Grief & Marriage: Part 2

When we left off, Hub and I were grieving very differently and I had finally surrendered to trust in his grief AND mine without having to understand or justify any of it.

I was lucky, neither of us grieved on a bender or with abuse. (Go ahead and judge your partner’s grief if it puts you in danger.) We were both just intensely uncomfortable and couldn’t seem to reach each other across the divide. Cultivating trust and reverence for our divergent griefs really did take the pressure off. What to do with the extra space?

Let Time Expand.

If all goes well, marriage is LONG. There is so much time. We don’t have to fix all these problems right here, right now. We get to find our way through them over months and years.

If all goes sideways and somebody else dies suddenly, well shit. Not much we can do about that. Having a dozen extra fights wouldn’t make it any easier. Might as well take our time.

Pay Attention.

What makes me feel lonely and awful? What makes me feel loved and supported?

This is different in every couple but tracking it looks the same. How does it feel in the moment? How does it feel just after? An hour later? A whole day later? When I tried to talk about heavy stuff: Laurel, my feelings, etc. it all went to hell and I felt awful for days. Verbal communication clearly wasn’t working. OK, less of that. When I reached out and touched my husband, I felt connected. OK, so more touching. Even just one time I held my tongue or one extra hug made a difference. Incremental change adds up.

“But Kate,” I can hear you say, “This is an awful strategy. I refuse to give up on my marriage like this. Talking is important.”

Indeed, this strategy did not meet my need to talk. It did meet my need to feel more loved in my marriage and stable in my home. I let that be enough to put on my husband and my marriage in the throes of grief. I let time be expansive.

It’s important to pair the “less bad more good” strategy with another one:

I cast a Wide Net

Grief’s emotional needs are enormous. Far, far more than any one person could ever meet. The hours of crying on shoulders, the sheer darkness and weight of the witnessing, the unrelenting physical and emotional need — it’s too much.

YOU are not too much when you’re grieving, but your needs are too much for any single person on the planet, even your first-choice person, the one you married.

So spread it out. When I realized I was putting my husband on the pointy end of a pin and balancing my entire grief on the head of it, I realized that wasn’t fair. He had his own grief which he couldn’t even figure out how to handle. He couldn’t start to hold mine, too.

And still, I deserve to have my needs met (and so, too, do you!) Therapy only gets us so far. That’s one other person. Support group adds more for witnessing and mirroring. Then add in friends, family, acquaintances, relations. Get really, really good at asking for help. Break a need up into specific, practical pieces, and ask for each, one at a time, one person at a time. Would you come take me for a walk on Wednesday? Would you drop me a meal on Thursday? Would you call me every Tuesday night and I might or might not pick up? Would you tell all our mutual friends what happened so I don’t have to? Would you come with me to my doctor’s appointment so I don’t have to go all by myself? Would you use Laurel’s name with me on the regular? Would you put her birthday in your calendar and send me a card next year so I’m not the only one who remembers?

You know all those people who say, “If there’s anything I can do….” Be ready for them. They do mean it. But you have to know where to start.

It helps to get vital support from the 2nd or 3rd or 175th-choice person. A lot. The better supported I felt, the easier it was to genuinely love my husband and let him love me back.

Survival First. Marriage of Your Dreams Later.

I’ve read a lot of marriage books (so, so many for couples coaching), and a whole lot of them say these are terrible ideas.

Well, those books weren’t written for grieving people. Grief is acute. And if you let time be expansive, there’s lots and lots of time to come back from not-talking-about-hard-things for a while. When your needs are too damn big for one person to carry, especially a person who is also IN IT, it’s 100% ok to go outside the marriage and get more help.* There’s a reason the whole attending audience is often asked, at a wedding, to support the couple through good times and bad. Sometimes we need an entire community to show up. Keep feeding the relationship with love and generosity as you can. Keep forgiving yourself when you can’t muster love and generosity. It’s ok. Tomororw is another day.

Remember: time is expansive. Sometimes slower is faster.

You are worthy of ALL the support that you need.

*NB that I don’t recommend going outside the relationship to meet sexual needs UNLESS the foundation of your relationship already allows for this (think polyamory, ethical non-monogamy). Betrayal is not going to feed your relationship. But do, by all means, enlist help from a sex coach like me or study Mantak Chia’s meditations and use this time to gain mastery over your own orgasm if intimacy is incompatible with your partner’s grief right now. I’ll talk more about going from surviving to thriving in the next post.

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