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Dear Eric: My wife of 44 years passed away after a 6-year battle with cancer. During that time, she said that with all the billions of people on the planet, I could surely find someone else to love. And that I had her permission.

After an appropriate time of mourning, I went on a dating site and met a lot of lovely women. One in particular has worked out splendidly for the past 15 years. We are very happy.

Now, the problem. About six or so years ago I met another woman. She lights up my life, but she is married.

One afternoon I told her that I loved her, but would not advance it in any way, not wanting to wreck her marriage. I love my significant other, but I can't stop thinking about this new love, day and night. My partner and I see her and her husband socially, but I never let on.

Am I nuts to think I could love two women equally?

– Lots of Love

Dear Love: Sure, it’s possible to hold love for both of these women, but it’s not clear from your letter whether the other woman is interested in pursuing anything. It’s also not clear if you plan to pursue something, or if this is a question about emotional capacity. Even if you and she do want to pursue something, you owe it to your significant other to first have a conversation about what’s happening and what the shared agreements of your relationship are.

You aren’t trapped, but you need to communicate clearly with the other people involved and be as sure as possible about what you really want to happen.

It may be that this other woman doesn’t need to be a romantic partner at all, but rather a close friend. Defining for yourself and with your partner what your wants are and what your boundaries are is going to help you a lot here.

Dear Eric: My wife and I are having a very hard time processing our feelings about two uncles and two aunts left out of our 41-year-old's recent wedding celebration.

These folks include my sister, two brothers and a beloved SIL, all who've been a loving part of our 41-year-old's life since birth. They live in our city where the reception was held.

Wedding festivities took place over four days and began in a city hundreds of miles away, to which my wife and I traveled. Many family members of the fiancé, including a number from halfway around the world, attended. We were thoroughly welcomed and are so happy to have gotten acquainted with such fine folks. Many of them then traveled to our city for the civil ceremony and reception. Also at the reception were a number of the fiancé's friends who came from over a thousand miles away.

Seeing all the fiancé's extended family in our city for the civil ceremony and reception and friends at the reception put a very poignant sting in our hearts for the four local family members who weren't included.

We just don't understand the exclusion of these four local, loving family members whom our 41-year-old knows well and loves, while we witnessed the importance of "honoring and including family members" over several days and two states of ceremonies and celebrations. It was sad for us to shed tears after getting home from the reception.

How do we navigate these feelings, Eric? We don't want an "explanation" for the exclusion from the couple.

– Hurting Parents

Dear Parents: While an explanation may not assuage the hurt and confusion you’re feeling, a conversation really is going to be the best path forward. Talking with your child about the experience that you had and the way you felt will open the door for your child to share his or her perspective and perhaps give context that you don’t have right now.

And yet, it still may not solve the problem. That’s the job of acceptance. Acceptance isn’t condoning; it isn’t explaining away. It isn’t always understanding. But as you and your wife navigate these feelings, it will be healthy for you to acknowledge to yourselves, and perhaps to your child, that you wish things had gone a different way.

Acceptance will also start to clear the path for you to release this. You didn’t have control over the wedding invitations; your 41-year-old and the new in-law made the decisions that they deemed best at the time. Their intentions may have been benign, or even good somehow. Whatever they were, they were their intentions, over which you didn’t have a say.

Talking about it will help this from curdling into resentment; accepting that your child made a decision with which you didn’t agree will help you leave the hurt in the past.

(Send questions to R. Eric Thomas at eric@askingeric.com or P.O. Box 22474, Philadelphia, PA 19110. Follow him on Instagram and sign up for his weekly newsletter at rericthomas.com.)

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