Jemma Walton found out more.

When Sue Manton met her husband she thought they would be together forever. But 27 years after they got married, her husband went to work one day and realised he couldn't put four pieces of paper in order.

He realised something was wrong. And it was – later a neighbour found him wandering around in the street, not knowing what he was doing.

He was soon diagnosed with a brain tumour, and died just over a year later, leaving Sue a widow at the age of 50.

"I felt so many things – loss, guilt, it was a very odd time," she said. "I had spent years being somebody's wife, somebody's mother, that I suddenly had to work out who I was by myself."

But after the huge wave of grief passes, widows and widowers often find themselves wanting to fall in love and build a new relationship. And yet the hardships they have been through don't protect them from the slings and arrows of life on the singles' frontline.

"Bob was always telling me how he wanted me to find someone else and be happy, he really wanted that," said Sue, of Piccard Drive, Spalding. "But it took me three years after he died to feel able to do that, and I really tried, but it just didn't work for me.

"Making a relationship work when you're older is completely different from when you're making one work when you're younger. When you're younger you're learning together, you're trying to build a home, and find patterns of living together, even when it comes to things like housework and gardening.

"But when you're older you're meeting people who have that already sorted, and it's different from your way of doing things. And that can be hard, even though you have the material things, the car and the house and the job, sorted out.

"Sometimes, it just doesn't work out – like with me. I am happy by myself, having friends but nothing more, for the time being.

"But some divorced people can meet a new partner and it's a dream come true. I know of a couple in their 50s who are getting married soon, and they were born to be with one another, and so that happy ending can happen."

Sue, now 61, has recently set up the Spalding branch of the National Council for the Divorced and Separated (NCDS) (Details on next page). She knows how people feel when they've lost their other half, or when they are struggling to put their lives together after a divorce or separation.

And she knows that often, what they need is a place they can meet new people, without any pressure. Spalding NCDS is a group where anyone of any age can come and make new friends, and maybe meet a new partner.

"We're not a dating agency or a counselling service," she said. "We can't tackle people's problems for them. But what we can do is provide a nice atmosphere for people to meet other people.

"And you will be protected - everyone who comes along has to prove that they are divorced, widowed or separated.

"When I moved here I didn't know anyone, but after going along to a couple of meetings when I walked through town I began to bump into people that I knew. And I have made some really good friends, women as well as men."

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