One of my friends lost her father to cancer when she was in college. Her mother remarried a couple of years later. At that time she told my friend: "It's not that I love your father any less, but I am still in my 40s and I would like to have some companionship in the coming years."

Given that my friend's maternal grandmother lived to be 101, I think that was a wise strategy. Decades later, my friend's mother is 85 or 86 and she has outlived her second husband and is still going strong.