes some champion level insecurity to feel threatened by someone's late husband AND CHILD,” someone replied. “How callous can you get? He needs to love and accept all of who you are, not cut away or hide the parts he'd rather not see.”
“The most egregious part, to me, is him expecting you to remove both names,” another Redditor wrote. “While being intimidated by a man who's already passed on is troubling, expecting you to erase your son's name for him is just horrendous. It doesn't matter how short a time they're in your arms or how long it's been since, you never stop being a mom.”
“If he loves you he’d understand how much those two meant to you,” someone else shared. “If he truly loved you he would know that he can’t replace them in your heart, but he can be apart of that heart. If he loved you he’d understand, but he’s making all about himself.”
“Erasing the tattoos aren't going to erase them,” added another commenter. “If he's uncomfortable and insecure, that's something he has to change, not you. It doesn't seem like he's understanding. If he did understand, he wouldn't have asked you to remove them.”
The reality of it all is that when it comes to “moving on,” OP can do that to an extent and live a happy and fulfilled life. But if her fiancé expects her to forget her husband and her 4-year-old son, that’s unreasonable — and that should be apparent.
These stories are based on posts found on Reddit. Reddit is a user-generated social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website where registered members submit content to the site and can up- or down-vote the content. The accuracy and authenticity of each story cannot be confirmed by our staff.
