Mourning Wood

My male neighbor was married to a wonderful woman for 15 years. She died, and he was grieving heavily for several months, telling my husband and me she was the love of his life and he didn't "know how to do life" without her, etc. Well, six months later, he was dating, and in less than a year, he's engaged to somebody new! I'm beginning to wonder if all his "I'm so grief-stricken" was just for show.

--Irate

The way you see it, he went through some Stages of Grief: 1) Wow, this is terrible and life-shattering. 2) Boobs! However, it isn't surprising that you're "irate" at what you perceive to be a suspiciously speedy recovery. Evolutionary psychologist Bo Winegard and his colleagues believe grief evolved to be, among other things, a form of advertising. "Prolonged and costly" grief signals a person's "propensity" to develop deep emotional attachments to others. This, in turn, suggests they can be trusted as a friend, colleague, or romantic partner. The reality is, there are individual differences in how people respond to loss that don't always square with widely held beliefs about how grief is "supposed" to work. These beliefs, explains grief researcher George Bonanno, "tend to create rigid parameters for 'proper' behavior that do not match what most people go through." They end up fostering doubt and suspicion about what's actually successful coping. "When we cast suspicion on a bereaved person just because we think she coped with death too well or got on with her life too quickly, we only make her loss more difficult to bear." Understanding this, maybe you can try to be happy for the guy and support him in his new relationship. Don't assume that his finding new love means he's forgotten his late wife or no longer misses her. Consider, as Bonanno observes, that if somebody had a wonderful relationship, they may feel an acute void and long to have the wonderfulness back. And to be fair, there was some passage of time here. It's not like the guy was all up in his phone at the funeral, drying his tears in between swiping right on Tinder. ... For pages and pages of "science-help" from me, buy my latest book, "Unf*ckology: A Field Guide to Living with Guts and Confidence." It lays out the PROCESS of transforming to live w/confidence.