Grieving the Relationship You Imagined
Some of the disappointment in your relationship isn't about your partner. It's about a version of the story you're still waiting to arrive.
There is the relationship you have and the relationship you pictured. When the distance between the two goes unmourned, it doesn't dissolve. It turns into a low, steady resentment about things your partner has never actually been asked to do.
Grief is the mechanism that closes that distance. Not resignation, not lowering the bar — grief. You let yourself be sad about the thing that isn't coming, and when the sadness has been fully felt, your attention returns to the person who is here.
I ask people to write it as a eulogy. The apology you're never getting. The parent who is not going to become curious about you. The version of your marriage where you were both twenty-nine and unencumbered.
Almost everyone resists this, because it feels like giving up. It is the opposite. Waiting is the giving up. Waiting takes the years you actually have and spends them on a version of life that does not exist.
Of the eight weeks I teach, this is the quietest and the one people mention a year later.
Psychotherapist, educator and organizational consultant in Los Angeles. He teaches Relationship Mastery, an eight-week live class.
See the class →