Abstract
The grief literature emphasizes widows’ continuing bonds with their deceased spouses as a significant part of their grief process. Yet, little is known about what happens to those bonds when a widow remarries and there is a second spouse, and how these bonds are dealt with by the new family members. This study explored the continuing bonds of remarried Israeli widows, the role the second spouse plays in these processes, and the ambiguity and permeability of the boundaries between the first and the second marital relationships. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 29 Israeli remarried military widows, over three decades after their first husbands’ deaths. Data were analyzed by using thematic content analysis. Findings revealed that most of the women maintained continuing bonds with their deceased husbands, whereas a few of them severed these bonds. In all of the scenarios, however, the second husband played a major role, resulting in different levels of boundaries, from strict to blurred, between the first and the second marriages. These findings suggest that in order to obtain a full understanding of grief's impact on the second marital relationship, grief should be considered a couple-hood process in which the boundaries between the relationships are dynamic. The association between these patterns and personal and marital adjustment should be further explored.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 674-688 |
| Number of pages | 15 |
| Journal | Family Process |
| Volume | 61 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jun 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2021 Family Process Institute.
Funding
Semi-structured in-depth interviews (Patton, 2015) were conducted with 29 remarried military widows who agreed to participate. The Head of the Department of Families and Commemoration in the designated area was the one who made first contact with and presented the study to the widows. Those who agreed to participate were interviewed by seven experienced social workers, who received additional training from the research team. Interviews lasted for an hour and a half on average (a more comprehensive description of the course of this study was published elsewhere: Nuttman-Shwartz et al., 2019). The interviews were conducted in accordance with an interview guide that addressed participants’ grieving processes. Questions referred to the way their grief developed over the years, on personal and interpersonal levels. For example, participants were asked to “describe the way grief manifested itself in your life and in your family's life. Please relate to its influence over your marriage.” Other questions related to the ways in which grief and the connection with the first husband were manifested in the current marital relationship. For example, participants were asked: "How did your relationship with your first husband influence your second marital relationship over the years? How did your grief over your first husband affect your relationship and life with your second husband? If and in what ways did these dynamics change throughout the years?". A randomized criterion sample (Patton, 2015) was used to contact 45 remarried widows (out of 317) who were under the jurisdiction of one district in the Department of Families and Commemoration of Israel's Ministry of Defense. This specific district was chosen in order to achieve a wide variety of case representations, as it is one of the most populated and diverse areas in the country. Out of 45 women who were asked to participate, 29 agreed and completed the interviews. The women who refused to participate explained this refusal in various ways, mainly describing a lack of desire to share their emotional hardships. All of the widows in the current study were Jewish and experienced military-related traumatic loss. Twenty-four lost their husbands in battle, and five lost their husbands in accidents during the husband's military service. The average participant age was 68 (SD =6.4), and the age at which participants became widows varied between 19 and 29 (the average age of widowhood was 23). Half of the participants had young children when they became widowed. It took 4.5 years on average between bereavement and remarriage (median = 4). Thus, the participants in this study had been remarried for over 30 years. Most of the participants had an advanced education (the average length of schooling was 15 years), and all but one had past or present careers. A randomized criterion sample (Patton, 2015) was used to contact 45 remarried widows (out of 317) who were under the jurisdiction of one district in the Department of Families and Commemoration of Israel's Ministry of Defense. This specific district was chosen in order to achieve a wide variety of case representations, as it is one of the most populated and diverse areas in the country. Out of 45 women who were asked to participate, 29 agreed and completed the interviews. The women who refused to participate explained this refusal in various ways, mainly describing a lack of desire to share their emotional hardships. All of the widows in the current study were Jewish and experienced military-related traumatic loss. Twenty-four lost their husbands in battle, and five lost their husbands in accidents during the husband's military service. The average participant age was 68 (SD =6.4), and the age at which participants became widows varied between 19 and 29 (the average age of widowhood was 23). Half of the participants had young children when they became widowed. It took 4.5 years on average between bereavement and remarriage (median = 4). Thus, the participants in this study had been remarried for over 30 years. Most of the participants had an advanced education (the average length of schooling was 15 years), and all but one had past or present careers. Semi-structured in-depth interviews (Patton, 2015) were conducted with 29 remarried military widows who agreed to participate. The Head of the Department of Families and Commemoration in the designated area was the one who made first contact with and presented the study to the widows. Those who agreed to participate were interviewed by seven experienced social workers, who received additional training from the research team. Interviews lasted for an hour and a half on average (a more comprehensive description of the course of this study was published elsewhere: Nuttman-Shwartz et al., 2019). The interviews were conducted in accordance with an interview guide that addressed participants’ grieving processes. Questions referred to the way their grief developed over the years, on personal and interpersonal levels. For example, participants were asked to “describe the way grief manifested itself in your life and in your family's life. Please relate to its influence over your marriage.” Other questions related to the ways in which grief and the connection with the first husband were manifested in the current marital relationship. For example, participants were asked: "How did your relationship with your first husband influence your second marital relationship over the years? How did your grief over your first husband affect your relationship and life with your second husband? If and in what ways did these dynamics change throughout the years?". The researchers used thematic content analysis (Clark et al., 2015) to analyze the data while adhering to an interpretative phenomenological approach (Shinebourne, 2011; Smith et al., 2009). In the current research, the second author read all the transcripts thoroughly and performed open coding, marked separate content units of meaning arising from the interviews, and shared these materials with the other authors. ATLAS software for analyzing qualitative data was used to detect units of meaning (codes and categories). During this process, the second author encoded every unit of meaning within the text separately (many units were encoded with more than one code). Related meaning units were gathered into categories, which were later arranged within the suggested themes (Patton, 2015). The three authors together analyzed the findings, discussing them until agreement was reached. The interviewers used an interview manual to help them focus on the subject (Patton, 2015). The guide was designed to cover the course of the bereavement process, its development and fluctuations over the years, and how grief and bereavement both influenced and were influenced by the familial dynamics. The interviewers were supervised by the authors throughout the data collection process. Data were analyzed by the three authors, who met on a weekly basis to share and critically examine their proposed conceptualizations. To ensure a high level of theoretical saturation, the authors conducted as many interviews as necessary to reach code and meaning saturation (Hennink et al., 2017). Such saturation was achieved once the researchers agreed that theoretical categories were beginning to repeat themselves and were sufficiently grounded. The findings and the theoretical conceptualizations were presented to the study's participants, who added their own input and gave their final approval (Thomas, 2017), ensuring that the findings reflected their actual life experiences. This research was approved by the first author's university's Board of Ethics and by the district board of the Ministry of Defense. To ensure participants’ confidentiality, none of the widows were interviewed or contacted regarding this study by their case managers, and interviewers did not interview women with whom they were acquainted prior to the study. Moreover, once a widow confirmed her participation in the study, no details of her interview were provided to other members of the research team. The content of the interviews was only made available for the research team's use after participants’ names and details were changed, to secure their confidentiality. The findings revealed two main patterns of long-term continuing bonds among the remarried widows over the years. Most of them (n = 22) preserved continuing bonds with their deceased husbands over the years and throughout the three decades of their second marriages. A small number of widows severed their bonds with their first husbands (n = 7), meaning that they cut these bonds both in terms of other parts of their lives in general and specifically in terms of their current couple-hood. Regardless of the pattern, the second husband seemed to play an important role. The Findings section continues now with a description of the prevalent pattern of continuing bonds as they manifest in the current marital relationship, as well as the second husband's role in this situation. Subsequently, the less prevalent pattern of relations will be described. Most of the participants described their long-term, continuing bonds with their deceased husbands and the manifestations of those bonds throughout the years. Most of the participants described examples of the continuing emotional bonds they held with their first husbands, which were manifested in the form of carrying out ceremonies and commemorative acts (22 out of 29 participants) and keeping a connection with the first husband's family of origin (20 participants). Most of them made clear that their second husbands accepted and respected their need to maintain these bonds and dealt openly with the “presence” of the first husband in their partnership and family life. For example, Batya, 69 years old, who lost her husband when she was 26, said: I decided that if I remarried it would be with a man I could talk to about my first husband - whenever I wanted, and the way I wanted. I mean, I'm not going to accept any restrictions on this issue. And so it was. My husband supports me and really lets me do everything I want when it comes to this issue, and his arms are always open to me. I decided that if I remarried it would be with a man I could talk to about my first husband - whenever I wanted, and the way I wanted. I mean, I'm not going to accept any restrictions on this issue. And so it was. My husband supports me and really lets me do everything I want when it comes to this issue, and his arms are always open to me. In this passage, Batya indicated that she consciously decided to maintain the presence of her first husband in her current marriage; it seems to have been something that she decided on in advance, and it was accepted by her second husband. In another interview, Esther, 73 years old, who was widowed at 29, when she was a mother of two children, described this decision as an act of maintaining her identity and her commitment to her deceased husband and to his family. As she said to her second husband, "I am part of this family, and I am not going to leave them." This commitment to her past relationships and experiences, as well as to a particular moral stand, seems to have been part of the basis on which the new partnership was established. In another interview, Tova, 66 years old, who lost her husband when she was 23, spoke emphatically: The first thing I want to say is that if I have a picture of my [first] husband here in my living room, while my [current] husband is here with us, then that means this is an issue that has been openly discussed. And it has been like this throughout the years, and if it had not been, then I would not have established a new relationship at all! The first thing I want to say is that if I have a picture of my [first] husband here in my living room, while my [current] husband is here with us, then that means this is an issue that has been openly discussed. And it has been like this throughout the years, and if it had not been, then I would not have established a new relationship at all! These quotes provide an example of the manifestation of participants’ continuing bonds with their deceased first husbands, which seem to have been accepted by the second husband. Participant narratives revealed that this agreement on the acceptance of the first husband often led to the blurring of boundaries between the “first” family and the current family, as was described by Mika, 66 years old, whose husband died when she was 23 years old. She explained: My first husband did not leave my life. The two men in my life reside next to each other […] I believe that the worlds are connected and communicate with each other, and so I do not want to give up on either of them[…] my first husband is part of the family life - his humor, etc. […] And my husband never asked me to stop grieving. My first husband did not leave my life. The two men in my life reside next to each other […] I believe that the worlds are connected and communicate with each other, and so I do not want to give up on either of them[…] my first husband is part of the family life - his humor, etc. […] And my husband never asked me to stop grieving. Mika seems to acknowledge the complexity of her relationships with her two husbands, demonstrating the way in which she managed to maintain a unique and vivid connection with both of them at the same time. In another interview, Karen, 69 years old, who lost her husband when she was 26 and the mother of a two-year old, said: "I define myself as a married woman, and my marriage is very good. But still, between us [between the interviewer and the interviewee] there are some additional figures in my marriage." Her words suggest that her previous marital relationship was an acknowledged component of her partnership with her current husband: physically absent but psychologically present. Participants described the different ways in which their second husbands took an active role in keeping alive the bonds with the first husbands. For example, Hagar, 67 years old, who was 19 when her husband fell in action, described: Every year before Memorial Day my husband and I go to the cemetery, and he always helps me clean the grave and take care of it, and makes sure the Ministry of Defense doesn't forget to maintain it. He comes with me to the memorial ceremonies in his [first husband’s] hometown. He supports me fully. And it is not taken for granted - because not everyone would do so Every year before Memorial Day my husband and I go to the cemetery, and he always helps me clean the grave and take care of it, and makes sure the Ministry of Defense doesn't forget to maintain it. He comes with me to the memorial ceremonies in his [first husband’s] hometown. He supports me fully. And it is not taken for granted - because not everyone would do so In another interview, Pnina, 69 years old, who lost her husband when she was 26 years old, described how her new husband took an active role in the maintenance of her first husband's memory: In our house we spoke openly of my first husband. And I have his picture hanging up […] [Ever since] we started dating, and even after we got married – whenever Yom Kippur would arrive [the anniversary of the death, or “yahrzeit”] - I would flee the country. I just felt I could not take it anymore. … So my second husband would go to the memorials [of my first husband] alone. Without me. And he would go to visit his [my first husband’s] family as well. In our house we spoke openly of my first husband. And I have his picture hanging up […] [Ever since] we started dating, and even after we got married – whenever Yom Kippur would arrive [the anniversary of the death, or “yahrzeit”] - I would flee the country. I just felt I could not take it anymore. … So my second husband would go to the memorials [of my first husband] alone. Without me. And he would go to visit his [my first husband’s] family as well. Hagar's husband actively contributed to her manifestations of long-term grief, and Pnina's spouse supported her continuing bonds with her deceased first husband even when she herself found it difficult to do. These are unique examples of couples preserving the widow's grief. The second husbands helped to preserve the widow's long-term commitment to the fallen husbands and even played an active and leading role in doing so. By contrast, other participants described how their current husbands did not take on any role or have any involvement at all in keeping the memory of their first spouses alive. Sigalit, 66 years old, who was 23 when her husband died in a war, shed more light on the impact this continuing bond of hers had on her current emotional bond with her present husband: My first husband always exists in my heart, he is always in the background. … But it is not a stumbling block, he is not an obstacle between us… We have been married for 34 years now, and he [my second husband] knows that this is a part of my life. … But emotionally - there is no emotion. I'm a completely different person now. My first husband always exists in my heart, he is always in the background. … But it is not a stumbling block, he is not an obstacle between us… We have been married for 34 years now, and he [my second husband] knows that this is a part of my life. … But emotionally - there is no emotion. I'm a completely different person now. Her description exemplifies a state in which the widow's continuing bonds seem not to threaten the current spouse. Other participants described similar situations. For example, Tamar, 74 years old, who was 28 when her husband died, said: “It is clear that I have him [the first husband] with me. And we've never talked about it deeply, but we know that each of us is carrying his own [emotional] toll." And Hagar said, "I always go back to it… I can't stop the comparison between the two of them…". Common to these relationships was the acknowledgment of the former relationship's influence over the current one, and the current husband's lack of involvement in keeping the bond with the deceased spouse alive. At the same time, the current husband did not object to the idea of the deceased spouse's presence. Several participants (n=7) described the hardships they experienced in maintaining any connection with their deceased first husbands (or their memories of them) since the time of their remarriage. A main factor in dealing with these hardships was the second husband's way of coping with this issue. Three of the study participants said that they found it too hard to maintain a connection with the memory of their deceased first husband, dating back to the time of the remarriage. For example, Sara, 57 years old, who lost her first husband when she was 22, described: The pictures of my first husband and all of these parts of my personal history – are stored at my sister's house. It is not an issue that accompanies us in our daily lives. This is because of my [current] husband’s nature, and it’s fine with me. I think it has to do with his ego. He wants to be “the only one,” and he does not want to compete with my former husband. […] and we “closed that door” behind us, so there is no one between us. The pictures of my first husband and all of these parts of my personal history – are stored at my sister's house. It is not an issue that accompanies us in our daily lives. This is because of my [current] husband’s nature, and it’s fine with me. I think it has to do with his ego. He wants to be “the only one,” and he does not want to compete with my former husband. […] and we “closed that door” behind us, so there is no one between us. It seems that Sara and her husband made the decision to exclude her first husband from their family. By making this decision, Sara and her husband may have been seeking to avoid dealing with the complexity involved in Sara's loss and its long-term emotional effects. This avoidance seems to have served the interests of both partners, who “bypassed” the conflict stemming from the recognition of the two men in Sara's life. Despite the proclaimed advantages of this choice, elsewhere in her interview Sara made clear that this coping method was taking its toll, in the form of restricted emotional levels and limited communication levels among all family members. In another interview, Noga, 73 years old, who lost her husband at the age of 24 when she was a mother of a two-year-old, explained her choice of not dealing with her grief once she remarried: Maybe because I had more children coming, I cut myself off fully from my grief. We hardly talked about my first daughter's father. There was no presence of him in our life for many years […] It was simply more comfortable for us not to think about it, and not to be grieving. Maybe because I had more children coming, I cut myself off fully from my grief. We hardly talked about my first daughter's father. There was no presence of him in our life for many years […] It was simply more comfortable for us not to think about it, and not to be grieving. Her explanation illuminated the short-term benefits of this coping method along with some of its costs, as later on in her interview she described the effect of this emotional deprivation on her daughter, who grew up seeking to fill the hole left by her absent father. In another interview, Timor, 63 years old, whose husband was killed in battle when she was 20 years old, described cutting herself off from grief as a way of dealing with the enormous emotional pain: “I felt that in order to get over the loss I had to distance myself from the memory of my first husband – from his “type.” [I had to find] someone who wasn't here at all during the war…”. All of the couples in these examples seemed to try and minimize the effects of grief on their new partnerships and families. Although these participants had in common the severing of the bonds with the deceased first husband, they differed in terms of who initiated the break: the widow, her second husband, or both. In contrast with the former examples, where the partners were in agreement about keeping the wife's widowhood out of the new family's life, four participants described disagreeing with their husbands on this issue. Miriam, 63 years old, who was widowed at the age of 20, said the following: My husband criticized me when I expressed my interest in going to widows’ events. He asked me: "Are you really a widow?"[…] For me – sharing [my grief] was over after we got married. I was not allowed to speak about my first husband or mention him […] And the fact that I could not speak or tell our children [about what I was dealing with] was very hard. My husband criticized me when I expressed my interest in going to widows’ events. He asked me: "Are you really a widow?"[…] For me – sharing [my grief] was over after we got married. I was not allowed to speak about my first husband or mention him […] And the fact that I could not speak or tell our children [about what I was dealing with] was very hard. As in Sara's case, Miriam's account depicts an extreme situation in which the current husband is unwilling to accept in his life the presence of his wife's deceased husband. Whereas Sara seemed to accept her husband's decision/need, Miriam could not seem to make her peace with it, and voiced her sadness. The husband's difficulty in containing this marital triad seemed to result in the couple's inability to resolve this complexity, which continues to date. In another interview, Naomi, 65 years old, who was widowed when she was 22 and the mother of a young child, explained why she chose to put her needs aside and accepted her current husband's wish to sever the emotional bond with her deceased first husband: It is not an easy situation to enter – to be willing to live in the shadow of the first husband […] and he didn't want my first husband to play a role in our life. And although it disturbed me, I respected his request. It is not an easy situation to enter – to be willing to live in the shadow of the first husband […] and he didn't want my first husband to play a role in our life. And although it disturbed me, I respected his request. Her words seem to represent a widow's understanding of her husband's state of mind and her willingness to bend to his will. Yet, this choice may exact an emotional toll. For example, Ziva, a 70-year old widow who lost her husband when she was 20, described how she'd had to conceal parts of her identity and suppress any overt expressions of grief for many years: "I did not even say the word ‘widow,’ and I never dared to let a tear fall in the company of others… It was something I had to shut within myself." For her, only when the formal recognition of her widowhood was reinstated could she finally share her grief-related emotions with her current husband: One day I told him, "Look, it's all flowing now. I feel like now I’m beginning to grieve. I’m allowing myself to feel the emotions fully." [After hearing this], he cried a lot. Loads and loads. We went to the cemetery and visited his grave and we sat there for a long time. And he wept and wept. And I felt so guilty… But on the other hand, I think I felt great relief, and he was relieved as well. One day I told him, "Look, it's all flowing now. I feel like now I’m beginning to grieve. I’m allowing myself to feel the emotions fully." [After hearing this], he cried a lot. Loads and loads. We went to the cemetery and visited his grave and we sat there for a long time. And he wept and wept. And I felt so guilty… But on the other hand, I think I felt great relief, and he was relieved as well. Ziva's experience of finally airing her grief contrasts with the way Naomi was living in the shadow of her grief. The fact that it took her so many years to allow the expression of her feelings reflects the ambivalence she had toward her initial decision. The mutual emotional relief she describes—hers and her current husband's—seems to mark the beginning of another stage of her continuing grief.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Department of Families and Commemoration of Israel's Ministry of Defense | |
| Ministry of Defense |
Keywords
- Boundaries
- Grief
- Relationship
- Remarriage
- Widowhood