DARREN Clarke is not the first high-profile figure to run the gauntlet of public opinion by starting another relationship so quickly after his wife Heather's death.

Russ Lindsay, former husband of the late Blue Peter presenter Caron Keating, started dating former TV weather presenter Sally Meen just five months after Keating died. He married Meen last September, 20 months after his first wife had passed away from a long battle with cancer in April 2004.

Nigella Lawson came in for criticism for moving in with Charles Saatchi just nine months after the death of her first husband John Diamond from throat cancer in 2001. The pair married in 2003.

But not all professionals agree that a relationship which develops so quickly after the death of a loved one heralds doom and gloom.

Robin Hegarty is a 10-year veteran of bereavement counselling with the Bereavement Counselling Services, Newbridge branch, and has guided people of all ages and situations through coping with the loss of a spouse.

"My thoughts are that there are no time limits on how long it should take before someone gets involved with another relationship, " she says.

I'm sure people are surprised when a person who has lost a loved one starts seeing someone new quickly but for a bereaved person it's very difficult not to take support wherever it's offered. People can be too judgmental. I would tell someone in Darren Clarke's situation to get support wherever they can."

Hegarty says that losing someone close often brings the important things in life sharply into focus. "The pain is in the here and now and when someone offers support it's like being offered an Anadin for a headache. You're not going to refuse it. You'll worry about the after-effects later on."

Unlike some experts who offer defined timelines for the mourning process, Hegarty says each case is different. "If there's such a thing as a normal grieving period, and I don't know that there is, I'd say it's two years before the average person starts to feel back to themselves. It's not something that goes away in a month."

She also believes that others should be slow to offer their opinions that the grieved one is moving too fast into another relationship. "When you're going through pain, any comfort is better than no comfort. If everything works out well with the new relationship people will say the person made the right decision, and if it doesn't they'll say it was because it was too soon. Nobody can answer the question of it being too soon or not. I would advise someone in that situation to take things very very slowly and be wary of going into another deep relationship very soon, but you can't say to someone 'you shouldn't see that person'. If it helps them get from A to B then it's not a bad thing. It's a different story of course if the relationship is in some way abusive or bad for the person."

Clarke might find the real trouble lies not with his kids but with extended family, Hegarty says. "Generally, the quicker a new relationship comes the harder it will be for that person in relation to the reaction of extended family. I don't think anyone watching the Ryder Cup could say Darren Clarke wasn't suffering when his wife died. I wouldn't be critical of him, but his new relationship will probably come at a price and I hope the new woman will support him. People who knew the bereaved person and the spouse may feel a little strange around them, like their loved one is being replaced, but it's not for anyone else to judge."

However, Hegarty believes that because Clarke's children are young he might be in a better position to establish a new relationship. "It's probably a bit less complicated if the children are young as they tend to be more accepting. If the children are teenagers it has to be done more sensitively, and there can be more of an issue with the timeframe. If they accept the new person fine, but often they don't and their feelings have to be respected."

Edward Kelly lost his wife Jane eight years ago to a sudden heart attack and started dating again six months later.

He says now that it was too soon. "With the first woman I took out I knew quickly that it wasn't going to work, but things just happened. I think probably you're looking for someone or something to fill the void that's left behind without even realising it. What people don't realise is that apart from the loss and the grieving it's incredibly lonely to suddenly be left on your own."

Kelly says that what threw his world upside down in particular was the little everyday things about being with someone that you didn't even know you enjoyed.

"Suddenly you're doing all the normal things that you've done with someone for years on your own. Sleeping alone, eating alone. You've no one to tell all the trivial things of your day to that most other people don't want to hear about. I found eating alone particularly difficult and actually didn't want to eat. Sometimes I'd come home from work and rather than eat alone I'd skip dinner and just go to bed. You end up getting caught up in work more as a way to fill the emptiness so it's probably not surprising that many people try to find someone else quickly."

Despite this, he says a grieving person is not in as good a position to make well-informed choices about relationships as they would normally.

Kelly, who has three grown-up children with his first wife, became engaged to another woman less than two years after his wife died, and only six weeks after meeting her . . . which his family strongly opposed. "There's the chance that you'll make a wrong decision because you're not in your normal frame of mind, which is what my family thought I was doing. I don't think they knew about the other women I'd dated, but they strongly objected to my getting engaged because they thought it was too soon. At the time I didn't think so, but in hindsight it probably was. I think their [the family's] influence contributed to our eventual breakup."

He has been involved in another relationship for the past three years and plans to remarry in April.

As his family has also had time to deal with their loss they've been encouraging of his new relationship. "They are very much supportive this time because it's developed over time and I wasn't in such a hurry to do something drastic like get married again. Deciding to get engaged this time round was a more rational decision rather than a knee- jerk or rebound one. I don't think I was looking for anything when I met my fiancee, which was a far healthier place to be."