Coping with Relationship Grief: when you lose someone who’s still alive
I kept hearing it from client after client:
“I’m walking around with hurt that nobody can see, and that makes me question if what I’m feeling is even real.”
“Everyone thinks I’m normal because I look it, but nobody can tell that I’m grieving.”
“There’s no acknowledgement because there isn’t space and there aren't adequate words.”
“Just because I haven’t buried someone doesn’t mean I haven’t lost.”
Phrases like these landed at my core as a clinician AND a human who resonated with what these clients were referring to but struggling to feel validated in: grief for the living.
Many of my clients who were brave enough to acknowledge this kind of grief were recently divorced or separated from a long-term partner who they had completely melded their lives with. Their routines, lifestyle, finances, family, and very sense of self had become wrapped up in the relationship they shared with this person and so losing their partner felt like losing so much more than a connection – it was losing a planned future, the parts of themselves that that person brought out, a shared history full of meaning, and so much more.
Some of these clients were grieving the loss of not just one person but a whole family or community. A lot of them had embarked on deconstruction journeys after experiencing spiritual abuse or a faith journey that had been marked by manipulation and exploitation by family systems or church leaders. Some didn’t relate to spiritual trauma but wanted to clarify their values and belief systems on their own terms after being raised with standards and expectations that didn’t hold up in their adult real world experience. They experienced shame, disbelief, anger, sadness, or even full-on alienation from parents, siblings, mentors, or leaders for their decision and it only added to the grief of losing a community that had been home for so long.
These lonely yet incredibly courageous grievers often had no idea that what they were experiencing was indeed grief because they assumed that label only belonged to people who lost a loved one to death or coma. They also uncovered that, unlike a death where there is some kind of announcement to friends and family about the loss, relationship loss often made them feel isolated because there was no formal way for their community to understand the experience. In their counseling sessions, the question came up over and over again: “what does it mean to lose someone who is still alive but not accessible to me?”
Relationship grief stages are not black and white, but my clients did begin to find answers within themselves over time for how to begin to process life after loss:
Grief is a Layered Emotion
Anger. Guilt. Helplessness. Self-hatred and blame. Betrayal. Despair. Shame. Rage. Emptiness.
All of these can be grief, many of them are felt all at the same time, and none of them are invalid after the loss of a person or place that was precious to you. These feelings often have a way of visiting you when you least expect them and other people often don’t recognize them as grief. But they’re not abnormal when you think about the task of life after loss: getting up and moving through the motions of work, school, and social life when it feels like the landscape of the world has fundamentally changed.
There is no “Correct” Way to Grieve and no Way to Fail at it
Our society is not a safe space for grievers, especially those grieving the living: we might give them a month or two to talk about the experience and express emotion, and then the general, unspoken consensus is “get your act together and start moving on.” Phone calls and check-ins start to wane and the world expects you to start moving back at its pace. This is a heavy task after loss and it’s tempting to feel like you’re “failing.” But in the same way that there is no correct way to lose someone, there’s also not a correct way to mourn that loss.
Loss is not an Experience that Gets Smaller, Your Life Grows Bigger Around it
Because grief is so painful, it can be helpful sometimes to picture it as eventually going away or at least becoming small enough in your emotional self that it doesn’t impact you anymore. But because grief is just an expression of all the love that you felt towards the person or community that you lost, it doesn’t take up less space in your story: your story just grows and expands around it as new chapters are added and that love starts having a place to go again. As new experiences and relationships develop around the pain, grief can integrate itself into the rest of your life as A terrible thing that happened but not the ONLY thing that has happened and NOT the end of your capacity to feel joy.
If this resonates, I hope you’ll stick around for the next post about practical strategies for navigating life after relationship loss. And, if you’re looking for professional support, I would love to hear from you. You can reach me at abigail@attachmentlabcounseling.com or access my calendar directly by clicking here
