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I have to admit that every once in a while, I get excited at the prospect of perusing the bargain shoe stores (like Payless shoes) and hope to find some extraordinary pair of shoes for less than thirty bucks. Of course, if I did, and someone happened to comment on them, I would never admit where I got them. Not because I was embarrassed that I shopped there, but I don’t like to kiss and tell my secrets. So today was one of those days.

My x-husband was taking care of our kids and my best friend and I decided to do a little shopping. I looked around Shoe Pavillion, and to my dismay I found nothing until I came across a pair of cute sandals. I recognized the name on the shoes right away. I knew the shoe designer. My x-husband and I were friends with him and his wife when we lived in NY many years ago. It was a second marriage for him and her first. They were in LOVE. If you want the truth, it was a co-dependent love in a very scary way. They didn’t do anything without each other. Just fyi, there was a twenty five year age gap but that I will save for another subject, another time.

Needless to say, they were together for about six years and she was diagnosed with brain cancer. She was in and out of chemo treatments for a short time but she died within a year. It was horrific. She was only forty-one. The first couple of months he seemed very low but managed to work a little to keep his mind off of his ‘loss’. A few months later, after I had split from my husband, I was back shopping for shoes on Larchmont and walked into his son’s shoe store. I asked him how his father was doing. He looked at me as if I had lost my mind. “My father? He’s great.” Huh? He continued, “he moved in with Patricia something and he is madly in love.”

“Are you f****** kidding me?”

How is that possible? I walked out of the store stunned. I couldn’t believe my ears. Within a couple of months he managed to mourn the “love of his life” as well as mend it with someone new. Oh did I mention this woman was a friend of “theirs”?

That’s another lovely thought. Which made me remember when I got divorced my husband swore he would never get married again. Less than a year later, my x-husband is already remarried. This shoe trip was turning into a major affair emotionally. But it made me think-

Women mourn and men replace.

Women go through the process of the loss, the anger, the loneliness, the hurt and eventually move on. How they do that is totally different than men. Men replace, it is as simple as that. They date someone they know, get fixed up, get seduced by someone in their spinning class, or simply just find a good enough replacement. And truthfully, it’s really not fair.

Women go within, men look outward. Women get therapy, change themselves physically, spiritually, and more or less try to survive. Men, well, they date and replace.

They wine and dine women until they find someone sufficient enough and eventually move-in and/or remarry. Look everyone deserves to be happy. I just find it so interesting how different the time frame and the process between men and women is,that’s all. Look there are always exceptions to the rules. There are men who have been devastated by breakups and deaths, but they are few and far between.

Of course the double standard rule applies here like everywhere else, if a woman started dating shortly after a divorce or death she would be considered aggressive, slutty, and fast, yet we expect men to start immediately.

Is this fair?

Maybe fair isn’t the right question, but it is the truth. What’s the answer exactly? Do we make our fiancée sign an agreement that if we ever get a divorce or die that they can never replace us? Yeah, like that will happen. Or do we just chalk it up to life like everything else when God handed out his and hers, he handed out the speed to recovery to men and not women.

I don’t know the answer. I wish I did. Sometimes I do wonder what happens to these men who don’t give themselves a mourning period. What really happens when they pass by a mirror long enough to look and really say to themselves “What the f*** just happened to me?”

I bet most of them look away, if they see a reflection of themselves in the true entirety. That might be the key for their survival.

They just never look.