Mourning a Relationship

[hadleycee]

I was in an emotionally abusive relationship for a bit this year. The relationship was short but I really cared about this guy and even months later struggle with having to end the relationship. I know it was the right thing to do. I’m in counselling and have had counsellors tell me to feel the grief over the relationship but it just always feels so difficult. In the end I miss the good parts of what we had, and as overdramatic as it sounds, really don’t feel I will find someone I will connect with in the same way who is an actual decent person. I want to be able to grieve him, accept the loss and move on but it just feels like I can’t stop missing only the good parts and forgetting about the way he made me extremely anxious all the time. I wondered if you had any advice for grieving someone in a situation like this?

[Heather]

Hey there, hadleycee. I'm sorry you're having such a hard time getting through this.

You know, I think it just takes time and reminding ourselves that in abuse, we are actually programmed to believe that only the person abusing us will meet our needs. The abuse cycle reinforces that again and again, pretty much every time we experience the honeymoon period of it. When the bad times are so bad, it also makes those good times look so much better than they actually are in comparison.

You probably won't feel the way you did in those times with anyone in a healthy relationship, you're right, but I don't think that's a bad thing. The kind of connection we feel in abuse isn't real so much as manufactured. The kind of intensity it creates can feel like deep connection, but it isn't, it's codependency, really.

Here's the good news: you're not 80, or even 50, you're 20, so you have a whole lot of time and opportunity to meet other people and to have healthy relationships where, when you experience the good stuff, it will actually BE good stuff and it will also stay good stuff, instead of being a crummy carnival ride from hell where anything that feels good is always in the context of something that feels terrible. Life is long, so much longer than it can feel like it is when we're young. You have time, and most likely, in the course of your life you won't only have another intimate relationship with the good stuff, for real, but probably much more than one.

If it's helpful, chances are what you are really grieving here isn't this guy and this relationship, but what you thought it was, and the promise you thought it held. It might be worth seeing if you can't sit with your grief in that way, and try to experience it through that lens?