[vsef]

This is such a lazy, bad take.

I was deeply moved by the article thinking about my own relationship of twenty years, and imagining the inevitable death of one of us in the future.

Much of my own pain would involve activities you suggest while giving advice about something you don't understand.

I immediately thought about how my ski routine would be a trigger like this for me. I ski near 100 days a year. My first thought reading the article was how much I would hurt making morning coffee and breakfast without my husband and not talking and making ski plans for the day. And how hard and long it would be for that break in daily routine to no longer be a constant reminder of absence. All the harder by it's very routineness and connection to something that is otherwise very pleasurable to me.

That this type of pain would be mitigated by "getting out there and doing fun stuff and having more friends and not pleasure eating" is a perspective with zero understanding of what the bond in a decades long marriage is like or why meal time is so emotionally salient.

[pengaru]

I just had to help my grieving mother with house repairs all summer and she's steeped in exactly this easily mitigated outcome.

It's a completely absurd self-created easily predicted misery and extremely depressing to witness.

[vsef]

Easily mitigated by what? Doing less things with your partner seems to be your suggestion?

I am active with close friends that I have maintained for even longer! I am lucky enough to continue having close friends of 25 years I still do things with (including skiing).

The idea that my friends and activities mitigates this problem is absurd and I think shows how little you understand.