It is difficult to reply to what you are saying when it is not obvious from what you write, what exactly you would like changed in your life and in which way you believe that it has failed, or even which steps you have taken to change it.
There are many factors involved here depending on what we are talking about. The stuff you want to be changed might have failed because your initial approach was wrong, so maybe it was doomed from the beginning. It might also be that what you are trying to change is simply not easy to change or it takes a lot of time etc.
The situation is very complicated but I will try to explain it in brief. Since you are so logical and I am trying to be logical maybe you can help me come up with some ideas.
My late husband passed on last July and it was quite sudden so I had no time to prepare emotionally or in any other way. I still have a pending malpractice lawsuit because of the circumstances surrounding his death, so this is not a simple grief and loss situation. On top of that, things were not good with his mental-emotional health leading up to his death and our marriage and home situation was not good either, not for a very long time.
I have been trying to pick up the pieces and go on because I really have no other choice. My initial choice and the only choice I thought I had was to find another man to marry because, not so much because I feel lonely, but because I could not envision myself continuing to live alone in this big house and taking care of all these cats all by myself. Mind you, I am not doing any more than I was doing when my husband was alive, I am probably doing less, because before his death I was doing everything I am doing now and also taking care of him. I have anxiety as a diagnosis but my anxiety is a lot less now that he is gone and I have dealt with most things one has to deal with after a death in the family.
Since you are an atheist maybe you won't fully understand but since you are my friend and you are very intelligent so I am going to try to explain this. Both me and my late husband were Baha'is and had been for all of our adult lives. That and our love for the cats were the glue that held us together. Not all Baha'is are alike in their attitude towards the material world but my late husband were very much alike in that we both hated it with a passion! We loved the cats but that was all.
We often has conversations about how I hated this life but I did not want to go to the afterlife either. The difference between us is that he hated this life but he looked forward to going to the afterlife, and he was doing everything to hasten his demise, like refusing to eat. He was suicidal but now I will never know the exact reasons why. It was nothing I was doing or not doing. I was taking care of everything and he lived the life of Riley. He was not physically sick with anything serious until the very end after the cancer had spread.
Now he got his wish because he is in the next world and I am here to contend with life all by myself. The thing is that he did not care about leaving me all alone, he just wanted out of here. He refused to eat and refused any treatment for the cancer, but I think he died of starvation, not cancer. I'll get to the bottom of this eventually.
Under these circumstances, why should I feel guilty about wanting to get remarried? My counselor had been following this before his death and she even knew him and talked to him, and she agrees that he just wanted to die. Moreover, she thinks it is a good idea for me to remarry as it is high time I had some happiness in life.
You were correct in saying that what I wanted to be changed failed because my initial approach was wrong, so it was doomed from the beginning. What was doomed was thinking I was going to find a man to marry on a dating site, like ordering up a pizza. I was very naive, but then what did I have to go on? I had been married for 37 years and I never dated before that. I was introduced to my husband by my mother and sister and we got married three weeks later.
The online dating scene has been an absolute nightmare! I have posted several threads about it from time to time. At the outset I was hit up on by con men who lied to me and I believed them since I was not suspicious until they asked me for money. I never gave any man any money but the con men just kept coming. It was as if there is nothing but con men on dating sites! I am not bad looking and I have many good qualities, why is this so difficult? I know other people who have met a partner on a dating site and got married.
But it was not only the con men, but the crazy man I met on one dating site. I did not know he was crazy just from the phone conversations, which was the only communication we had, because he did not say that much that would indicate that he is crazy. But now that he has sent me e-mails and letters I know for sure he is mentally deranged and a thoroughly selfish manipulator, so that is completely over, even though he is still sending me e-mails and letters.
I forgot to mention that an additional problem I have with dating sites, and it would be the same with meeting a man in person, is that all men expect sex, and Baha'is don't have sex out of wedlock. I simply cannot understand why men who are as old as me or older still consider sex so important, especially the men who consider themselves spiritual. I might want sex if I get married but I do not consider it important. I once did but I am way past that age and stage of my life. There are so many more important things in life.
As you said, what I am trying to change is simply not easy to change and even if it can be changed it might take a lot of time, so I guess what I need is more patience. Maybe there is a man for me or not but I cannot order one up like a burger. Just because it was easy when I first got married does not mean it will ever be that easy again. That was a fluke and I consider it an example of fate.
But it is also that I am not sure what I want to do with my life whether I am single or married. Mind you, I did not know what I wanted to do when my late husband was still alive, but at least I did not have an additional problem of being all alone. I am still working full time at age 70 and I do not see any retirement in sight. I don't need the money at all, but I have nothing else I want to do that I could do alone. I do not have any girlfriends, I did everything with my late husband who was also my best friend. And no, it is not much easier to order up friends than it is to order up a husband.
Obviously, as an atheist, I have no fate in God doing anything, but nonetheless, we can have "fate" and probably more correct to call it to hope that certain things will go our way. But usually, this simply means that things occur in such a way that it ends up benefitting us in a positive way. So there is no higher power or anything behind it, the closest you could probably get is to just refer to it as luck.
It does not matter if God is involved in our fate because it all amounts to the same thing. Things go our way or they do not. After all, nobody could ever prove a God is involved, so that is just a belief.
So without really thinking about it too much, I think all atheists in general will approach problems with the basic idea that we have to stack or prepare things to be in our favour and those things for which we have no control, as it might depend on other humans or some other external factor, that they for whatever reason "vote" or act in our favour.
I think that believers approach life pretty much the same way except that in the back of their minds there is the belief that an additional player is involved, God, kind of like an invisible friend who is all-powerful.
But relying on fate, I think most if not all atheists would agree is probably the worse approach one can take because that is basically to just hope that things go your way without any good reason to believe that. So an atheist reaching this point in a process, I think is somewhat equal to saying that such a person has given up or they have reached a point where they don't know how to solve something, in which case, it might be a good idea to get advice from other people. Either to simply get a fresh perspective or maybe from someone that has been in or dealt with something similar and how they "stacked" things in their favour so to speak or maybe professional help if that is what is needed.
That is a good point. When I thought to post this and title it 'Without God there is no hope' I was feeling pretty hopeless. I still feel pretty hopeless because I have no reason to have hope? If anything got better I would have a reason to hope, but I don't see that happening. It is just the same old humdrum existence day after day.
If fate is hoping that things will go my way without any good reason to believe that, that is the same as what I was doing before with the dating sites. Do you see the similarity? What reason do I have to hope that anything will go my way even if I take certain actions?
I have reached a point where I don't know how to solve this, if there is even any solution, so maybe posting this was my indirect way of trying to get ideas or even advice from other people. I wish I could get a fresh perspective from someone that has been in or dealt with something similar. I attended a widows group and a grief-share group, but so far it has not helped me figure out what to do with my life since that is not what the groups are for. The other problem is that I know no widows my age that share my predicament because everyone has children and grandchildren, family and friends to help them, and I have nobody. There might be a few other people like me somewhere, but how would I find them? I do have a counselor I met with every two weeks, but she only gives me feedback on what I tell her, she doesn't have any suggestions I have not already thought of.
So again there are many things that can play a part in why something doesn't go the way we would like, but to me at least the solution is to figure out why, where and what went wrong and then try again.
I have some idea what went wrong and why, on the dating sites, but I am in no hurry to keep trying because I feel like I am beating my head against a stone wall, and I am in between a rock and a hard place since I cannot imagine living alone forever. My counselor thinks I should keep trying to find a man but I need to try something different. I really would prefer to marry a Baha'i but they are scarcer than hen's teeth so that is another problem. I am sure there are some Baha'i men in my age bracket who want to get married but finding them is another story. On the two Baha'i dating sites all I got was con men pretending to be Baha'is!
Sorry for the book, the unabridged edition.
