I recently lost my Grandad in Australia, after a long 9 month battle with cancer. My family is all over the world in Australia, Asia, the NL and the UK. I have a new (10 month) partner and friends that I am trying to lean on.
Struggling to find how much to lean into partner without putting all my sadness and pain onto her. Feeling guilty about being an inadequate partner while feeling all this grief so I try to hide it, but then it comes out in ways where I inadvertently treat her differently and then we fall out because I push her away. She then runs out of patience and we’re distant in our connection for some time as she’s hurt by the way I’m dealing with this.
I feel lost in my feelings and what to do with them. It’s been 2 weeks since my loss now and I feel like I should have moved further along in my journey of how I’m feeling but I’m feeling constant sadness and anger still.
Don’t try to hide your grief from people, who I assume want to help you. Be open and honest how you feel, cry when you need to, get angry when you need to to. That’s the way to get through this. Share your grief with her, and you will get lots of time for talking, listening and hugging in return. I’m not really surprised she’s losing patience
You comment about moving further along your journey, but 2 weeks is absolutely no time to have moved forward!!! we do well to hang on by our fingertips at this stage. Be emotional, be human, be realistic
I am very to hear of your loss. What might actually help is to ask her to have a heart-to-heart talk, explaining how upset you feel and saying you will naturally sometimes act differently, maybe even in ways she doesn’t like. It doesn’t matter if you cry while you’re talking to her, you most certainly have the right to express your feelings and you were clearly very close to your granddad. Maybe trying to work out what would help you during the talk would help.
Yeah, I get caught in feeling constantly too heavy for her so then I try to let her see me not be heavy. But then that clearly doesn’t go well and everything comes crumbling down in a moment and I definitely don’t get the support or affection I’m initially yearning for.
My work schedule means I’m out of the house from 7-7 and this past week we haven’t had time for each other in the evening either so I have been feeling alone in my grief journey and I don’t know how much I should be expecting to share with her.
Thank you. We often have heart-to-hearts and she knows the sadness and anger I’m feeling. She just doesn’t like it when it feels like that anger and sadness is directed at her - which I understand, but also in a moment when I’m feeling strong emotions I feel like I don’t have full control over my expression, which sucks. Because then she feels like I’m directing my sadness and anger at her, but I am not.
@ZayC Do you tell her all of this? I realize it’s hard, but if it’s “just” anger, then I think it’s something she should expect. Obviously, getting physically wouldn’t be okay, but being a little angry at people, For example someone rang me up pestering me about having an inspection where I live and I asked on the verge of tears for them to postpone it because my partner had only been dead for a week. In reply they said about the stupidest thing you could imagine " I don’t know what to say". I got quite angry at that point, particularly as they tried to carry on talking about some other business. I haven’t heard from them since.
I think you can only go on the way you are , talking to one another, being honest, trying to accept one another’s feelings.