Dear Grief Guide, My Partner Doesn't Understand My Grief

After her father's death, a grieving woman is frustrated by her partner's distant, unsupportive behavior. I read her anonymous letter and then offered her 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

Trigger Warning: This practice may include references to death, dying, and the departed.

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,

It's been almost five months since I lost my dad to pancreatic cancer,

And I feel like I'm losing my relationship too.

My partner was really supportive at first,

Making sure I ate and slept and got to work safely.

But after my dad's funeral,

He stopped acting like anything happened.

I talked to him a couple of weeks ago explaining that I feel like he expects me to be over my dad's death because I'm back at work and doing other quote-unquote normal things.

But I'm not normal.

I think about and miss my dad every day,

And at least a few times a week,

I'll express that to him out loud.

Even so,

He just doesn't engage with me and my grief.

When I tell him I feel sad or start talking about my dad,

He doesn't even acknowledge I've said anything.

I guess he doesn't want me to talk about it or deal with my tears when they come.

I'm not a blubbering mess,

But I'm still trying to figure all of this out.

Some days it's just really heavy to carry,

Especially by myself.

It's becoming more and more clear that my partner doesn't understand my grief.

Have you ever had this sort of experience with a partner?

How do I deal with this feeling of being iced out by someone who's supposed to support me?

Am I the problem?

Sincerely,

Frozen Out Of Love Hi there,

Frozen Out Of Love.

Thank you so much for writing in with this because it is such a common and heartbreaking experience in life after loss that the people who live with us,

Who we're tied to,

Who we have chosen to share our lives with through partnership,

Marriage,

Dating,

Or otherwise,

Oftentimes it hurts the most when they are the people who do not understand our grief.

And I think when it comes to grieving and having a partner support you in your grief,

One of two things could be happening here.

Number one,

Your partner genuinely doesn't know what to do.

They don't know what to say.

He doesn't know what to do.

He doesn't know how best to support you,

Even if you've tried to verbally tell him.

And in that case,

It might be an instance of him needing more education.

And if that's something that he's willing to access and willing to be interested in,

And this is a question you can post him,

Are you interested in learning how to support me?

Is that something I can share with you?

I would highly,

Highly,

Highly recommend a service called Help Texts.

And this should work no matter where you're located in the world,

Because they are able to text internationally,

But you can sign up for a Help Text subscription and put in your dad's name,

His death anniversary,

His birthday,

Any other important days that are important to you,

And then his cause of death,

How old he was when he died,

How old you are.

And you get,

As the grieving person,

Custom text messages tailored to your loss.

But the cool part about Help Texts is that it also allows you to add two supporters to your subscription.

And I would encourage you to add your partner as a supporter.

And what they get is not tips about dealing with grief,

But tips about supporting you as you grieve,

Including notifications of,

We're a week away from Frozen Out of Love's dad's death anniversary.

Here are some ideas for honoring that.

Here are some scripts you can use for inviting Frozen Out of Love to start to tell stories about her dad.

Or here's how you can honor important grief days together.

Or here's how you can support them at work.

Or here's how you can support them at home,

Or help them get more sleep,

Or help them eat healthy meals that feel nourishing to their body,

Or help them release emotions that maybe they're afraid to talk about.

There are so many tips that Help Texts sends,

And they are written by authors,

By researchers,

By doctors,

By nurses,

By hospice professionals,

By people who are in the grief space,

Experts in their field,

Dozens and dozens and dozens of them,

Full transparency,

Including myself.

So you will get tips and scripts and resources from me written by me as a part of Help Texts.

And this service for less than one therapy session gives you an entire year of support for both you and your partner.

And this is a service that takes the burden of teaching off of you.

Because as I've mentioned so many times before on this show,

It is such a shame that as we are grieving,

We must become the teachers of our grief to other people to tell them how to support us.

And it's just so life changing when that burden of teaching is taken off of your shoulders because you were already carrying so much.

So if you believe Frozen Out of Love on any level,

That he might be receptive to getting an education on how to support a grieving person,

I really encourage you to try on Help Texts.

And if you'd like a discount on services,

Use my name,

Shelby Forsythia,

All one word at checkout,

And it should take a discount off of a year's worth of text messages about your dad and him supporting you and your grief.

Okay,

That was a long winded number one.

Number two,

That I often see in partnership and grief support,

Is that your partner genuinely does not care about you and your grief.

Whether he doesn't know how to care,

Whether he doesn't have the energy to care,

Whether he actually out of some sort of malice or malintent does not want to care,

And just cannot bring himself to be a person who is in your support network or is not capable of that emotional,

Spiritual,

Psychological,

Physical depth,

Dump him.

It is so harsh,

And it is so final,

And it can feel like because it is a loss on top of a loss,

And frozen out of love,

I do not want that to be your name forever.

Frozen out of love.

You deserve support from people in your life,

Not just a partner,

But from people in your life who know what it is to grieve,

Who listen to you when you talk about your dad,

Who sit by you,

Who witness your pain and are willing to do so when you are having grief's hardest emotions.

Everyone deserves that when they grieve.

And so many grieving people I've worked with,

Clients and students alike,

Have told me it was so much more painful to stay in a relationship with someone who did not get my grief than to be by myself.

And I wish I would have made that decision much sooner,

Because I didn't recognize the energy I was expending trying to be seen and heard and witnessed and validated by somebody who was committed to misunderstanding,

Or not even interested in understanding,

My grief.

One step towards this,

If you're not ready to pull the plug just yet,

Is to see a couples counselor.

Maybe a session or two or three or four might help both of you come to some sort of understanding about the fact that this has irreversibly changed your life,

And you will be forever changed by this,

And will need support on some level,

Maybe not at the same intensity,

Year after year after year,

But with a decent measure of intensity here at the beginning.

And then as you learn to cope with grief,

To have somebody to help carry it with you over time.

And can he commit to being that person?

That's a very valid question that might be worth asking in the presence of a neutral third party.

And then if some sort of agreement or some sort of consensus,

If some sort of progress can be made there,

Excellent,

Maybe the solution is not to dump him.

But if he makes it clear over and over and over again that your grief,

And by consequence you,

Your emotional state,

Your needs,

Your life experience,

Cannot be a priority to him,

You have my full permission and endorsement to let this guy go.

To let him go.

And I am so sorry if that becomes your reality,

And it is such an unfair consequence of grieving that we lose people that are close to us because they don't know what to say or do.

And I repeat again,

The energy you are expending right now wondering if you're the problem?

Wondering if there's something you're doing that's not getting through to him?

That energy is so much better spent actually learning how to process the grief you're feeling and finding ways to remember your dad and locating ways to feel safe in a world where loss has taught you anything can happen at any time.

Imagine how much more mental and emotional and maybe even physical energy you might have to put towards your grief,

Towards coping with this really hard thing,

If you do not also have to fight the battle of convincing your partner that you are worth loving and supporting at this time.

Oh,

That gives me so many emotions that makes me tear up.

If you're if you're kind of afraid of both of these things,

Something that I hear often from another advice podcast I listen to,

The Savage Lovecast,

Is to invite him to listen to this episode.

If you're like,

Hey,

I,

Um,

I wrote into a podcast recently,

And I got an answer.

Just leave it at that and let him listen.

If you feel safe doing so that might be an option for you.

Or you can pretend it's from somebody,

The letter is from somebody else entirely.

And to have him listen anyway and say,

Isn't it eerie how similar our circumstances are?

But she's got some solution.

She's got some words in here that really resonated with me.

And I wonder if you feel the same.

That might be helpful for both of you to listen to this episode together,

Or to have maybe a friend covertly recommend it to him.

So that there's a way that this wisdom that this knowing somehow reaches his ears.

And I want to tell you this too,

Frozen out of love.

From what I understand,

From what I have experienced in my own life of grief as being the grieving partner and not being the person dating someone who's grieving,

Or married to someone who's grieving.

From what I have heard from people who have been partnered to me,

Is that in some seasons,

Especially when I did not know what to do with my grief,

It was hard to be partnered to me.

It is hard to be partnered to somebody who is a grieving person,

Not just because it's a heavy emotional lift.

But because a lot of times when we envision partnership,

When we envision dating and relationships and marriage and being together for a long time,

Oftentimes we don't imagine grief being a part of that equation.

We do not often enter relationships,

Signing up to do loss,

To navigate loss together.

Your partner may not have signed up to date a grieving person.

This may not be what he anticipated in entering into partnership with you.

And it's not your fault.

It's just not what he was expecting from life.

And to be frank,

It was probably not what you were expecting of life either.

And that's really fair for both of you.

But now that you are a grieving person,

And you cannot make that untrue,

That will be true for you for the rest of your life.

And that's not a bad thing.

As we've mentioned so many times on this show,

You both have to decide,

On some level,

Lay it all out,

Truly,

Honestly,

Transparently,

Whether this relationship is working for you.

This is especially true if your dad's cancer or death was a big surprise,

Was something you did not see coming.

This is also especially true if neither of you has experienced big losses before.

Because navigating a first big loss with somebody else for whom it is also their first big loss,

That's really hard because you're both learning what grief is,

Very intimately,

Very close up,

Together.

I am sending you so much love,

Frozen out of love.

This is not an easy place to be in the world.

You may not be a blubbering mess,

But you are still trying to figure all of this out,

The dynamics of all of this.

So if he is open to being educated on some level to becoming what a lot of people call grief literate,

You could certainly look up resources for grief literacy,

There are so many that exist in the world.

Consider help texts,

And again use discount code shelbyforsythia to sign up.

And if you recognize,

Through couples therapy,

Through continued conversation,

Through whatever other means,

That he is simply uninterested or incapable of being a good,

Consistent source of support to you in your grief,

In a way that feels good to you,

Not by anybody else's measurement,

Just yours,

Then it is okay to let this relationship go.

And as always,

If you need support through this process,

If you are looking for a place to find language or words for it,

Or frameworks,

Community or structure,

I would love to work with you,

Whether one on one,

Whether through Life After Loss Academy,

Or even,

I mean,

Send me another letter.

Send me another email,

Keep us posted,

Because I would love to know how this lands with your heart,

And eventually what steps you take next.

Good luck.