My partner’s unresolved grief is putting a strain on our relationship

As a teenager, my partner lost their father to illness. He was their idol, so of course this led to profound grief, which I feel is unresolved.

We recently watched a movie that was hauntingly emotional, and my partner was angry afterwards. This led to an argument, with them saying they never want to watch something that will make them feel sadness again. I encouraged them to sit with sadness; they went to bed.

We have been together for six years, and it feels as if they are wanting to shut themselves off from vulnerable emotions. It has been this way since we got together, and I am trying to support them as well as support my own emotional wellbeing.

I believe it is important to remind ourselves of the tragedy and beauty in the world, and not close ourselves off from sadness; I see it as valuable. My partner believes they have experienced too much pain and they want to keep that door closed.

A decade has passed since their father died, and I fully support my partner and understand they must be feeling emotional pain. But I worry that without finding some peace and the ability to take on difficult emotions, it will affect their, and our, future.

I don’t know how to tread. It feels as if I have to sacrifice my own interests and emotional availability to preserve their needs a lot of the time. I want to support them, but I don’t know what to do.

It’s a very common response to turn away from “negative” or hard-to-handle emotions. But what I learned early on in this job is that humans are not like fuse boxes – you can’t isolate one switch: if you numb one emotion, you dampen all of them. Also to even begin to process things we really need to face them.

I went to psychotherapist John-Paul Davies, not least because he taught me that “human beings aren’t built for happiness, they’re built for survival – happiness has to be worked at”. Indeed, if we only pursued happiness, we’d be dead as a species. But in order to experience happiness, we also need to be able to experience sadness.

“One of the repeating themes I see as a therapist,” he said after reading your letter, “is people disconnecting from their sadness and grief and, in turn, one of nature’s greatest gifts to help us move through these emotions: tears.”

Although you haven’t commented on whether your partner is afraid to cry, a lot of people are, even though tears can have soothing properties. While I understand your partner’s fears and their desire not to experience more sadness, Davies explained that “by keeping the door closed in this way, their pain can’t move, it stays frozen in time and is experienced, in one way or another, for ever. A person is then often left only with fear and anger [because the pain is omnipresent] or experiencing nothing much at all emotionally. This is because sadness and grief are in the same emotional room as love, and turning against them hinders our capacity for emotional intimacy and vulnerability, and therefore to really love and be loved.”

Davies wondered if your partner was only like this with others, or if they allow themselves to feel sadness on their own? Some people find it very hard to show such a vulnerable emotion in the company of others.

How to move forward? “It’s important to remember,” said Davies, “that these are often deep-rooted patterns and change can therefore take time. When we learn to live with something early on, it can take time to unlearn living with it, and time to develop and establish a different way of doing things.” I would add that your partner probably sees their way of doing things as protective and having “worked for them so far”, even if it actually doesn’t work for them in the long term or isn’t healthy.

Some people have built up such strong defences against difficult emotions that to change can be too much for them. So I would tread carefully and go slowly. A place to start might be to talk about their dad in a very ordinary, neutral, everyday fashion to see what comes up. Is there anyone else in their family that can help with this process? Your partner may also feel under attack and that processing their grief is letting go of their father. Grief counselling can help.

You and your partner may find this podcast I did on adults bereaved in childhood useful.

Every week, Annalisa Barbieri addresses a personal problem sent in by a reader. If you would like advice from Annalisa, please send your problem to [email protected]. Annalisa regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence. Submissions are subject to our terms and conditions.

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