Good grief

I had a conversation with someone last night who talked about the experience of when her partner seemingly moved on to 'bigger and better things' without so much as a backward glance.  She was left reeling and spent years wondering just what the feck had happened.

'It felt like he didn't care about me at all' she said.  I reflected back a conversation I'd had with someone else who'd been through a similar thing, and that I've blogged about before...that relationships have momentum. They take a while to ramp up, and they can take a long time to slow down too - even after something is over feelings remain, on both sides! I'd add that just because someone is the initiator or  'leaver' it doesn't mean that they won't have lingering feelings of sadness or grief.  In fact, if the experiences of my friends are anything to go by, it's often harder for the leaver.  They risk being vilified by others, have to justify their position, there's very little sympathy headed their way (unless there was abuse involved...a totally different scenario and not for this post). And, because the uncoupling process may have started long before the relationship ends, they may appear to have it all together and to have moved on, even when they most likely haven't. 

Grief is a weird thing - it's not linear. It can hit you at unexpected moments months or years after an event. It can be triggered by a smell, or a taste, or a random comment. You can feel like you've got it all together in the morning, and be falling apart by lunch. And it's private...oh so private.  Grief scares people - they don't want to hear that you're not ok, not really. So it tends to be internalised - and that means that even a leaver, who might be really struggling with the aftermath of a relationship breakup (even if they wanted it) may never let on their true feelings.

The point of this post? To remind me and others that we don't know what we don't know.  To remember that not only is it ok to be sad when a relationship ends, it's ok to accept that the other person might be sad too, regardless of how it might look from the outside. And to hang on to the idea that grief is actually not such a bad thing if you acknowledge it exists - and if you can learn from an experience that will make you a better person in the long run. 



Read more about grieving a relationship here

Read more about the process of uncoupling here