Still married, sorta

—How do I say this maintaining taste and decorum?
My wife died over eight years ago, and much to my surprise I made many female friends since, even pretty ones.
MARKED FOR LIFE, I say, regarding my early childhood. My holy-roller parents and hyper-religious Sunday-School superintendent neighbor convinced me no female would ever smile at/talk to/associate with/or hang out with ME — except the asexual frumps they lined up to “straighten-me-out” (their words).
Now, 70 years late, I find myself attracting ladies, even pretty ones.
“You’re funny,” they tell me = make ‘em laugh.
Plus ladies love talking, and I encourage that. Talking with ladies is much more fun than men, who often pull that macho crap on you, or get defensive.
Every time I hike Lehigh Valley RailTrail, it’s the ladies that smile at me and say hello. The men don’t.
But I’m still married, sorta.
Friends wonder how I got a female to marry me despite being “marked-for-life.”
Special case, I always say. She liked me as soon as she saw me. “I like the way that guy thinks.”
My wife also had a difficult childhood, mainly her mother. Her father liked her. Both parents were difficult for me, although my mother mellowed as I got older. She realized my father was turning me off.
Another friend whose husband died nine years ago, also feels “still married.”
Her husband was a prize; they liked each other.
“Someone might come along that might change my mind, but I doubt it,” she says.
The fact her husband was so well-suited also factors in.
I could say that’s true in my case, except who I am now makes me wonder. My wife was an excellent match in that she understood what I said. Figures-of-speech, obtuse concepts, philosophy.
But I doubt she could live with who I became. Flirtatious, and I enjoy female company. I wonder sometimes if she was right for me.
My bereavement counselor says she was step-two in recovery from a dreadful childhood.
Step one was my college, the first religious institution to not declare me evil and stupid. Some professors wanted me in their class — unlike most students I could think. I had a habit of skewering conventional wisdom with viable criticism. “That Hughes kid has a point!”
I’ve made many lady-friends, way more than I expected.
But I have yet to meet anyone comparable to my wife.
Flirting is fun, but that’s as far as I go. I love makin’ ‘em laugh, or make them feel pretty, but I can’t get physical.
I don’t want the girl to think I’m a lecher, and I’m still attached to my wife.

• My college was Houghton College in western New York, from where I graduated with a BA in 1966. I never regretted it, although I graduated a Ne’er-do-Well, without their blessing. Houghton is an evangelical liberal-arts college, and was the first religious institution to not consider me rebellious and Of-the-Devil = a threat.