5 Tips for Mourning a Relationship

Grief is never easy when you really cared about whatever/whomever you lost. If you care about a person, their absence is painful. That’s true for loss by death, but also non-death losses such as divorces, breakups, and imprisonment/deportation. Losing someone to the foster care system can also be painful and stigmatized because of the reason for the person going into foster care. In this post, I’ll discuss some ideas for mourning a relationship with someone who’s still alive. Since quite often this is due to a relationship that broke up, I’ll focus on mourning a failed relationship.

The loved one’s gone but still in circulation….

In the Q&A part of an online seminar I recently gave for East Bay CAMFT, one therapist pointed out that it can be hard to grieve the loss of a person when they’re still alive and out living their lives without you. I’ve seen people have a lot of difficulty accepting such a loss. They often wonder what’s wrong with them that the person chose to break up with them.

If the person moved on to get married or in a relationship with someone else shortly after the breakup, it hurts even more. They sometimes torture themselves wondering what the other new partner has that they don’t. A powerful mixture of anger, jealousy, sadness, and confusion can make it hard to move through the grief, because there are all these unanswered questions. It also shakes their self-esteem. They might wonder, what’s wrong with me? Why do people leave me?”

Even if the relationship had problems, it’s common to idealize an ex or feel stuck with regrets and unfinished business. Ghosting can be particularly painful and leave you questioning yourself, draining mental energy as you search for answers. That’s why it helps to step back, reflect on what happened, and consider both partners’ roles in the relationship and its ending.

Understanding and Mourning a Relationship

When you’re hurting from a breakup, it’s easy to idealize one party and villainize the other. You might think your partner was great and you were the one to blame for the breakup, or the reverse. Neither perspective is helpful or realistic. You each contributed to the successes and failures in the relationship, and it’s important to examine that. What did you contribute to the relationship, and what did your partner? How did your shortcomings interact with theirs to create the end of the relationship? This inquiry requires honesty with yourself, which might be painful at first. However, the pain of hanging onto the idea that it was all one person’s fault is hurtful too, and it stops you from learning or growing from the breakup.

Giving Yourself Time to Reflect and Mourn

I’ve seen many people jump from one relationship to the next without giving themselves time to reflect on what happened with the last relationship. There’s a saying that the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else. While that could be fun in the short run, it often results in hasty, poor decision making and sometimes unwanted pregnancy or STDs.

If you’re in a rush to get together with someone, it might be because you’re uncomfortable being with yourself. No one wants to be lonely, of course. However, if you keep getting involved with the same kind of person and having the same types of relationship problems, it’s probably because you’re not thinking it through or giving yourself a chance to mourn the last relationship. Mourning is not just allowing yourself to feel the emotions, but also making meaning of the loss and understanding it more clearly and realistically, as mentioned above.

Accepting that Some of this is Beyond Your Control

Part of what makes grieving relationships hard is that some of it is beyond your control. Sometimes, in couple’s therapy, one partner may want the relationship to work while the other doesn’t. One person once said, “can’t you make her love me?” Unfortunately, I can’t make anyone fall in or out of love; neither can you. There are certainly things you can to make the relationship you have more successful, if you’re both willing to put in the effort, but no one can manufacture desire or attraction.

Maybe you think that if you just did the right thing, you could make the person love you again, or stop cheating on you, or make them less depressed. Perhaps you think you can fix their attachment style and make an avoidant person more available. Unfortunately, this, too, is out of your control. Your inability to control these factors are not a failure; they’re just how it is. Acceptance can save you a lot of time and aggravation from trying to control the uncontrollable.

Depersonalizing the End of the Relationship

It’s natural to think that if the relationship didn’t work, it’s a rejection of you. However, going back to the first tip, both people contributed to the successful and unsuccessful elements of the relationship. If you do an honest self-assessment, you’ll be able to see that you are not some unlovable slob who’s destined for loneliness. There are probably people in your life who love and value you already, even if they’re not romantic or sexual partners. It’s good to take stock of the people who do show they care, and take the sting of personalization out of the breakup.

Finding a Way to Socialize Again Without Expectations

Even before you emerge from your mourning, with fresh understanding and having licked your wounds from the loss, it’s important to keep your connections with friends and family alive. Don’t let the loss define you or dictate your ability to still having loving connections with others. If you’re wary about dating for a while after the loss, that is understandable. You can learn to read red and green flags for relationships and wade back into the dating waters cautiously, with eyes open. Your previous relationships don’t determine whether you’re capable of getting into future ones, but you want to trust wisely and be circumspect about how you get involved again.

If you are struggling with grieving a relationship, it might be hard to sort all this out by yourself. Grief counseling can give you a different perspective and help you release the pain of the loss. It can also help you cope if you’re likely to see your ex-partner in your daily life. Please call me if you’re interested in resolving the grief of your loss, or click the button below.