Dear Grief Guide, My Friend Keeps Comparing Our Losses

A letter-writer is bothered by their friend's unsupportive actions and comments after the death of their cat. I read their anonymous letter and then offer them practical tools and compassionate wisdom for growing through grief.
Dear Grief Guide is a weekly advice podcast where I answer anonymous letters from people feeling lost, stuck, or overwhelmed in the midst of grief.
Music © Adi Goldstein, Used with Permission

Transcript

Hello and welcome to Dear Grief Guide, A podcast where each week I answer one anonymous letter from a listener feeling lost, Stuck, Heartbroken, Or overwhelmed in the midst of grief. My name is Shelby Forsythia. I'm a grief coach and author, And I'm here to help you create a life you love from the life loss forced you to live. Let's get to today's letter. Dear Grief Guide, The situation has been really bothering me, And I feel like I can't turn to anyone in my life. A friend of nearly 12 years, Who used to watch my cat and whom I called his uncle, Has not been supportive at all of my grief. Let's call him Roger. Three years ago, My cat passed away a day after my birthday on Halloween. When I shared the news with Roger, He gave the least empathetic, Aww, I'm sorry, Ever, And didn't say or do anything else. In the weeks and months that followed, I left our interactions feeling terrible. During our first get-together a few months after my cat's death, Roger took me to a cat cafe, But ended the night driving by his ex's house, As if to say, See, I'm going through something too. He and his girlfriend broke up in April 2021, Just a few months before my cat died. Fast forward to now, And I've adopted another cat. Losing my first cat was incredibly hard, And I told him that I'll never love another cat like my last one. Roger keeps telling me he doesn't like me saying that. He compares it to his breakup, Saying it's the same for him because a breakup is like total emotional destruction. I feel like my friend keeps comparing his grief to mine. Am I going crazy? I've been in a serious relationship twice as long as the one he's upset over, And was completely blindsided. He and this girl were together for one year, Already broke up once, And at the end of the day they had different values, But it's not about comparing, It's about being there for your friend. I really feel like Roger's trying to validate his feelings by invalidating mine, And it really hurts. Does what he's doing make any sense at all? Am I being too sensitive? Signed, Apples and Oranges. Hello there Apples and Oranges, I love your signature, Because you're right, Comparing griefs to each other is like comparing apples and oranges, But I think a lot of people don't even like that phrase apples and oranges because you can put them both in the category of fruits. It's like comparing apples and like pointillism, Which is a form of fine art painting. It's like where do these two things belong in a world next to each other? Maybe that they're both colorful, Maybe that in some ways, Especially with the work of farmers and agriculture, They are manufactured by humankind. That's about where it stops. Maybe we can compare apples to construction equipment, Or apples to philosophy, Or apples to any other sort of thing that really cannot be compared to them. Because here's the thing, I've mentioned this on a few podcast episodes before, Both on Dear Grief Guide and in other shows where I've been interviewed. The only person who can rank or compare your griefs is you, And you can only rank or compare your own losses to each other. So for me, I have my own personal ranking system of which of my losses is the worst. And frankly, If I'm honest with you, It changes by the day. Is my mom's death the worst today? Or my best friend's death the worst today? Or the sudden breakup of my engagement the worst today? Or the death of my cat the worst today? Which of these things feels like the worst today? For me, It's a constantly shuffling and re-rotating, Like a leaderboard on an arcade game. Constantly changing by who's winning and whose initials are in those top slots. For a lot of other people, I think they rank their losses by the order in which they happened. Because some measure of youth is tied up into how bad the loss is felt. For a lot of people, Closeness or proximity to the person who died, Or the significance of the loss, Is how they rank their losses. But again, The ranking systems we have for our own personal grief are as different as we are. So I can't look at my experience of losing my mother and look at somebody else's experience of losing their mother and compare them. Much less look at my experience of losing my mother and somebody else's experience of losing a mother and compare them. Much less look at my experience of losing a mother and somebody else's experience of major job loss and compare them. They are different. Every single loss is different. You can lose the same role of a person in your life. You can be grieving the same thing such as a pet or a disease diagnosis or an animal or a pregnancy loss. You can be grieving the same category of a thing. But the depth and the richness and the nuance of your relationship to that thing or person or animal, That cannot ever be compared. I don't think you're crazy. I think what's happening is that Roger is playing a long game, Three years now, Of suffering Olympics, Where in some ways, And you even got the sense when he drove by his ex's house, He's trying to let you know that he is suffering too. And perhaps that he is suffering worse than you are. He is trying to do this thing where he's relating to your pain by sharing his own. But what ultimately happens, It sounds like, Is that you don't feel seen and heard and he doesn't feel seen and heard. And so your friendship is really damaged and impacted negatively because of it. And it really sounds like he is trying his best to relate. And it's not great. It's not a good time. It's not anything that is resonating with you. It sounds like he doesn't have the capacity to make space for the significance of your grief and significance of your loss without also injecting his own life experience with grief to the depth and the level that he knows it. I think you phrased this very well, That Roger validates his grief by invalidating yours, Something about needing to prove his pain or needing to demonstrate or show his pain is coming up. I really can't psychoanalyze him very far because I don't know him. But I wonder if you have capacity, If you have it in you, If this is a friendship that you would like to maintain, If there is room between the two of you to issue an invitation to him of an alternate way of being when it comes to grief. So for example, You could say something like, Hey, Instead of bringing up your ex, Whenever I talk about my cat, I would actually really love it if we could share some memories of my cat. You're his uncle in life and in death, And you have just as many silly memories of him as I do. I'm not sure if you enjoyed visiting the cat cafe, But maybe that's a place you could visit together. I know for me, I would not want to visit a cat cafe after the death of my cat, But maybe that's something that's comforting to you. So if it is, That could be a place where you regularly gather together around cat oriented activities. And so saying something like, Hey, Instead of driving by your ex's house again, Why don't we set a date to go to the cat cafe in the future? And based on what you've written, Based on how you speak about Roger and the impact that he has on your life, I get the sense that maybe he's not a person you can share your cat's memory with, Or maybe just your grief with. And if that's true, If that is the reality that you're living in right now, That no matter how hard you've tried, No matter what way or what phrase you've used to ask, No matter how many boundaries you've set, No matter how many times you've let Roger know clearly and maybe passively that you don't appreciate having your grief compared to each other, Maybe it's time to release this relationship. This is worth grieving though, If that's the conclusion you've come to, Because it sounds like your cat was really close to Roger and Roger was close to your cat. And you had a lot of memories tangled up together. Like there is a chapter in your life that was written and cannot be unwritten that includes you and Roger and your cat all alive, All existing in the same little life together. And to write chapters now in the future where Roger is not included and your cat is dead. There is a grief for the cat's absence, And there is also a grief for Roger's absence as well, Especially when you may have hoped for or wished for Roger's presence to continue, Even after the death of your cat. I think that we don't talk enough about how friendships change in the aftermath of loss. One of the most popular workshops I lead and one of the most popular sections of Life After Loss Academy is all about establishing relationships that honor our grief. Because how we are supported in life after loss makes all the difference between feeling lonely and unseen and unheard, And frankly, Feeling loved. And it sounds like right now you feel very alone in a room with two people in it, One of those people being Roger. I hope that he has the capacity to change, That he has the capacity to hear you, Because that's the first step to changing his behavior, Changing how you interact with each other. I hope that he has learned more about grief by knowing you and by living three more years on the planet, Because God knows the longer we live, The more education we get on grief. And I hope that you can tune into the part of yourself, Whether you believe that to be your head, Your heart, Your gut, Your soul, Your spirit, Whatever you call it, To advise you when it feels safe enough to stay, And when, If this time comes, You are ready to say goodbye to this relationship. I am wishing you so much love and luck, Loving blessings for your cat who died, And blessings for this new cat who is in your life too, And the joy and the value and the love that they bring alongside, Both of them, All of them, Together. I hope this helps.