This topic is the first of the set of discussions that address the kinds of relationships we might want to have with other people as we grieve and how what we want or need might change as we move forward in our journeys. It will be the first of the discussions that will look at the often difficult questions that come from finding ourselves alone now and of figuring out how we will interact with others or how they will interact with us. We will also address the changes in what we want and need in the way of companionship as we go forward into the next part of our lives no matter when that happens or what it looks like.
Affirmation and Approval:
A related idea to get started with, one that is sort of about who or what’s not there for us now, is the often sad and difficult place where we no longer have our loved ones to share affirmation and approval with.
Affirmation and approval are powerful needs in most people throughout their lives. The need we have for someone to tell us “well done” or “good job”, “great idea”, or “you look nice today” among many others, is strong in us and for some people it can even be a driving force.
In most positive long-term relationships, it is often a powerful part of what we do for each other. It’s part of our caring and our affection and a part of why we become happy to be together. And it seems that whether it’s out front and obvious or tucked away and hidden, there is a glow that comes over us when our loved one tells us these things in some special way. The affirmations we shared with our loved ones and how often we made each other feel good with compliments and affectionate approval throughout our lives together were probably a very important part of our love and our lives together.
It may have been rare or it may have been often but I suspect that it always made us feel good to hear or to know by words or actions or a special look that our loved one thought we had done a good job at some task we had undertaken or something we had done or said, something that they liked and took the time to tell us so.
And with their passing, that important part of our emotional lives is gone!
Loss of those affirmations seems to be an often under-recognized but potentially significant part of the “missing you” and emptiness that becomes part of our grief. Though in some ways it may have been a fairly subtle component of our lives, it may well have also been hugely important and may now be a much larger part of the sadness and emptiness we feel then we might realize.
How much of what we do, how we act or how we interact with others in our grief and grieving may now be a search for those missing approvals and affirmations?
Who’s there for you?
What can we and should we expect from the people we know and the people we meet? This appears to be quite different for each of us and it is also different with each of the people we’ve known and those we meet along the way.
Our society doesn’t often give people much help in dealing with other people’s grief. Because it is often hidden or little talked about, many people really don’t know what to say or do or how to act around a bereaved person. It may be especially obvious when our bereavement continues beyond a relatively short time and when people want us to stop talking about it. Then, the “get over it” and “move on” thoughts may begin to surface in other people’s minds and they may unfortunately start to withdraw when we don’t move on the way they think we should.
In a lot of instances, those who knew us as part of a couple can become quite uncomfortable because we aren’t with our spouses or partners when we get together with them now. Often, either we or they or both of us are uncomfortable with that dynamic and don’t know how to react, what to say or we have that “third wheel feeling” that something is missing or unbalanced enter into the interaction.
Often too, if one partner was very much the more social one in a couple, if that person is no longer there, it can be very difficult to pick up the social connections and responsibilities without them. Until we learn how to connect or reconnect with people by ourselves, many of our old and not many new social interactions work well or in some cases may even be possible for us to maintain or form.
Old friends:
Sometimes, as a result of our bereavements, we may find that old friends drop away, again, at least in part because they don’t know how to act or aren’t comfortable with us as single persons when they knew us as part of a couple. Very often, they don’t know what to say and they particularly worry if it’s ok to remember and talk about our loved ones, even though most of the time, we would very much like it if they did.
Their discomfort and perhaps their wanting us to go back to being the person they remember and knew, sometimes makes them withdraw their company and support from our lives, either slowly or quickly depending on who they are, what the relationship between us is and what they now feel.
We also may not know how to stop those things from happening, especially through the fog of our grief. They may just be gone from our lives and we may not get a chance to do or say anything about it, even if we actually knew what to say or do about it anyway. This may include people who live near us and people who live at a distance and who we communicate with mainly by phone or email. We may not know why it happened either. We may just be left confused, hurt and wondering… If it happens, on top of everything else, how sad is that for us to have to deal with!
It was pointed out at a past meeting that “our spouses or partners friends are not necessarily our friends” and so they too may fall away in some fashion.
Gratefully, there may be those old friends who stick by us and learn to listen to our stories and who are willing, no matter when or for how long it goes on, to support us, to share our journey, to hug us when we need it and to let us cry if that happens. They have somehow thankfully overcome any discomfort they may have had and remain the friends they have always been. Thank you!
We may also find ourselves withdrawing from old friendships as we lose commonality with those people we knew as couples and from those who have not experienced what we have. We may also retreat from people who say or do things that end up being hurtful to us even when or if they might only have been trying to help. `
Under these circumstances and others we might encounter, we may find that we can become isolated and estranged from friends and their support, from friends who don’t know what to do or say as time goes by and we are still grieving.
Family:
I’ve heard that everyone in a family grieves differently, usually because of their different personalities and their different relationships with the person they are grieving. And I believe that it’s important to let everyone in a family grieve for a family member in their own way and in their own time. Sometimes however, that can cause conflicts between family members because not everyone understands that it doesn’t and that it doesn’t have to look the same or be the same for everyone as it does for them.
Family unfortunately, can often be no wiser than friends in how they deal with our grief. If or when they begin to withdraw for whatever reason, that can be even more painful because of who they are and our relationships to them.
When family members have to deal with someones loss of a spouse or partner, often they too may find themselves not knowing what to do or say, of wanting us to get over it and wanting us to move on. I think it’s possible that they may want us to stop talking about it too since we are more likely, especially at first, to turn to family to tell our stories and share our grief. In a kinder way, they may just want us not to be hurting anymore because they love us and it hurts them to see us this way and they don’t know how to fix it or make it better.
While some people in our families somehow get it and are wonderfully supportive, unfortunately, other people in our families may be somehow so put off by our grief or our continuing grief that they completely don’t know what to do or say and so, often do or say nothing. Or, in their confusion, they say hurtful things, which, coming from family, can hurt much worse than the same behavior or words or lack of behavior or words, from friends.
Another more positive possibility is that close members of especially “the immediate family” might “huddle together” and support each other in their grief and become a strong support system for each other even as each person grieves and learns to find healing in their own way. The hard part of this one is to allow that healing to happen by allowing it to progress in it’s own way and at it’s own rate for each family member.
Here’s a difficult one:
What are the differences between how our own family deals with us and our grief and how our loved ones family deals with us and our grief? Is it always going to be the same? Should it always be the same?
Our own families may behave in totally different ways than our loved ones families. If there are differences, what does that look like, why is it happening and how do we deal with any negative energy that it generates from either side? What if our loved ones family treats us “better” than our own family? What if our loved ones family doesn’t want to deal with us anymore? What can we do to work through any differences that come up and retain a (reasonable) relationship going forward?
Going forward:
So unfortunately, for many different reasons, some of our past relationships can grow cold. They can stop being what they were and we may find ourselves becoming even more alone in our grief because our old and often trusted relationships (friends and/or families) stop functioning and stop supporting us.
And because of all these reasons and in all these ways, in our bereavement, we may sometimes be left isolated to some extent or another and find ourselves with the unexpected but now very real and important task of somehow meeting new people and making new friends or finding new companions to fill those gaps.
Making new friends and companions, some questions we may want or need to ask ourselves:
If people from our lives with our loved ones fall away and we are left feeling isolated and in need of support, how and where do we find that, how do we go forward in that way? How and where do we meet people and how do we trust our instincts about who to approach or allow into our lives. What do we want new friendships to look like? What do we want new companions to bring into our lives?
How can we separate out our desires, our illusions, our loneliness and perhaps our “rebound“ feelings from our true wants and needs for simple friendships and companionship? In our grief and isolation, how can we not drive people away by perhaps being “too needy”? How can we find ways to safely let people in if we do find them? How can we find safe places and safe ways to find and meet new friends or companions if we choose to have them?
What can we do once people appear in our lives to not try to hold so tightly to them that we do things to actually drive them away? In our need for friends or companions in our lives, how do we keep ourselves from wanting and expecting old friends, new friends and new companions to fill the empty spaces in our lives instead of letting them fill whatever space they are comfortable filling? How do we keep from expecting them to act or react the same way our loved ones did?
If people appear in our lives, how can we figure out who to trust and who to keep away from? How can we find safe ways to let people we meet grow into friends?
The processes each of us follow towards finding and making friends and companions depends on a large number of factors in each of our individual lives. Where we live, what we have access to, our age, our gender, our personalities, if we are raising kids, caring for parents, if we are working and more, can all play a role here.
As with much of what we talk about, if finding new friends and/or companions is something we may have to or want to try at some point, as we look to find those new people to bring into our lives, we will each need to find our own way to explore the possibilities that are available. We will each have to learn to safely navigate the social requirements and patterns in each of the modalities we investigate. And we will have to safely choose who those people we want to include may be.
There is no right way to do it but it can be a very important growth area and a comfort and healing area for us going forward as well. It can also be difficult and dangerous. I believe it is very important to pay attention to what we are doing and why we are doing it as we seek to make new friendships and build new relationships while we are grieving.
Most of these questions will be the themes of the topics we will be investigating over the next series of meetings. We will look at possibilities and cautions to consider about what it might mean or entail to bring people into our lives not only as friends and companions but also into deeper relationships of different types and intensities in the next part of our lives. We will also consider the reasons for and results of not bringing people into our lives in various ways and intensities.
Questions:
Does the lack of affirmations and approvals play a role in your grief?
Do you find their absence something you’ve noticed?
How important is that absence to you if you do recognize it?
What types of affirmation do you miss?
Do you think you are seeking affirmation in things you do now?
Do you think you are seeking affirmations now to replace the missing affirmation from the past?
Would finding new types of affirmation and/or approval or new ways to find affirmation and/or approval help your healing?
How can you find affirmation and approval now?
Where or who might they come from?
What form might they take?
Can it be as good as the affirmation or approval that you miss?
Can it be better than the those you miss?
Should it or can it ever be as good?
Would you like to find new ways to receive affirmation and approval going forward?
Would you like to find more affirmation and approval in the future than you did in your life with your loved one?
Have you experienced old friends being less willing to talk to you or spend time with you?
Have family members begun to distance themselves from you?
Do you feel a need to socialize?
Can you see ways and places to meet new people if you need to that you are comfortable with?
Do you think that other bereaved spouses or partners would be a more comfortable group than the non-bereaved to become friends and spend time with?
How would you like people to behave or react to you in your grief? What would you like them to do or say that would make it easier for you and for them?
Can you think ways that that would help others to become comfortable with your grief and your new situation?