“Grief transforms you in ways that are impossible to understand from the outside looking in,” she says. “It’s easy to judge somebody else’s life choices from the sidelines, but until you’ve experienced the death of a spouse or partner yourself, you really have no idea.”

Bowser, a grief educator (see her podcast Lemonade) and author of the memoir Bittersweet, was just 30 years old when she became a widow. Her fiancé, Ben, who she’d been with for six years, died in 2020 of cancer and Covid, turning Bowser’s world upside down. “It’s a unique agony of not just losing the person you love, but the future you had envisioned together,” she recalls.

In the months that followed, Bowser slowly started rebuilding this future, finding a community of other young widows, moving to Lisbon, and, inevitably, dating again.

​Soon, she found herself in a new relationship — but she wasn’t prepared for the kaleidoscope of conflicting feelings that it would bring up, not just for herself, but for onlookers, too.

“It’s as if love is viewed as a finite currency — something our hearts can’t possibly make more of,” Bowser tells Cosmopolitan UK.

“But just as a parent’s love multiplies with each child, our hearts have infinite capacity to hold both our past and present loves. Moving forward doesn’t diminish the love we carry for those we’ve lost; if anything, it’s testament to the depth and beauty of what they taught us about loving.”

“When we see characters like Bridget navigating the uncharted territory of dating again all while carrying their grief, it helps normalise something that’s already completely normal: the human desire for connection that doesn’t end with loss,” she continues.

“In fact, turning towards connection and intimacy can be a healing balm for grief — it reminds us of our aliveness: the very antithesis of death.”

“But what’s crucial is showing the complexity of it; the moments of joy alongside the pangs of guilt, the excitement of new connections melded with the deep ache of longing that remains for the person we lost.”

As Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy hits cinemas, we asked Bowser to share an extract from Bittersweet. In the below, she delves into the strangeness, shame, and joy of dating — and loving — again after such a monumental loss.

What it’s like to tell a new date that you’re recently widowed

I pulled my phone out of my bag and perused a dating app to entertain myself while I waited for my lunch to arrive.

I flicked through a sea of profiles, pressing the heart icon on a couple I liked the look of, when a match appeared. His name was Manu, he was 28 years old and a photographer, with big, brown doe eyes and skin the colour of cappuccino.

We got chatting, and he asked if I wanted to meet him for a drink. We planned to meet at the end of my road later that evening, pick up a bottle of wine, and go for a walk along the river. A few hours later, I pulled on my clothes and put on some make-up, and headed out to meet him. As soon as I got to the front door, my phone pinged.

“I have some bad news,” Manu wrote. “I’m outside, but one of my friends who I went surfing with yesterday just called me. He has Covid. What should we do? I totally understand if you don’t feel comfortable meeting anymore.”

“Hmm. Well, since you’re already here, let’s just meet and chat at a distance? We can decide what to do from there.”

“Okay, good idea.”

I walked outside to find him leaning against a motorbike on the corner of the road, dressed all in black.

“Hey,” he said coyly as I walked over to him.

“Hello. How are you doing? It’s nice to meet you!”

“You too,” he smiled.

The conversation flowed effortlessly between us. It struck me how easy he was to talk to, how quickly I felt comfortable around him.

“So why are you thinking of moving here?”

I hesitated for a moment. I wondered whether or not I ought to tell him the truth. What would he think? Would he run a mile like I’d predicted? Ben’s death was so recent, my grief so present still. I couldn’t just pretend like none of it had happened.

“Well, I need a fresh start. I was in a relationship for six years — we were engaged, actually. But he died seven months ago. He had stage-four cancer.”

“Oh,” he said, his eyebrows lifting. I could sense he was surprised. Shit. I mean, who wouldn’t be? It’s not exactly your standard situation for a 30-year-old. I searched his face for smears of ick, expecting him to make up an excuse and leave. “I’m so sorry you went through that,” he offered. “Wow. That must’ve been really hard.”

To my surprise, he was sweet about it. He asked all the right questions, said all the right things. For four and a half hours, we sat on the concrete steps talking.

There was no bottle of wine, no river, no background music or chatter that might have eased any awkward silences between us. We didn’t need any of it because there weren’t any. It was just us and a couple of stray cats sniffing around the bins nearby, and it was perfect.

I waved him goodbye as he disappeared up the road on his motorbike. I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face as I climbed the stairs to the flat. It was the first date in seven years with someone other than Ben, and it wasn’t so scary after all.

The following day, we met up again, this time at the park Tapada das Necessidades, west of the city centre. I bought us a pastel de nata each from the cafe by the park entrance, and we sat a few metres apart from each other under the jacaranda trees, talking.

We wandered south towards the river and along the waterfront, talking some more, occasionally stopping at outdoor kiosks for more snacks. “I’ll be your tour guide when you move here,” he grinned. “And I’ll teach you Portuguese in exchange for English lessons.”

I felt a familiar rush of dopamine that I hadn’t felt in a while. How cute, I thought, as I studied the edge of his heart-shaped mouth. We were already making plans together. But also, how right. This couldn’t just be a 48-hour thing, no way.

All I’d hoped for was for a gorgeous man to entertain me in this gorgeous city for an evening at the very most. But this? I wasn’t expecting this. He captured my attention. He was gorgeous — and he was also smart and funny, and, from what I could tell, kind.

By the time we parted ways, it was almost midnight. We’d spent 11 and a half hours wandering through the city in our own little world, talking incessantly. We’d talked about our childhoods, our families, our jobs.

Our relationships, politics, our goals. I could have continued talking to him for hours and hours — days, in fact — and still leave feeling like I’d barely scratched the surface of him. I wanted to scratch some more. To get right up against it, underneath it even.

What it feels like to fall in love after loss
When I landed at Lisbon airport, Manu was waiting for me at Arrivals. I walked down the ramp towards him, all six suitcases balancing precariously on a trolley.

My heart pounded inside my chest as his eyes met mine and we waved at each other from across the hall. Would it be as good as I’d imagined it to be between us? I asked myself. Or had I made him out to be something he wasn’t? Was it all just wishful thinking, an attempt to run away from my pain?

Once the sun had disappeared behind the terracotta rooftops, he picked me up on his motorbike and drove me to a restaurant for some dinner. It was a no-frills sort of joint, with paper tablecloths, harsh lighting, and waiters who didn’t care to hide the fact that they’d have rather spent their evenings somewhere else.

I watched as Manu made an incision at the tail end of our roasted sea bass, before running the flat edge of his knife along the spine. I studied him as he pulled tiny bones from the flesh, made note of all the ways he wasn’t Ben.

But he’s not Ben, I tried to reason with myself — he was different, and being different wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

After dinner, we paid the bill and went for a drive through the city, up and down the hills, round the winding, cobbled lanes past the pastel-coloured buildings. And there it was again, I noticed. The dichotomy of agony and rapture. I ought to have been overjoyed, and I was — I was back in this gorgeous city, pressed up against this gorgeous man.

But I was sad too, for all that I had left behind to get here. I felt myself pushing and pulling in opposite directions, walking the threshold again between two worlds: the land of the living and the land of the dead.

We parked his bike outside the entrance to my building some time later and headed upstairs. I could feel his touch beginning to reassemble the broken parts of me that I’d salvaged amidst the rubble.

What would Ben make of all this, of me falling for somebody else? I was confused. Wasn’t this technically cheating? I tried to silence the voice that kept telling me that Ben was watching us.

Perhaps it was better to quit while I was ahead, to cut myself off and buffer the pain that would follow if — or rather when — it ended. How could I possibly love somebody again, knowing all that there was to lose? But I was already in too deep, I realised. I had feelings for him — big ones.

On wrestling with guilt over finding love again
​
“You know I love you, right?” said Manu. We were sitting side by side at my dining table, huddled together against the damp December air.

He’d spent the past hour toiling in the kitchen, cooking pan-fried salmon, sweet potato purée, and a fig and goat’s cheese salad. He’d even decorated the table, complete with candles and a bouquet of flowers in all my favourite colours.

I nodded and kissed him. I did know, and I knew I felt the same way about him — but the more time we’d spent together in recent weeks, the more my guilt and confusion spiralled.

I knew I was clinging to certain stories — that I was undermining Ben’s death and letting him go by being with somebody else. That if I allowed myself to fully give and receive love again, then ours no longer meant as much. I’d made excuses not to attend things he’d invited me to. I’d held him at arm’s length, avoided introducing him to my new friends.

“I do,” I replied. “I just need time. Just give me some more time.”

Why finding new love as a window is moving forwards — not moving on

I wish I could tell you that Manu and I rode off into the sunset together and lived happily ever after, only it hasn’t been quite as simple as that. It’s been a long and sometimes painful journey, with lots of bumps and U-turns, even a break-up somewhere in-between.

Yet despite all the ways I tried to push him away, he loved me anyway, steady and unfaltering.

I almost didn’t include the bits about dating again, you know. I was worried about what others would think — that it was too soon, that I don’t love Ben as much as I say I do, or that I must be over my grief.

But I’ve learned that grief doesn’t work like that. There is no such thing as moving on, there is only moving forwards.

Eventually, I learned to relinquish the guilt and let Manu in. It’s not the same, no, but I think that being different is a good thing.

This extract has been edited and condensed. Bittersweet: A Story of Love and Loss by Lotte Bowser is out now.
​
​As told by Brit Dawson for Cosmopolitan.