Widows Dating Online
As the name suggests, Widowsorwidowers.com is a dating site for heterosexual widows and widowers looking to make connections and relationships with those of the opposite sex who may be in a similar situation. However, when you register, you are able to select divorced and separated as your marital status and when you conduct searches for other members, you are also able to filter according to other status besides widowed. In fact, in the About Us section on the website, the company describes itself as a general dating site.
Registration
To help maximise the chances of meeting the right person for you, Just Widower Singles is part of a shared romance network of members and sites. Widowsorwidowers.com is the longest running widows and widowers dating site in the US. With over fifteen years’ experience in online dating for widows and widowers, we are well placed to provide you with a safe and compassionate dating exeperience.
As soon as you go to the website or the mobile app, you are prompted to set up your account. All you have to do is (1) choose your location country (out of seven countries), (2) select whether you are a man looking for a woman or a woman looking for a man, (3) enter your birth date, (4) enter your email address, and (5) choose a password. Then you’re prompted to verify your email address and you can go into your account and fill out your profile some more, if you wish. You may choose to write a short narrative about yourself, answer a few questions, and select your characteristics and interests. You are also able to select a few physical characteristics in the person you are looking for (such as location, build, and height).
You may create a profile without uploading a photo but there is also no function to register by linking to your Facebook account.
App/Mobile
There is no mobile application for Widowsorwidowers.com but there is a mobile version that contains most of the features available on the website except for Diaries. The mobile version is quite easy to use, loads quickly, and you can easily access some of the reference information from the desktop version under the Account tab, such as the site’s Safety Dating Tips and the Help menu.
Design & Usability
As with most of these membership-based sites, Widowsorwidowers.com is also constantly prompting you to upgrade your membership so that you may access additional features. The messaging feature is a bit confusing as without a premium membership, you are able to send one message per member for free but you are unable to actually read any incoming messages or respond to them without upgrading. So it would seem that even if I sent a member a message, I would need to upgrade to actually respond to him or her.
Upon immediately entering the site or mobile version, Widowsorwidowers is very visually pleasing through the registration process but once you get to the member dashboard, it kind of looks like a website that was designed in the early to mid 2000s and that has not been updated much at all. The font is rather small and in light pink or gray so it’s not the most easy to read. Even the tabs on the top of the page delineating the various functions are rather small. There are some icons for shortcuts on the bottom of the view page that may make for easier navigation. But the good thing is that the site itself is quite simple and basic in terms of how it’s laid out and what it offers, so it is still easy to find what you need to.
Special Features
A unique feature on Widowsorwidowers is the Dating Diaries, which resembles a social media feed of various members’ status updates. You are able to filter the entries to see those between a certain age range and you are also able to upload your own (but only if you upgrade your membership). And as previously mentioned, this feature is not available on the mobile version.
There is also an Encounters function, which is what I would consider the “swiping right or left” part of the site. It shows you a photo of one member at a time, his/her first name, age, and distance from you. Then you click Yes, Maybe, or No and you will get to see the next photo.
For the avid traveler, or those who split their time internationally, Widowsorwidowers is available in six other countries besides the United States – United Kingdom, Canada, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa – basically, all other primarily English speaking countries.
Summary
Widoworwidowers seems like a good place to start if you are a widow or widower looking for a romantic connection with someone that has experienced a loss similar to yours. However, in terms of quantity, it is probably not the most popular of such sites. When conducting a generic search for online dating sites for widows and widowers, it is not the first result. And when I searched for widows within 50 miles of my location (which is a large American city) and also within a 10-year age range, the site only came back with 14 results. If I then also checked Single, Divorced, and Separated, as well as Widowed, then 91 members appeared.
The site is also clearly for heterosexual relationships so does not have an option for those of other sexual orientations.
Widows Dating Online Reviews
Members also really have to upgrade their memberships if they wish to even be able to connect with potential members since only the premium membership allows for exchanging of messages.