New partnerships in widowhood in Spain: Realities and desires

ABSTRACT

Widowhood has traditionally been associated with the end of the family cycle; however, social and generational transformations in Spain are providing a new context for the development of new partnerships in widowhood. This study analyzes widowed persons who have found new partners and those who would be willing to do so, focusing on their characteristics and motives and related sociodemographic factors. Research is based on a sample of 306 widows and widowers in Spain taken from the survey Social Networks and Well-Being. The results reveal the importance of sociodemographic factors for both those who wish to have a partner as well as for those who have one. For the former, elements associated with quality of life are very important, while among those with a new partner, the key is not having an extensive family support network. The principal motives for looking for a new relationship are related to enjoying life more and not feeling alone; while those who reject a new relationship do so because of the belief that their lost partner is irreplaceable.

KEYWORDS:

• Forming a partnership
• social support
• social well-being
• the elderly
• widowhood

Acknowledgments

I am indebted to Professor Félix Requena and Verónica de Miguel (University of Málaga), and Professor Gerardo Meil (Autonomous University of Madrid) for their helpful comments on early drafts.

Notes

¹ Those widows and widowers who have married are no longer widowed, which makes their participation in the study difficult. In the survey used for this study, participants were asked about remarriages, resulting in 15 cases of the 1,403 in the sample (1.8%), but no difference was made between remarriages after a divorce or after the death of a spouse. What is known is that in 14 of the 15 cases, the respondents were under 60 years of age; as a result, it was decided not to take these cases into account. This decision was also based on the most common forms of partnership in Spain in widowhood being cohabitation or maintaining a LAT-type relationship (Martínez Pastor, 2009).

² Living Apart Together refers to relationships in which the partners do not live together every day in the same household. These relationships constitute a “new” form of stable partnership, which is increasingly common in central and northern European countries, above all being desirable after the ending of a previous relationship (through divorce or the death of a partner) (Duncan, Phillips, Carter, Roseneil, & Stoilova, 2014; Benson & Coleman, 2016).

³ In the early 20th century in Spain, in 14% of marriages one of the spouses was a widow/widower (Barciela, 1989).

⁴ The definition for cenderrada [shivaree] in the dictionary of the Real Academia de la Lengua Española is “unpleasant noise made with bells, horns and other things to make fun of widows on the first night of their new matrimony.”

⁵ For more details on this survey see: www.uam.es/gerardo.meil, section on statistics on family change.

⁶ Despite the different waves of the international surveys in which Spain participates (SHARE, ISSP, European Social Survey), and the national available surveys (IMSERSO, CIS, INE), no information about partnership formation in widowhood or their expectations is collected, so they are not valid sources to address the research questions of this work.

⁷ Both the variable “education level” as well as “size of place of residence” could have been introduced as dummy variables, but we opted to use them as continuous variables due to the greater information they contributed.

⁸ Introducing an income variable into the different regression models caused significant problems due to the reduced number of cases (because of the high percentage of persons that did not answer) and the high correlation with age and education level. As a result, we decided to use the variable “Economic difficulties making it to the end of the month.”

⁹ This variable was constructed counting the number of family members (that the interviewed mentioned) that they could turn to for help with domestic tasks, for advice, in case of depression or for a loan of 1,000 euros.

¹⁰ In the case of divorce, there also tends to be greater preference for other types of “less institutionalized” relationships. A survey carried out by the CIS Study 2639 (2006) regarding the relationship habits of 10,000 women in Spain showed that 23.3% of separated or divorced women were in a relationship in which they lived with their partner, while 13.7% had an LAT-type relationship. In the case of widows, 2.5% stated that they lived with a partner, and 1.3% revealed that they were in an LAT-type relationship.

¹¹ First, because they have a wider market of choices, as there are a greater number of women than men among older age cohorts; secondly, because the period of mourning that tends to be (socially) demanded of men is less than that demanded of women and there is greater acceptance of men partnering with younger women than the reverse; and thirdly, because of the greater willingness of widowers to look for a partner, due, to a great extent, to men’s lives revolving, practically and emotionally, around women, while many widows, in contrast, may perceive their situation as a form of liberation (Davidson, 2001; and Hasmanova, 2016).

¹² There is some debate over the effects of psychological and health factors on the desire to have a relationship. Some authors argue that widows/widowers with poor physical or emotional health probably see greater benefits in remarrying; therefore, they are more likely to have greater desire for a relationship (Smith et al., 1991), while other studies, such as that carried out by Carr (2004), reveal that widows most interested in “romantic dates” are those who have lower rates of depression.

¹³ This figure is obtained by subtracting from the value of the quality of life indicator (0.346) the value of the indicator squared (−0.051), as recommended by Kash Kachigan (1991).

Additional information

Funding

Financial support was obtained through the author’s participation in the research projects SEJ2006-08676, CSO2013-46440-P, and CSO2017-86349-P, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy.